"These kind of flesh-flies shall not suck up or devour their husbands' estates:" married women's separate property rights in England, 1630-1835

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dc.contributor.authorMercier, Courtenay
dc.contributor.supervisorMcKenzie, Andrea Katherine
dc.date.accessioned2018-06-18T14:21:56Z
dc.date.available2018-06-18T14:21:56Z
dc.date.copyright2018en_US
dc.date.issued2018-06-18
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of Historyen_US
dc.degree.levelMaster of Arts M.A.en_US
dc.description.abstractDuring the long eighteenth century, married women in England were subject to the rules of coverture, which denied them a legal identity independent of their husbands and severely curtailed their acquisition, possession and disposition of property. There is a consensus among historians that married women circumvented the restrictions of coverture both in their daily lives and by use of the legal mechanism of the separate estate. This study reviews contemporary legal and social attitudes towards women’s property rights in marriage to examine the extent to which married women had economic agency under coverture. Through a review of reported cases, treatises on the law of property, and a contemporary fictional representation of pin-money, I assess the foundations justifying the law of coverture, and the challenges presented to coverture by the separate estate. I argue that there is a distinction between the theory and practice of the separate estate; the separate estate must be understood as a type of property set aside for a special purpose rather than a type of property separated from a husband’s control. More precisely, the existence of the separate estate generally, and pin-money in particular, did little to advance married women’s economic agency.en_US
dc.description.scholarlevelGraduateen_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1828/9461
dc.languageEnglisheng
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.subjectlegal historyen_US
dc.subjectwomen's historyen_US
dc.subjectmarriageen_US
dc.subjectmatrimonial lawen_US
dc.subjectcovertureen_US
dc.subjectsocial historyen_US
dc.subjectfeme coverten_US
dc.subjectcourts of equityen_US
dc.subjectgenderen_US
dc.subjectproperty lawen_US
dc.subjectmarital propertyen_US
dc.subjectproperty rightsen_US
dc.subjectpin moneyen_US
dc.subjectseparate estateen_US
dc.subjecteconomic agencyen_US
dc.subjectlong eighteenth centuryen_US
dc.title"These kind of flesh-flies shall not suck up or devour their husbands' estates:" married women's separate property rights in England, 1630-1835en_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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