Marriage, Women, and Property: A Legal History of Enforced Dependence

Abstract

The study of married women's property law must be seen as a cohesive, gradual process of reform, rather than a dramatic or radical innovation commencing with 19th-century legislative initiatives. Marylynn Salmon's book on legal developments relating to married women's property shows with succinct and careful detail how the roots of legislative action in the 19th century were firmly planted in colonial and post-revolutionary trends. Salmon's findings represent a significant and welcome body of analysis augmenting our growing knowledge of the history of married women's property law. Benefitting from and building upon research by such scholars as Norma Basch, Suzanne Lebsock, Lee Holcombe, Peggy Rabkin, Mary Beard, and Richard Chused,' Salmon has focused upon women's property law between 1750 and 1830, a period somewhat earlier than that which most other scholars have examined. While Basch, Holcombe, Rabkin and Chused have all focused on the genesis and impact of 19th-century legislative reform, Salmon has examined statutory enactments, common law and equitable rulings predating the waves of married women's property legislation. Her important findings place her very much in sympathy with the analysis historians have made of 19th-century married women's property reform. Indeed she finds extensive evidence that the reform trends exemplified by the widespread passage of legislation post-1830 represented the culmination of a long evolutionary process.