Women and the Law
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 July 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 July 2021
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0350
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 July 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 July 2021
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0350
Introduction
In the early modern Atlantic world, the law conditioned gendered power relations in European and colonial contexts alike. The everyday workings of legal systems yielded a vast archive of legal sources. These include statutes, treatises, petitions, legal instruments, and court, notarial, and probate records. Since emergence of women’s and gender history as vibrant fields of inquiry during the final decades of the 20th century, scholars have mined these and other complementary sources in order to interrogate women’s relationship to the law. Casting c. 1400–1815 as a distinctive period spanning from early colonial encounters to the birth of modern nation-states, these researchers emphasize that overlapping jurisdictions and legal systems shaped early modern women’s statuses and access to recourse. They have traced the ways in which the law structured women’s lives opposing ways: as an instrument of regulation and discipline, and as a source of authority for women within their households and communities. They have additionally analyzed women as legal actors, examining their uses of law and the forms of skill and strategy they demonstrated in the course of such activities. European-descended settlers and officials transported metropolitan legal systems with them to colonial contexts, and such legal systems thus functioned as an instrument of colonialism, affording greater accessibility and protections to white women than to black and indigenous women. Yet African-descended and Native women equally possessed their own understandings of law and justice, and they maneuvered within European-derived legal systems to advance their own interests. This bibliography attends to the major areas of scholarly inquiry on women and the law c. 1400–1815, many of which necessarily overlap. In keeping with recent scholarly trends in Atlantic and early American history, it does so by grouping works thematically. This organizational structure reflects the interconnectedness of the early modern Atlantic world and underscores that the history of women and the law resists straightforward narratives of declension or improvement. By inviting comparisons across regions, a thematic approach clarifies the ways in which specific imperial and local contexts shaped women’s relationship to the law. It also reveals commonalities in the patriarchal character of European-derived legal systems, and the ways in which they functioned similarly in order to create intersecting hierarchies of race, class, and gender. For specific regions, see also the separate Oxford Bibliographies articles Gender in the Caribbean, Gender in Iberian America, and Gender in North America.
General Overviews
It is difficult for any one work to fully summarize women’s relationship to the law, both because of the many legal systems that operated within the early modern Atlantic world, and because diverse groups of women participated in these legal systems in myriad ways. Works within this category therefore suggest the range of women’s interactions with the law in both European and colonial settings. The synthetic essays Brewer 2008 and Snyder and Dayton 2020 survey scholarship on women and the law in British North America. Given the relative dearth of similar synthetic works on women and the law the non-Anglophone Atlantic world, readers seeking an introduction to the field should also consult edited collections and influential monographs. The essays in Desan and Merrick 2009 and Owens and Mangan 2012 suggest topics and themes pursued by scholars of France and the Iberian Atlantic, respectively. The contributions in Tomlins and Mann 2001 and Shepard and Stretton 2019 offer entry points into scholarship on the British Atlantic world. Important single-authored studies on women and the law include Dayton 1995 and Brown 1996 on British North America, Hardwick 2009 on France, and Premo 2017 on the Iberian Atlantic. Each of these studies spans the range of legal matters in which women participated. These works also showcase and intervene key scholarly conversations concerning whether legal systems became increasingly patriarchal between the 16th and 18th centuries. In so doing, they evaluate the extent to which women contributed to or were marginalized from major transformations of the early modern period, including the formation of the states, the standardization and professionalization of law, the commercialization of markets, the development of Enlightenment ideology, and the emergence of new norms of privacy. Premo 2017 additionally exemplifies scholarly attention to women’s legal literacy, while Brown 1996 analyzes the mutual construction of categories of race, class, and gender via the law. On gender and Atlantic history more generally, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Gender in the Atlantic World.
Brewer, Holly. “The Transformation of Domestic Law.” In The Cambridge History of Law in America. Vol. 1, Early America (1580–1815). Edited by Michael Grossberg and Christopher Tomlins, 288–323. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
This synthetic essay and associated bibliographic essay use the framework of domestic law to link questions surrounding the legal status of wives, children, servants, and slaves in colonial British America and the early United States. Between the 17th and early 19th centuries, jurists’ increased emphasis on common law enhanced the authority of masters over their dependents.
Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Brown revises classic narratives of Virginia’s development in order to emphasize intersections between gender, race, and class. English colonists invoked gender, a key element of social relations, in order to define and stabilize racial and class hierarchies. This influential study is based on extensive analysis of laws and court records, and it discusses the many kinds of court cases in which women participated.
Dayton, Cornelia Hughes. Women before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Dayton argues that Puritan theology contributed to a favorable legal climate for women in early Connecticut, and that intertwined processes of class formation and increasing adherence to English law subsequently increased the legal system’s patriarchal character. Based on extensive qualitative and quantitative analysis of court records concerning debt litigation, divorce, sex crimes, and slander.
Desan, Suzanne, and Jeffrey Merrick. Family, Gender, and Law in Early Modern France. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009.
Emphasizing the ways in which individuals and households maneuvered within and shaped legal regimes, this edited collection provides a useful entry point to the scholarship on families and state formation in early modern France.
Hardwick, Julie. Family Business: Litigation and the Political Economies of Daily Life in Early Modern France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199558070.001.0001
The dynamic interplay between households, law, and litigation was central to daily life and social relations in the early modern French cities of Nice and Lyon. Hardwick emphasizes the political and economic importance of marriage and by extension, women’s extensive involvement in the workings of local courts. Topics include spousal conflict, violence, and borrowing and lending.
Owens, Sarah E., and Jane E. Mangan, eds. Women of the Iberian Atlantic. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012.
This collection includes essays on African, European, and indigenous women in the Iberian Atlantic world. Many of its contributions utilize legal sources or attend to the ways in which the law conditioned gendered power relations.
Premo, Bianca. The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190638726.001.0001
In Peru, Mexico, and Spain, litigants shaped and articulated Enlightenment ideologies through their arguments in civil suits. Women made strategic and extensive use of the law in familial and marital conflicts, and cases involving women contributed to the overall rise in litigation in 18th-century Spanish America.
Shepard, Alexandra, and Tim Stretton, eds. Special Issue: Women Negotiating the Boundaries of Justice in Britain, 1300–1700. Journal of British Studies 58.4 (October 2019).
This special issue includes articles on many aspects of women’s participation in the courts and legal system of early modern Britain. Topics include marriage law and women’s legal skills and agency.
Snyder, Terri L., and Cornelia Hughes Dayton. “Women and the Law in Early America.” In A Companion to American Women’s History. 2d ed. Edited by Nancy Hewitt and Anne Valk, 55–72. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020.
A synthetic essay surveying recent scholarship on women and the law.
Tomlins, Christopher L., and Bruce H. Mann, eds. The Many Legalities of Early America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Emphasizing the interplay between law and social practices in British North America, this collection contains many essays concerning women, gender, and patriarchal authority.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern Amazonia
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- Founding Myths of the Americas
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Maritime Literature
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Phillis Wheatley
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Potosi
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic Worl...
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Swedish Atlantic World, The
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World)
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- William Blackstone
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
- William Wilberforce
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets