Married Women’s Property Act

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Grace Moore (University of Otago)

Domains

Gender Politics
Marriage and divorce

Dates

Date of occurrence 1882

Places

United Kingdom (Location)

Since Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69) women had been considered to be “covered” by their father or husband: women had no moral, political or economic rights of their own, but were subsumed into the identity of the male responsible for them. Following the limited success of the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act (1857) and the Marriage Act (1870), women struggled through the Married Women’ Property Committee to achieve full legal recognition. The Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 was a milestone along this road, recognising the right of women to hold property of their own and to act in all ways as an independent legal agent in financial matters. See our entry on the

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

122 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Married Women’s Property Act". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 February 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=5775, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Married Women’s Property Act

Domains

Dates

Places

Save this article

Leave Feedback