Medieval Douai was one of the wealthiest cloth towns of Flanders, and it left an enormous archive documenting the personal financial affairs of its citizens—wills, marriage agreements, business contracts, and records of court disputes over property rights of all kinds. Based on extensive research in this archive, this book reveals how these documents were produced in a centuries-long effort to regulate—and ultimately to redefine—property and gender relations. At the center of the transformation was a shift from a marital property regime based on custom to one based on contract. In the former, a widow typically inherited her husband's property; in the latter, she shared it with or simply held it for his family or offspring. Howell asks why the law changed as it did and assesses the law's effects on both social and gender meanings but she insists that the reform did not originate in general dissatisfaction with custom or a desire to disempower widows. Instead, it was born in a complex economic, social and cultural history during which Douaisiens gradually came to think about both property and gender in new ways.

Kallista couldn’t believe what Hector Christophe was suggesting. He wanted to marry her? But they barely knew each other! They’d exchanged possibly three or four sentences over the past several years, and now he was suggesting that they marry to save her father’s business. Only Hector had the resources, but Kallista’s father wouldn’t accept help from anyone but family. Hector’s solution? Become part of Kallista’s family. She didn’t understand him – he was kind and considerate one moment, then grouchy and insulting the next. So how could his touch send sparks of electricity through her body? Why does his kiss make her forget everything? How could she fall in love with such a mercurial man? Hector knew he didn’t deserve Kallista. She was sweet and pure, intelligent and witty. He’d grown up an orphan, survived on the streets by stealing for his next meal and slept in places others had abandoned. If it weren’t for Kallista’s father, he might still be stealing but the man had picked Hector up and cleaned him up, given him hope and urged him to become something. Now he had the power and wealth to pay her father back but the only way he could do that was by marrying his daughter. Falling in love with Kallista had been the last thing he’d wanted to do. But she got under his skin, wove through his defenses and he’d been no match for her smile or kindness.

'Heroic Disobedience: The Forced Marriage Plot and the British Novel, 1747-1880' shows the ways in which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels used what the author terms the forced marriage plot - a plot arc in which a greedy father tries to force his daughter into a marriage she does not want but that would be financially expedient to himself - to explore capitalism’s detrimental impacts on women’s right to autonomy. As capitalist economic practices replaced mercantilism, a woman’s value was seen primarily in the economic sense. That is, men came to recognize that women – especially young, marriageable women – could be used as objects of exchange between men. Recognizing this phenomenon, the novelists considered in 'Heroic Disobedience' – Samuel Richardson, Charlotte Lennox, Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Stone, and Anthony Trollope – depict the very specific ways in which women were raised to become willing pawns in this system. Religious discourse, conduct guides, marriage and property laws, wages, lack of meaningful education, and inheritance practices combined to leave women with no other options besides dependence on their patriarchs. Importantly, authors who use the forced marriage plot go beyond exposing women’s subjugation by creating – and celebrating – heroically disobedient heroines who believe, above all else, that they have the right to determine their own futures: futures in which they are autonomous agents, not subjected objects.

Introduction -- The politics of women's "domestic" alliances. Distaff power: plebeian female alliances in early modern England / Bernard Capp -- Between women: slanderous speech and neighborly bonds in Henry Porter's The two angry women of Abington / Ronda Arab -- The political role of the gossip in Swetnam the woman-hater, arraigned by women / Megan Inbody -- Virtual and actual female alliance in The maid's tragedy and The tamer tamed / Niamh J. O'Leary -- Failed alliances and miserable marriages in Katherine Philips's letters / Elizabeth Hodgson -- Women's alliances and the politics of the court. Performing patronage, crafting alliances: ladies' lotteries in English pageantry / Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich -- Tyrants, love, and ladies' eyes: the politics of female-boy alliance on the Jacobean stage Roberta Barker -- Her advocate to the loudest: Arbella Stuart and female courtly alliance in The winter's tale / Alicia Tomasian -- Not sparing kings: Aemilia Lanyer and the religious politics of female alliance / Christina Luckyj -- The politics of female kinship. Shakespeare revises Juliet, the nurse, and Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet / Steven Urkowitz -- Crossing generations: female alliances and dynastic power in Anne Clifford's great books of record / Jessica l. Malay -- Exilic inspiration and the captive life: the literary/political alliances of the Cavendish sisters / Jennifer Higginbotham -- Afterword / Susan Frye and Karen Robertson

Based on close readings of five Victorian novels, Hallum presents an original study of the interaction between popular fiction, the marriage market and the aesthetic movement. She uses the texts to trace the development of aestheticism, examining the differences between the authors, including their approach, style and gender.

The exchange of power for genuine loveContrary to what we have been taught at a young age, women need to be possessed by a honest man's love, that walks into their lives with genuine motives for love. Similarly men have a fundamental psychological need to shower a woman with his love, but sometimes fear of being less of the man they want to be for the woman they sincerely care about get in the way of that. Men want power; and women want love. In order for a marriage to be successful a marriage needs to have an exchange of the two within their sacred union. Women need to experience power as love, and Men need to perceive love as power, its an equal exchange between the two. The exchange of female power for male love is at the heart of the relationship. The foundation is trust, the heart is power and the love you share equally, the soul of your relationship is your communication, and the life of your commitment is your friendship. As a man your courtship involves you winning over your female counterparts trust so that she would willingly surrender the power. And as a woman your union involves you to place all of your trust in him and the commitment you share so that he would be willing to fully give all of his love. The one thing women need to realize is if your actions are in line with every other woman out there, how you expect your spouse to see you any different than the women of his past. In order to catch and keep a good man, you must be a woman that he can't afford to loss. That woman can't be just seen as such within her own eyes, it has to be seen in her spouse eyes as well. And her actions and words as a queen must reflect that woman.

These thirteenth-century legal cases from the classic compendium Yuan dianzhang reveal the complex, contradictory inner workings of the Mongol-Yuan legal system, as seen through the prism of divorce, adultery, rape, wife-selling, and other marital disputes. Bettine Birge offers a meticulously annotated translation and analysis.

"Bradley Ensor shows how kinship can be a valuable tool for archaeologists. The Archaeology of Kinship explains how kinship is relevant to contemporary archaeological theory, detailing methods appropriate for archaeological analysis, and provides long-overdue solutions to problems plaguing ethnological hypotheses on the origins and contexts of kinship behaviors"--Provided by publisher.

This Handbook advances research on the family and marriage in China by providing readers with a multidisciplinary and multifaceted coverage of major issues in one single volume. It addresses the major conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues of marriage and family in China and offers critical reflections on both the history and likely progression of the field.