Property Rights of Women in Nineteenth-Century England
Property Rights of Women in Nineteenth-Century England
The property rights of women during most of the nineteenth century were dependent upon their marital status. Once women married, their property rights were governed by English common law, which required that the property women took into a marriage, or acquired subsequently, be legally absorbed by their husbands. Furthermore, married women could not make wills or dispose of any property without their husbands' consent. Marital separation, whether initiated by the husband or wife, usually left the women economically destitute, as the law offered them no rights to marital property. Once married, the only legal avenue through which women could reclaim property was widowhood. Women who never married maintained control over all their property, including their inheritance. These women could own freehold land and had complete control of property disposal. The notoriety of the 1836 Caroline Norton Case highlighted the injustice of women's property rights and influenced parliamentary debates to reform property laws. The women's movement generated the support which eventually resulted in the passage of the Married Women's Property Law in 1882. England's mid-nineteenth century focus on married women's property rights culminated in the transformation of the subordinate legal status of married women.
The property owned by women in Victorian England was usually inherited from fathers. To protect the status of their daughters, most fathers included them in the distribution of the patrimony, however, the type of property inherited by sons and daughters differed. Amy Louise Erickson notes that "Fathers normally gave their daughters shares comparable in value with those of their brothers, although girls usually inherited personal property and boys more often inherited real property" (19). The more valuable real property inherited by the sons refers to freehold land, which is the actual land. Personal property
The property rights of women during most of the nineteenth century were dependent upon their marital status. Once women married, their property rights were governed by English common law, which required that the property women took into a marriage, or acquired subsequently, be legally absorbed by their husbands. Furthermore, married women could not make wills or dispose of any property without their husbands' consent. Marital separation, whether initiated by the husband or wife, usually left the women economically destitute, as the law offered them no rights to marital property. Once married, the only legal avenue through which women could reclaim property was widowhood. Women who never married maintained control over all their property, including their inheritance. These women could own freehold land and had complete control of property disposal. The notoriety of the 1836 Caroline Norton Case highlighted the injustice of women's property rights and influenced parliamentary debates to reform property laws. The women's movement generated the support which eventually resulted in the passage of the Married Women's Property Law in 1882. England's mid-nineteenth century focus on married women's property rights culminated in the transformation of the subordinate legal status of married women.
The property owned by women in Victorian England was usually inherited from fathers. To protect the status of their daughters, most fathers included them in the distribution of the patrimony, however, the type of property inherited by sons and daughters differed. Amy Louise Erickson notes that "Fathers normally gave their daughters shares comparable in value with those of their brothers, although girls usually inherited personal property and boys more often inherited real property" (19). The more valuable real property inherited by the sons refers to freehold land, which is the actual land. Personal property
Cited: Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Janice Carlisle. Boston: Bedford, 1996. Erickson, Amy Louise. Women and Property in Early Modern England. London: Routledge, 1993. Helsinger, Elizabeth, Robin Lauterbach Sheets, and William Veeder. The Woman Question: Social Issues 1837-1883. New York: Garland, 1983. Laurence, Anne. Women in England: 1500-1760, A Social History. New York: St. Martin 's, 1994. May, Trevor. An Economic and Social History of Britain: 1760-1970. New York: Longman, 1987. Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England, 1850-1895. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. Staves, Susan. Married Women 's Separate Property in England, 1660-1833. London: Harvard UP, 1990. Stetson, Dorothy. A Woman 's Issue: The Politics of Family Law Reform in England. London: Greenwood, 1982.