Addresses Early Modern representations of chastity and adultery, as well as matrimony and its dissolution in both the private and public realms, including the most well known marital dissolution, that of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.

Addresses Early Modern representations of chastity and adultery, as well as matrimony and its dissolution in both the private and public realms, including the most well known marital dissolution, that of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.

Addresses Early Modern representations of chastity and adultery, as well as matrimony and its dissolution in both the private and public realms, including the most well known marital dissolution, that of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.

Addresses Early Modern representations of chastity and adultery, as well as matrimony and its dissolution in both the private and public realms, including the most well known marital dissolution, that of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.

Women, Property, and the Letters of the Law in Early Modern England turns to these points of departure for the study of women's legal status and property relationships in the early modern period.

In the first part of this book, Lawrence Stone provides a series of case-studies which paint a vivid picture of how individuals coped with the manifold uncertainties of the law of marriage before the Marriage Act of 1753. There are stories of unwise courtship, prenuptial pregnancies, forced marriages, and bigamy, told in intimate, often ribald detail. The case-studies in the second part reveal how the break-up and dissolution of marriages was contrived before the first Divorce Act in 1857. Offering details of dramatic courtroom confrontations, secret negotiations, blackmail, and bribery, they provide sobering evidence of the huge gap between the enacted law and actual practice in early modern England.

Based on vivid court records and newspaper advertisements, this 2003 book is a pioneering account of the expectations and experiences of married life among the middle and labouring ranks in the long eighteenth century. Its original methodology draws attention to the material life of marriage, which has long been dominated by theories of emotional shifts or fashionable accounts of spouses' gendered, oppositional lives. Thus it challenges preconceptions about authority in the household, by showing the extent to which husbands depended upon their wives' vital economic activities: household management and child care. Not only did this forge co-dependency between spouses, it undermined men's autonomy. The power balance within marriage is further revised by evidence that the sexual double standard was not rigidly applied in everyday life. The book also shows that ideas about adultery and domestic violence evolved in the eighteenth century, influenced by new models of masculinity and femininity.

The transatlantic crossing of people and goods shaped nineteenth-century poetry in surprising ways. This book focuses on poetic depictions of exile, slavery, immigration, and citizenship and explores the often asymmetrical traffic between British and American poetic cultures.

Juxtaposing the insights of feminism with those of marxism, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction, this unique collection creates new common ground for women's studies and Renaissance studies. An outstanding array of scholars—literary critics, art critics, and historians—reexamines the role of women and their relations with men during the Renaissance. In the process, the contributors enrich the emerging languages of and about women, gender, and sexual difference. Throughout, the essays focus on the structures of Renaissance patriarchy that organized power relations both in the state and in the family. They explore the major conequences of patriarchy for women—their marginalization and lack of identity and power—and the ways in which individual women or groups of women broke, or in some cases deliberately circumvented, the rules that defined them as a secondary sex. Topics covered include representations of women in literature and art, the actual work done by women both inside and outside of the home, and the writings of women themselves. In analyzing the rhetorical strategies that "marginalized" historical and fictional women, these essays counter scholarly and critical traditions that continue to exhibit patriarchal biases.

These days, many of us enjoy unrivalled freedom and equality when it comes to choosing and building a relationship. Yet new myths about how to live and love compromise that happiness. Kate Figes argues that, whether married or cohabiting, gay or straight, remarried or a couple living apart, the quality of our intimate relationship is fundamental to our long-term health and happiness, because our need for commitment and love hasn't changed. This is not a handbook. There are no easy 'Mars and Venus' universal recipes for success, because relationships are far too complicated, individual and important for easy answers. But learning how others sustain lifelong love, and what really goes on in other people's lives can help us to understand our own partnerships and take responsibility for making them work. Couples is an incisive and important look at how we can learn to make love endure.