Description
Book SynopsisImportant both for political theorists and for women's studies. She explores with great care and thoroughness the connections between nineteenth century feminist argument and activism on the one hand, and familiar liberal principles of justice and equality on the other - Nannerl 0. Keohane, Wellesley College
Traditional studies of the women's movement in Victorian England focused on the battle for suffrage and other public rights. In this new study, however, Mary Lyndon Shanley explores how Victorian women campaigned to reform the laws which related to marriage and the married state.
Arguing that without a fundamental transformation of the marriage relationship there would be no justice for women, they fought a series of campaigns to change laws governing divorce, married women's property, infanticide, protective labour legislation, child custody, wife abuse, marital rape and the restitution of conjugal rights.
Women involved in these campaigns exposed the connectio
Table of Contents
What kind of a contract is marriage? - married women's property, the sexual double standard, and the Divorce Act of 1857; equal rights and spousal friendship - the Married Women's Property Act of 1870; the unity of moral law - prostitution, infanticide, and employment; an ambiguous victory: the Married Women's Property Act of 1882; Parliament's rejection of parental equality - the Infant Custody Act of 1886; a husband's right to his wife's body - wife abuse, the restitution of conjugal rights, and marital rape. Epilogue: the search for spousal equality - a legacy for feminists.
