“As If She Were Single”: Working Wives and the Late Medieval English 'Femme Sole' (original) (raw)
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Medieval Singlewomen in Law and Practice
The Place of the Social Margins, 2017
In a world that categorized women into a tripartite model of maid/wife/widow, there was little conceptual space for singlewomen. By juxtaposing the image of women in the Year Books with that of actual case studies drawn from court records, this chapter hopes to highlight that singlewomen were much less invisible in real life than they were in the legal mindset. The questions that this study will attempt to answer are: what can the courtroom evidence tell us about the life of a singlewoman? And how did singlewomen survive in a world that failed to acknowledge their existence?
2013
Medieval scholarship has emphasized the legal and economic dealings of widows and single women, who appeared more prominently than married women in legal records. The essays in this collection illuminate the legal identity of married women and demonstrate that wives were not hidden from view in legal acts. Framed around the theme of guardianship, as exemplified in the English common law concept of coverture, this collection offers a nuanced examination of the ways in which women navigated and negotiated the laws that conferred on them a new legal status at marriage. This compilation of eleven essays is organized chronologically, with studies examining legal materials from ca. 1200 to 1800. The majority of the essays focus on the Middle Ages and on regions relating to the English doctrine of coverture. Essays pertaining to English common law stress the limitations of the influence of coverture as it was applied to women in different local contexts. Looking at instances where husbands and wives appeared as co-litigants in the Court of Common Pleas, Matthew Stevens's essay demonstrates that coverture did not prevent women from taking an active role in debt litigation in fifteenth-century London. While management of real property is often highlighted in studies of wives' legal activities, Stevens finds that wives were involved in a range of "economic-oriented lawsuits" that were non-land based. Stevens's skepticism on the comprehensive application of coverture in medieval London agrees with Miriam Müller's essay on peasant women in manorial English courts, which reveals that the concept of coverture did not depict the experiences of many married women in a manorial setting. Müller observes that married women's legal status and the application of English common law varied on a local level and depended on what the lord deemed most expedient. Lizabeth Johnson also finds that coverture was applied inconsistently in Welsh lordship courts, where husbands appeared in court with their wives (in line with coverture) only for certain crimes. Johnson' s essay finds that the conventions of coverture were followed in cases of abduction, when husbands were often seeking reparations for lost property, and in other interpersonal disputes. However, in cases of criminal presentment for assault or defamation, married women often appeared in court on their own behalf, indicating that wives were held responsible for some crimes independent of their husbands. Cordelia Beattie's essay examines legal theory in English Year Books
2013
Medieval scholarship has emphasized the legal and economic dealings of widows and single women, who appeared more prominently than married women in legal records. The essays in this collection illuminate the legal identity of married women and demonstrate that wives were not hidden from view in legal acts. Framed around the theme of guardianship, as exemplified in the English common law concept of coverture, this collection offers a nuanced examination of the ways in which women navigated and negotiated the laws that conferred on them a new legal status at marriage. This compilation of eleven essays is organized chronologically, with studies examining legal materials from ca. 1200 to 1800. The majority of the essays focus on the Middle Ages and on regions relating to the English doctrine of coverture. Essays pertaining to English common law stress the limitations of the influence of coverture as it was applied to women in different local contexts. Looking at instances where husbands and wives appeared as co-litigants in the Court of Common Pleas, Matthew Stevens's essay demonstrates that coverture did not prevent women from taking an active role in debt litigation in fifteenth-century London. While management of real property is often highlighted in studies of wives' legal activities, Stevens finds that wives were involved in a range of "economic-oriented lawsuits" that were non-land based. Stevens's skepticism on the comprehensive application of coverture in medieval London agrees with Miriam Müller's essay on peasant women in manorial English courts, which reveals that the concept of coverture did not depict the experiences of many married women in a manorial setting. Müller observes that married women's legal status and the application of English common law varied on a local level and depended on what the lord deemed most expedient. Lizabeth Johnson also finds that coverture was applied inconsistently in Welsh lordship courts, where husbands appeared in court with their wives (in line with coverture) only for certain crimes. Johnson' s essay finds that the conventions of coverture were followed in cases of abduction, when husbands were often seeking reparations for lost property, and in other interpersonal disputes. However, in cases of criminal presentment for assault or defamation, married women often appeared in court on their own behalf, indicating that wives were held responsible for some crimes independent of their husbands. Cordelia Beattie's essay examines legal theory in English Year Books
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2018
The research targets women in court – those who were frequently recorded in legal documents managing or protecting their property rights. The main concern is the change and development of the legal status and property rights of women, namely hereditas (inheritance), maritagium (marriage portion) and dos (dower) from the end of the twelfth century to the thirteenth century in England, and how they strove for their rights in court. While the thirteenth century is significant in England for the crucial development of the common law, the evolving common law also enacted a few prominent pieces of legislation which had huge impacts for women’s property rights. A number of important questions should be addressed at this point - How did women strive for their rights and what difficulties did they encounter in court? What strategies and claims did they and their representatives use in court in order to cope with the new regulations? Also, in a rather primitive age, what was the gap between t...
Medieval Single Women: The Politics of Social Classification in Late Medieval England
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This book is a focused study of the use of the category ‘single woman’ in late medieval England. In a culture in which marriage was the desirable norm and virginity was particularly prized in females, the categories ‘virgin’ and ‘widow’ held particular significance. But the law gave unmarried women legal rights and responsibilities that were generally withheld from married women. The pervasiveness of religion and the law in people's day-to-day lives led to a complex interplay between moral and economic concerns in how medieval women were conceptualized. The result is different unmarried women are marked out as ‘single women’ in different contexts. This study is therefore revealing of the multiplicity of ways in which dominant cultural ideas impacted on medieval women. It also offers a way into the complex process of social classification in late medieval England. All societies use classificatory schemes in order to understand and to impose order on society. This study views classification as a political act: those classifying must make choices about what divisions are most important or about who falls into which category, and such choices have repercussions. When those classifying choose what defines a group or how an individual should be labelled, they choose between certain variables, such as social status, gender, or age, and decide which to prioritize. This study does not isolate gender as a variable, but examines how it relates to other social cleavages.
Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe
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There has been a tendency in scholarship on premodern women and the law to see married women as hidden from view, obscured by their husbands in legal records. This volume provides a corrective view, arguing that the extent to which the legal principle of coverture applied has been over-emphasized. In particular, it points up differences between the English common law position, which gave husbands guardianship over their wives and their wives' property, and the position elsewhere in northwest Europe, where wives' property became part of a community of property. Detailed studies of legal material from medieval and early modern England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Ghent, Sweden, Norway and Germany enable a better sense of how, when, and where the legal principle of coverture was applied and what effect this had on the lives of married women. Key threads running through the book are married women's rights regarding the possession of moveable and immovable property, marital pro...
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Though there is now a fairly extensive scholarship on the lives of medieval women and particular attention has been paid to women’s work, this has conventionally been understood in rather narrow terms. This present chapter seeks to move beyond an exploration of paid employment or the public economy. It seeks rather to offer a holistic analysis of the activities of the medieval bourgeois housewife. Here a whole range of activities necessary for the effective functioning of the home as both an emotional and an economic entity are seen as integral to the role of the bourgeois wife. She was simultaneously wife, sexual partner, mother, domestic manager, and economic partner. She it was who directed the female servants, supervised in her husband’s absence, ensured meals were cooked, floors cleaned, utensils washed, children comforted and clothed, guest catered for, and husbands kept emotionally and sexually satisfied. The very success of the household and the family trade depended or her working in partnership with her husband, but whilst he may have been the public face of the family business, it is she who made the family home.