Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England

by Perkin; JOAN

• ISBN13: 9780415007719
• ISBN10: 0415007712
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1988-12-22
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Joan Perkin demonstrates clearly in this outstanding book, full of human insights, that women were not content to remain inferior to men in the 'bonds of matrimony'.The 'bonds of matrimony' describes with cruel precision the social and political status of married women in the nineteenth century. Women of all classes had only the most limited rights of possession in their own bodies and property yet, as this remarkable book shows, women of all classes found room to manoeuvre within the narrow limits imposed on them. Upper-class women frequently circumvented the onerous limitations of the law, while middle-class women sought through reform to change their legal status. For working-class women, such legal changes were irrelevant, but they too found ways to ameliorate their position. Joan Perkin demonstrates clearly in this outstanding book, full of human insights, that women were not content to remain inferior or subservient to men.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Women and the Law	p. 10
Marriage À la Mode	p. 33
A Family on the Throne	p. 35
One Law for the Rich	p. 50
The Glorious Licence of a Wife	p. 76
The Provoked Wife	p. 102
Respectables and Roughs	p. 113
Another Law for the Poor	p. 115
A Life of Willing Sacrifice	p. 130
Rough and Ready Women	p. 156
The Country Wife	p. 181
The Gilded Cage	p. 205
The Crusade against Marriage	p. 207
The Angel in the House	p. 233
A Life of One's Own	p. 257
The Battle of Jericho	p. 292
Conclusion	p. 311
Bibliography	p. 317
Index	p. 327
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.