ABSTRACT
Women were given personhood in the early twentieth century; apes are on the way in the early twenty-first. The artificial nature of legal personhood denied to some humans but given to many non-humans has been fully confirmed in the post-modern world. The ‘Earnest Englishwoman’ was complaining about the status and treatment of women in the nineteenth century. Women were treated in law as a ‘chattel’ by their fathers, husbands or guardians. The legislation outraged women of all classes and led to the creation of a strong proto-feminist movement to which the Earnest Englishwoman probably belonged. The discussion of the legal personality of women and animals shows two different strategies at work. Whether the reasoning for such extension is utilitarian or rights-based, at protecting animals from maltreatment and suffering. By including animals into a social institution it protects them from the evils society and humans visit on them. The extension of legal personhood to animals could increase the protection for humans.
