The Marriage Exchange

by Howell, Martha C.

• ISBN13: 9780226355160
• ISBN10: 0226355160
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Medieval Douai was one of the wealthiest cloth towns of Flanders, and it left an enormous archive documenting the personal financial affairs of its citizens--wills, marriage agreements, business contracts, and records of court disputes over property rights of all kinds. Based on extensive research in this archive, this book reveals how these documents were produced in a centuries-long effort to regulate--and ultimately to redefine--property and gender relations. At the center of the transformation was a shift from a marital property regime based on custom to one based on contract. In the former, a widow typically inherited her husband's property; in the latter, she shared it with or simply held it for his family or offspring. Howell asks why the law changed as it did and assesses the law's effects on both social and gender meanings but she insists that the reform did not originate in general dissatisfaction with custom or a desire to disempower widows. Instead, it was born in a complex economic, social and cultural history during which Douaisiens gradually came to think about both property and gender in new ways.

Author Biography

Martha C. Howell is professor of history as Columbia University.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Note on Money, Dates, and Names

Introduction

From Custom to Contract

The Social Context of Custom

Legal Reform as Social Engineering

The Social Logic--and Illogic--of Custom

An Alternative Logic

Living with the New

The Weight of Experience

The Douaisien Reform in Historical Context Conclusion: Marie, Franchoise, and Their Sisters

The Evolution of Douai's Douaire Coutumier

Written Custom and Old Custom in Douai Glossary of Legal Terminology

Glossary of Measures

Bibliography

Index

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