Abstract
In the early years of the American republic, most married women did not enjoy any rights over their property or earnings. According to the common law, a married woman was a femme covert or “covered woman,” meaning that when she married she was placed under the “protective wing” of her husband and had no independent legal status. Furthermore, any contract that a married woman entered into was considered void precisely because she was under “coverture,” carrying no independent agency status; if she wanted to enter into an apprenticeship or convey property, she needed the permission of her husband.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Basch, Norma. In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage, and Property in Nineteenth-Century New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982.
—. “The Legal Fiction of Marital Unity in Nineteenth-Century America.” Feminist Studies 5 (1979): 346–366.
Bishop, Joel P. Commentaries on the Law of Married Women under the Statutes of the Several States, and at Common Law and Equity. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1875.
Chused, Richard H. “Married Women’s Property Law: 1800–1850.” Georgetown Law Journal 71 (1982–1983): 1359–1425.
Doepke, Matthias, and Michele Tertilt. “Women’s Liberation: What’s in It for Men?” Quarterly Journal of Economics 124 (2009): 1541–1591.
Geddes, Rick, and Dean Lueck. “The Gains from Self-Ownership and the Expansion of Women’s Rights.” American Economic Review 92 (2002): 1079–1092.
Geddes, Rick, Dean Lueck, and Sharon Tennyson. “Human Capital Accumulation and the Expansion of Women’s Property Rights.” Journal of Law & Economics 55 (2012): 839–867.
Geddes, Rick, and Sharon Tennyson. “Passage of the Married Women’s Property Acts and Earnings Acts in the United States: 1850–1920.” Research in Economic History 29 (2013): 145–189.
Horwitz, Morton. The Transformation of American Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.
Kelly, John F. A Treatise on the Law of Contracts of Married Women. Jersey City, NJ: F.W. Linn & Company, 1882.
Khan, B. Zorina. “Married Women’s Property Laws and Female Commercial Activity: Evidence from the United States Patent Records, 1790–1865.” Journal of Economic History 56 (1996): 356–388.
—. “Property Rights and Patent Litigation in Early Nineteenth-Century America.” Journal of Economic History 55 (1995): 58–97.
Lazarou, Kathleen Elizabeth. Concealed under Petticoats: Married Women’s Property and the Law of Texas, 1840–1913. New York: Garland, 1986.
Orren, Karen. Belated Feudalism: Labor, the Law, and Liberal Development in the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Peck, Epaphroditus. The Property Rights of Husband and Wife under the Law of Connecticut. Hartford: Dissell Publishing Co., 1904.
Roberts, Evan. “Women’s Rights and Women’s Labor: Married Women’s Property Law Reform and Labor Force Participation.” Unpublished manuscript (obtained from author), 2014.
Salmon, Marylynn. Women and the Law of Property in Early America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Shammas, Carole. “Re-assessing the Married Women’s Property Acts.” Journal of Women’s History 6 (1994): 9–30.
Siegel, Reva B. “Home as Work: The First Woman’s Rights Claim Concerning Wives’ Household Labor, 1850–1880.” Yale Law Journal 103 (1994): 1073–1217.
—. “The Modernization of Marital Status Law: Adjudicating Wives’ Rights to Earning, 1860–1930.” Georgetown Law Journal 82 (1995): 2127–2211.
Warbasse, Elizabeth Bowles. The Changing Legal Rights of Women, 1800–1861. New York: Garland Publishing, 1987.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Mark D. White
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
MacDonald, D. (2015). On the Question of Court Activism and Economic Interests in Nineteenth-Century Married Women’s Property Law. In: White, M.D. (eds) Law and Social Economics. Perspectives from Social Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137443762_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137443762_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49562-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-44376-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)