"In Law Husband and Wife are One Person, and the Husband is That Person": Marriage Laws In Eighteenth Century Fiction"
Open Access
Author:
Conway, Caitlin
Area of Honors:
English
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Carla J. Mulford, Thesis Supervisor Christopher Gervais Reed, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
British Marriage Eighteenth Century Literature Law
Abstract:
Eighteenth-century British and inheritance laws mandated married women be subsumed under the legal identity of their husbands. As such, they were unable to own or manage property, independently engage in business, or carry out any kind of legal action against another person or in defense of themselves. Within this constrictive legal and economic context, authors engaged with these laws in fiction by portraying how these laws impacted female characters and their marriages. I consider three such novels in this study: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and the anonymously written The Woman of Colour. The two authors of these works portray the effects of these laws on the lives of women differently. While Austen suggests that laws regarding marriage and inheritance need not disadvantage a woman seeking an advantageous marriage, the author of The Woman of Colour indicates that the laws are dangerous and disenfranchising for women.
