The Hardships Of The English Laws In Relation To Wives With An Explanation Of The Original Curse Of Subjection Passed Upon The Woman In An Humble Address To The Legislature

In this legal treatise published anonymously in 1735 in the form of an address to Parliament, Sarah Chapone discusses the oppression of married women in England. In this landmark in the history of feminism, Chapone argues forcefully against the legal doctrine of coverture, which she compares to slavery, and under which married women were subject to their husbands.

Susan Paterson Glover here presents, in modern type, a critical edition of the first printed work by an English woman writer, Sarah Chapone, on the inequity of the common law regime for married women. Glover's extended, original introduction provides an account of Chapone's life; a discussion of the influence of Mary Astell's work on Chapone's thought and work; and a review of the legal status of women in England's eighteenth century, with particular attention to marriage and the doctrine of coverture and the relations of women, law, and property. It concludes by acknowledging the importance of this text to any consideration of the evolution of a discourse of "rights" for women in the Anglo–American legal tradition, and its contribution to a movement for property rights and women's equality whose genesis is generally located in the legislative changes of the nineteenth century. The edition contains valuable appendices including, among other writings, excerpts from Chapone's correspondence with Samuel Richardson; excerpts of responses to Chapone's work from the Weekly Miscellany; and excerpts from contemporary legal literature. Also included is an annotated text of Chapone's pamphlet on the Muilman controversy, Remarks on Mrs. Muilman's Letter to the Right Honourable The Earl of Chesterfield (London, 1750).

This book examines the writings of seven English women economists from the period 1735–1811. It reveals that contrary to what standard accounts of the history of economic thought suggest, eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women intellectuals were undertaking incisive and gender-sensitive analyses of the economy. Women’s Economic Thought in the Romantic Age argues that established notions of what constitutes economic enquiry, topics, and genres of writing have for centuries marginalised the perspectives and experiences of women and obscured the knowledge they recorded in novels, memoirs, or pamphlets. This has led to an underrepresentation of women in the canon of economic theory. Using insights from literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and feminist economics, the book develops a transdisciplinary methodology that redresses this imbalance and problematises the distinction between literary and economic texts. In its in-depth readings of selected writings by Sarah Chapone, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Mary Robinson, Priscilla Wakefield, Mary Ann Radcliffe, and Jane Austen, this book uncovers the originality and topicality of their insights on the economics of marriage, women and paid work, and moral economics. Combining historical analysis with conceptual revision, Women’s Economic Thought in the Romantic Age retrieves women’s overlooked intellectual contributions and radically breaks down the barriers between literature and economics. It will be of interest to researchers and students from across the humanities and social sciences, in particular the history of economic thought, English literary and cultural studies, gender studies, economics, eighteenth-century and Romantic studies, social history, and the history of ideas.

This ground-breaking book reveals the economic reality of ordinary women between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. Drawing on little-known sources, Amy Louise Erickson reconstructs day-to-day lives, showing how women owned, managed and inherited property on a scale previously unrecognised. Her complex and fascinating research, which contrasts the written laws with the actual practice, completely revises the traditional picture of women's economic status in pre-industrial England. Women and Property is essential reading for anyone interested in women, law and the past.

Was the century of Voltaire also the century of women? In the eighteenth century changes in the nature of work, family life, sexuality, education, law, religion, politics and warfare radically altered the lives of women. Some of these developments caused immense confusion and suffering; others greatly expanded women’s opportunities and worldview – long before the various women’s suffrage movements were more than a glimmer on the horizon. This study pays attention to queens as well as commoners; respectable working women as well as prostitutes; women physicists and mathematicians as well as musicians and actresses; feminists as well as their critics. The result is a rich and morally complex tale of conflict and tragedy, but also of achievement. The book deals with many regions and topics often under-represented in general surveys of European women, including coverage of the Balkans and both European Turkey and Anatolia, of Eastern Europe, of European colonial expansion (particularly the slave trade) and of Muslim, Eastern Orthodox, and Jewish women's history. Bringing all of Europe into the narrative of early modern women's history challenges many received assumptions about Europe and women in past times, and provides essential background for dealing with issues of diversity in the Europe of today.

Women in early modern Britain and colonial America were not the weak husband- and father-dominated characters of popular myth. Quite the reverse, strong women were the norm. They exercised considerable influence as important agents in the social, economic, religious and cultural life of their societies. This book shows how women on both sides of the Atlantic, while accepting a patriarchal system with all its advantages and disadvantages, contrived to carve out for themselves meaningful lives. Unusually it concentrates not only on the making and meaning of marriage, but also upon the partnership between men and women. It also looks at the varied roles – cultural, religious and educational – that women played both inside and outside marriage during the key period 1500-1760. Women emerge as partners, patrons, matchmakers, investors and network builders.

A wide-ranging and accessible account of the pioneering professional women writers who flourished during the Romantic period.