Less Favored – More Favored? Women’s Approaches to Property After Re- marriage During the Second Half of the 18 Century by (original) (raw)
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Women in court : the property rights of brides, heiresses and widows in thirteenth-century England
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...
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
Gender Issues in Comparative Legal History 2
Gender Competent Legal Education, 2023
This chapter analyses the key gender issues throughout comparative legal history, from the Antiquity to the contemporary era. A wide array of subjects will be briefly touched upon, such as the traditional roles of men and women and their legal recognition, the legal status of women, the patriarchal patterns and the trends of their change, the interaction of religion and law in these areas. These various subjects all portray a millennia-long domination of the patriarchal system and the long and arduous struggle for gender equality. The text is mainly concerned with the Western legal systems, broadly speaking-European, Near-Eastern and American-showcasing individual legal systems in the Antiquity and Middle Ages, where differences during these times were greater, but focusing instead on key issues and areas of law in the Modern era, where convergence and common tendencies become more pronounced. By understanding these issues in their historical context, readers will gain valuable knowledge of the historical background of the current status of gender relations in the main legal systems of the world.
Gender Issues in Comparative Legal History
Gender-Competent Legal Education
This chapter analyses the key gender issues throughout comparative legal history, from the Antiquity to the contemporary era. A wide array of subjects will be briefly touched upon, such as the traditional roles of men and women and their legal recognition, the legal status of women, the patriarchal patterns and the trends of their change, the interaction of religion and law in these areas. These various subjects all portray a millennia-long domination of the patriarchal system and the long and arduous struggle for gender equality. The text is mainly concerned with the Western legal systems, broadly speaking—European, Near-Eastern and American—showcasing individual legal systems in the Antiquity and Middle Ages, where differences during these times were greater, but focusing instead on key issues and areas of law in the Modern era, where convergence and common tendencies become more pronounced. By understanding these issues in their historical context, readers will gain valuable know...
Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe
2013
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...
J.L. Nelson and A. Rio, Women and laws in early medieval Europe
J.M. Bennett and R. Mazo Karras eds., Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, 2013
This article examines the main ways in which early medieval lawmakers concerned themselves with women. Law codes put forward ideologically loaded representations of women, and they reflected concerns to ensure both their protection and their control by men. At the same time, they also dealt with highly practical issues and were subject to continual amendment as new and ever more complicated cases were brought before lawmakers. They reveal a conflicted and ambiguous attitude towards women: as highly prized assets and a crucial form of symbolic capital, but also a heavy financial burden, a liability, and a weak point in the safeguarding of family honor. We consider the valuation of women in terms of compensation for homicide, injuries, and insults; the regulation of marriage and of sexual crimes; and property, to which women and men had differential access.
This article unpacks the contexts and meanings of one extended episode surrounding a notary's wife, her husband, their kin, his clients, and the judicial system. It suggests how women as agents and subjects were central in the interlocking web of social relations and laws that maintained a complex, negotiated, and contested, household-based gender hierarchy as a key element of the social and political topography of early modern Trance. The legal disadvantages and exclusions women faced were key elements in the maintenance of an inequitable gender hierarchy. Yet "the law" was a complicated matter involving national decrees promulgated by the monarchy and regional customary laws.
Gender, social and marital status in the seventh century: the legal framework
2017
ABSTRACT: La legislazione del Kent ci permette di osservare la condizione delle donne nella societa del tempo. Ai sensi delle disposizioni di AEthelberht, i diritti legali di una donna dipendono principalmente dal suo stato civile (si possono individuare quattro categorie: fanciulle, mogli, madri e vedove). Questo non si applica agli uomini, per i quali e rilevante non lo stato civile ma quello sociale; per cui un uomo, per la legge, e re, nobile, uomo libero o liberto. Di fatti, la posizione giuridica del maschio e definita piuttosto da disposizioni apparentemente dettate dal rango che si concentrano sul potere e l’autorita. Ci sono forti indizi che, nella legislazione del VII secolo, i legami coniugali fossero meno vincolanti rispetto agli obblighi sociali. In questo articolo l’autore si propone di indagare le ideologie che sottendono questi differenti quadri normativi e le strutture sociali che li determinano. ABSTRACT: The Kentish legislation allows us to observe the status of w...
Women, Agency and the Law, 1300–1700
Women, Agency and the Law, 1300–1700, 2015
This well-crafted volume of ten essays is an important contribution to the growing body of research on women and law in England the pre-modern period. Each essay examines a different aspect of women's interactions with the law (broadly defined and encompassing both secular and ecclesiastical courts) and, as suggested in the title, foregrounds their agency. Given the wide chronological span covered and the many different courts, locations, and legal situations examined, it is a credit to the editors that the collection fits together so well, both thematically and stylistically.