Description
Book SynopsisThe diversity of women’s lives as wives then as widows negotiating the law, patriarchy, family relationships, and the economy in 19th-century Montreal come alive in this first major study of widows in Canada.
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Part 1: Marriage, Identity, and the Law
1 Marriage Metropole: Mobility and Marriage in Early-Nineteenth-Century Montreal
2 Companionate Patriarchies: Money Matters and Marriage
3 Marriage Trajectories: Class, Choices, and Chance
4 “Dower This Barbarous Law”: Debating Marriage and Widows’ Rights
5 Imagining Widowhood and Death: Marriage Contracts, Wills, and Funeral Provisions
Part 2: Individual Itineraries of Widowhood
6 Diverse Demographies: Death, Widowhood, and Remarriage
7 In the Shadow of Their Husbands: The First Days of Widowhood
8 “Within a Year and a Day”: The First Year of Widowhood
9 Widows’ Votes: Marguerite Paris, Émilie Tavernier, Sarah Harrison, and the Montreal By-Elections of 1832
10 Widow to Mother Superior: Émilie Tavernier Gamelin and Catholic Institution Building
11 Patchworks of the Possible: Widows’ Wealth, Work, and Children
12 Final Years, Final Wishes: Care, Connections, Old Age and Death
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
