Married women and the law in premodern northwest Europe / edited by Cordelia Beattie and Matthew Frank Stevens.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Beattie, Cordelia.

Stevens, Matthew Frank

JSTOR (Organization)

Constance L. Rosenthal Book Fund.

Series:

Gender in the Middle Ages ; v. 8.

Gender in the Middle Ages ; v.8

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--History.

Women.

History.

Women--Social conditions.

Married women--Europe, Northern--Social conditions.

Married women.

Married women--Europe, Northern--History--To 1500.

Married women--Legal status, laws, etc--Europe, Northern--History--To 1500.

Married women--Legal status, laws, etc.

Social conditions.

Northern Europe.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (248 pages).

Place of Publication:

Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK ; Rochester, NY : Boydell Press, 2013.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

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 property at the dissolution of marriage, married women's capacity to act as agents of their husbands and households in transacting business, and married women's interactions with the courts. Book jacket.

Contents:

Inheritance, property and marriage in medieval Norway / Lars Ivar Hansen

Spousal disputes, the marital property system, and the law in later medieval Sweden / Mia Korpiola

When two worlds collide : marriage and the law in medieval Ireland / Gillian Kenny

Married women, crime and the courts in late medieval Wales / Lizabeth Johnson

Peasant women, agency and status in late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century England : some reconsiderations / Miriam Müller

London's married women, debt litigation and coverture in the Court of Common Pleas / Matthew Frank Stevens

Married women, contracts and coverture in late medieval England / Cordelia Beattie

Property, family and partnership : married women and legal capability in late medieval Ghent / Shennan Hutton

"For his interest"? : Women, debt and coverture in early modern Scotland / Cathryn Spence

The worth of married women witnesses in the English Church courts, 1550-1730 / Alexandra Shepard

Married women, work and the law : evidence from early modern Germany / Sheilagh Ogilvie.

Notes:

Electronic reproduction. New York Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Constance L. Rosenthal Book Fund.

Other Format:

Print version: Married women and the law in premodern northwest Europe.

ISBN:

9781782041146

1782041141

Publisher Number:

99962027166

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.