dazed, that's twice you've called me kind!

In my property law class we studied the evolution of the law of property, derived primarily from English law, (as are most of our laws) specifically, William Blackstone.  You can imagine how a classroom of about 50% women reacted to what we were learning.  And, of course, several of the guys lamented the fact that we are no longer operating under that legal system.  It is often difficult for me to distinguish between words in my vocabulary that are legalese and a "normal" layperson's vocabulary.  There are so many highly intelligent, well-informed, articulate posters on these threads, I know that many are familiar with some of the basics. 

Blackstone codified women's legal nonentity in his Commentaries on the Laws of England. The English woman had no individual legal standing, no rights over her own person, property, or children. A husband could beat and rape her at will, confine her to the house, to a room. It was extremely difficult for a wife to separate from her husband. All she possessed or earned after the separation legally belonged to him.

In law she herself belonged to him, so that a husband could have her hunted down and brought back to him to be punished as he pleased. He could further avenge himself by suing her lover for trespassing and assault, since her consent to relations with another man was considered legally null, like any other contract she made.

Dr Samuel Johnson swore that female chastity was paramount since "upon that all the property in the world depends." But of male adultery he declared, "Sir, a wife ought not to greatly resent this." He said he would send his daughter away if she came home because her husband was having sex with the chambermaid. [Thomas, DS 209]

Not long after the French Revolution, the Napoleanic Code gave husbands sole rights over communal property and over their wives. It decreed that "The husband has the right to say to his wife, 'Lady, you belong to me body and soul... lady, you will not go out, you will not go to the theater, you will not see this or that person..."

Under French and Italian law based on the Napoleanic code, women could not make contracts, buy or sell without their husbands' permission. They had to follow a husband to wherever he made his home. Men could divorce wives for adultery, but a woman could only divorce her husband if he brought a concubine into the house. (In practice, given battery and economics, this law offered little protection.) A woman could be imprisoned for up to two years for adultery. [Esistere, 73-6]

All this was right and proper in the eyes of the Church, which offered cold comfort to battered and deserted wives. The influential canonist Alphonsus Liguori instructed confessors to ask wives "if they have obeyed their husbands in all things." [Ranke-Heinemann, 275]

So much was a woman the property of her husband or father that they were spoken of as owners. An English magazine for young ladies advised in 1701, "... your Body is the Goods of your Father, and you can't lawfully dispose of yourself without his knowledge and consent...." [Fraser, 275] One father wrote, "For very need I was fain to sell a little daughter I have for much less than I should have done by possibility." [Thomas, DS, 213]

There are records of husbands selling their wives, and in the 1700s and 1800s it was reported abroad that English men could sell their wives in open market. [Thomas, DS, 213] Another source reports the widespread belief "that a man may sell his wife, provided he does so in the open market, with a halter round the neck." In 1613, at Murhous, Scotland, the drunkard David Fotheringham was tried for selling his wife at market on the Sabbath. [County Folklore, Vol VII, 165-66] (To the Calvinist kirk, the sale itself was less an offense than the violation of the Sabbath.) In 1663 New York colonist Laurens Duyts had his ear cut off for selling his wife. [Olsen, 74] A Rumanian folk song also tells of a man selling his wife at market. [Bratulescu, 313]

Other sales were ongoing: the sale of lower class women as captive whores, and the selling of female paupers and convicts into indentured servitude. The latter involved deportation to English colonies in North America and the Caribbean, and later Australia. A large proportion of early female settlers in the American colonies were sold as servants, others as brides. South Carolina advertised for wives in 1666: "... if they be but civil, and under 50 years of age, some honest man or other, will purchase them for their wives." [Olsen, 77]

It was customary for masters to flog and abuse indentured women. They could rape them without fear of punishment. In fact, the law rewarded them for it. Masters who succeeded in impregnating bondswomen were rewarded with a seven-or-twelve-year extension of the servitude. The law in its majesty enforced chastity only on subject women.