Property & Married Women: An allegory

A Discussion of the Laws concerning the Property of Married Women

by Frances Power Cobbe

Listen here: read by Julia Pascal

There was an allegory rather popular about 30 years ago, whose manifest purpose was to impress on the juvenile mind that tendency which Mr Matthew Arnold has ingeniously designated ’Hebraism’. The hero of the tale descends upon earth from some distant planet, and is conducted by a mundane cicerone through one of our great cities, where he beholds the docks and arsenals, the streets and marts, the gallories of art, and the palaces of royalty. The visitor admires everything till he happens to pass a graveyard. ‘What is that gloomy spot?’ He asks of his companion.

‘It is a cemetery,’ replies the guide.  

‘A- what did you say?’  inquires the son of the star.  

‘A graveyard; a place of public interment where we bury our dead,’ reiterates the cicerone.

The visitor, pale with awe and terror, learns at last that there is in this world such a thing as Death, and (as he is forbidden to return to his own planet) he resolves to dedicate every moment left him to prepare for that fearful event and all that may follow it.

Had that visitor heard for the first time upon his arrival on earth of another incident of human existence-namely, Marriage, it may be surmised that his astonishment and awe would also have been considerable. To his eager inquiry whether men and women earnestly strove to prepare themselves for so momentous an occurrence, he would have received the puzzling reply that women frequently devoted themselves with perfectly Hebraistic singleness of aim to that special purpose; but that men, on the contrary, very rarely included any preparation for the married state among the items of their widest Hellenistic culture. But this anomaly would be trifling compared to others which would be revealed to him.

…

 ‘Of course, having entered this honourable state of matrimony, she has some privileges above the women who are not chosen by anybody? I notice her husband has just said, ‘With all my worldly goods I thee endow.’ ‘Does that mean that she will henceforth have the control of his money altogether, or only that he takes her into partnership?’

‘Pas precisement, my dear sir. By our law it is her goods and earnings, present and future, which belong to him from this moment.’

 ‘You don’t say so? But then, of course, his goods are hers also?’

‘Oh dear, no! not at all. He is only bound to find her food; and, truth to tell, not very strictly or efficaciously bound to do that.’   

‘How! Do I understand you? Is it possible that here in the most solemn religious act, which I perceive your prayer book calls ‘The Solemnization of Holy Matrimony’, every husband makes a generous promise, which promise is not only a mockery, but the actual reverse and parody of the real state of the case: the man who promises giving nothing, and the woman who is silent giving all?’

‘Well, yes; I suppose that is something like it, as to the letter of the law. But then, of course, practically…

‘Practically, I suppose few men can really be so unmanly and selfish as the law warrants them in being. Yet, some, I fear, may avail themselves of such authority . May I ask another question? As you subject women who entered the marriage state to such very severe penalties as this, what worse have you in store for women who lead a dissolute life, to the moral injury of the community?’

‘Oh, the law takes nothing from them. Whatever they earn or inherit is their own. They are able, also, to sue the fathers of their children for their maintenance, which a wife, of course, is not allowed to do on behalf of her little ones, because she and her husband are one in the eye of the law.’

‘One question still further-your criminals? Do they always forfeit their entire property on conviction?

‘Only for the most heinous crimes; felony and murder, for example.’

‘Pardon me; I must seem to you so stupid! Why is the property of the woman who commits Murder, and the property of the woman who commits Matrimony, dealt with alike by your law?

Leaving our little allegory, and in sober seriousness, we must all admit that the just and expedient treatment of women by men is one of the most obscure problems, alike of equity and of policy.

…

From: Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors. Is the Classification Sound?

(reprinted from Fraser’s Magazine, December 1868)

This is taken from Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Place Group ed Candida Ann Lacey Routledge & Kegan Paul, NY & London 1987