ABSTRACT

In Anglo-Saxon England women had rights to property, to a share in control of domestic affairs and of children, and even in the last resort to divorce or legal separation, departing with the children and half the marital goods. Down to the eighteenth century and beyond women were subjected to the domination of the unfair sex. Male privilege and domination began to be eroded in the nineteenth century. It was the Victorians who pioneered the emancipation of women. However, to nineteenth-century feminists the Common Law of England enshrined the subjection of married women to their husbands, making them little better than slaves. Working-class women, too, benefited from changes in the marriage law, such as legal separation with maintenance and control of their own earnings, which gave them some, if often inadequate, protection against a violent, drunken husband impervious to the pressure of neighbourhood norms.