Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300-1550

The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300-1550

Howell, Martha C.

Paperback

Series: Women in Culture and Society

Medieval & Renaissance HistoryGeneral Gender StudiesGeneral Law

ISBN10: 0226355160
ISBN13: 9780226355160
Publisher: Univ Of Chicago Pr
Published: Jun 22 1998
Pages: 294
Weight: 0.88
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
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.

Also in

Medieval & Renaissance History

View All