Crivelli on Eighteenth-Century English Marriage and Inheritance Law in Pride and Prejudice

Chiara Crivelli (no affiliation provided) has published Eighteenth - Century English Marriage and Inheritance Law in Pride and Prejudice. Here is the abstract.

This paper examines how Pride and Prejudice reflects the intersection of marriage, inheritance, and gender in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century England, with a focus on the legal implications for women. The central research question is: “How does Pride and Prejudice engage with contemporary marriage and inheritance laws to reflect the economic and legal dependencies of women in this period?” Using a socio-legal historical approach, the paper explores the legal doctrines of coverture and entailment, tracing their historical development from the De Donis Conditionalibus clause in the Statute of Westminster (1285) to their application in Austen’s time. The analysis draws on legal scholarship, particularly J.H. Baker’s work on English property law, to examine how Austen’s treatment of inheritance laws—particularly entailments—shapes the financial prospects and autonomy of women in the novel. The paper is structured as follows: the first chapter provides a biographical and thematic overview of Austen’s work. The second chapter situates Pride and Prejudice within the social and legal context of Austen's England, focusing on class structure and gender norms. The third chapter explores the legal implications of marriage, particularly the doctrines of coverture and their impact on women’s legal identity. The fourth chapter focuses on inheritance law, specifically entailments, and their role in restricting women’s financial autonomy. Ultimately, this paper argues that Pride and Prejudice critiques the restrictive legal and social systems of its time, illustrating how marriage served as both a means of survival and a legal constraint for women.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Shaviro on Gilded Age Literature and Inequality @DanielShaviro

Daniel Shaviro, New York University School of Law, has published Gilded Age Literature and Inequality. Here is the abstract.

We are an intensely social species, and often a rivalrous one, prone to measuring ourselves in terms of others, and often directly against others. Accordingly, relative position matters to our sense of wellbeing, although excluded from standard economic models that look only at the utility derived from own consumption of commodities plus leisure. For example, people can have deep-seated psychological responses to inequality and social hierarchy, creating the potential for extreme wealth differences to invoked feelings of superiority and inferiority, or dominance and subordination, that may powerfully affect how we relate to each other. The tools that one needs to understand how and why this matters include the sociological and the qualitative. In my book-in-progress, Dangerous Grandiosity: Literary Perspectives on High-End Inequality Through the First Gilded Age, I use the particular tool of in-depth studies of particular classic works of literature (from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice through Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier and The Titan) that offer suggestive insights regarding the felt experiences around high-end inequality at different times and from different perspectives. A successor volume will carry this account through the twentieth century and up to the present. On May 17, 2018, at Stanford Law School, I gave a talk on the book project in general, and a chapter on E.M. Forster’s Howards End in particular. This paper offers the approximate text of that talk.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Matthew H. Birkhold on Why Judges Cite Jane Austen

Via Electric Literature, this interesting meditation on why judges find Jane Austen so intriguing, and why, when they cite female authors at all, they cite her, as well as Harper Lee and Mary Shelley. Writes Matthew H. Birkhold, Ohio State University,

After reading every available opinion, I’ve come to a rather banal but beautiful conclusion: Jane Austen is cited as an authority on the complexity of life, particularly with regard to the intricacies of relationships. Alternatively, judges cite Austen as a shorthand for erudition and sophistication, to demarcate who is a part of high society (often, lawyers) and who is not (often, defendants), reflecting the novelist’s popular reception....Half of the published legal opinions that cite Jane Austen don’t engage with her work beyond the first line of Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife.” This approach relies on the Austen quotation to underscore the legal writer’s intellect and the certainty of his or her claim. For instance, in a medical malpractice case, the court denied the plaintiff’s cause of action because “it is a truth universally acknowledged that she who comes into equity must come with clean hands.”

More here.

Knudsen@KathleenKnudsen and Kohm @LynneMarieKohm on Jane Austen, Changes in Women's Legal Status, and the Attractions of Online Dating

Kathleen M. Knudsen and Lynne Marie Kohm, both of Regent University School of Law, have published Would Jane Austen Be on eHarmony? How Changes in Women's Legal Status Have Influenced the Choice of a Spouse. Here is the abstract.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” ― Jane Austen. Jane Austen’s beloved novel Pride and Prejudice opens with the news that Mr. Bingley, “a young man of large fortune from the north of England,” has let Netherfield Park. According to local gossip, Mr. Bingley is “quite young, wonderfully handsome, extremely agreeable, and, to crown the whole, he meant to be at the next assembly with a large party.” Obsessed with finding spouses for her daughters, Mrs. Bennet’s joy in hearing news of wealthy, handsome Mr. Bingley’s imminent move to Netherfield Park may only be imagined. Of course, nothing goes quite as Mrs. Bennet imagines. While most women today do not see themselves as a Mrs. Bennet who goes hysterical when a new marriage prospect moves into town, do many women nonetheless still, at least initially, evaluate the Mr. Bingleys of life by their age, looks, wealth, and personality? Historically, restrictive property laws such as primogeniture and coverture prevented married women from owning or inheriting property. With limited employment and educational opportunities, marriage was every girl’s preeminent goal. Potential suitors were critically evaluated for their wealth, good looks, and social status — just ask Mrs. Bennet. By contrast, today women may independently own property, enter into contracts, earn advanced degrees, and pursue nearly limitless career options. Since New York authorized the Married Women’s Property Act of 1848, the law has continuously expanded women’s legal rights and opportunities. Women now have vast educational opportunities, with young women today more likely to earn an undergraduate and more likely to earn a graduate degree than their male counterparts. As a practical outcome, these educational attainments result in higher earnings than women have ever enjoyed before. Yet, despite these developments, could it be that the modern online dating trend indicates millions of women still evaluate suitors based on a remarkably similar criteria to that used generations ago, using a computer to filter matches based on evaluators such as wealth, social status, looks, and education? Since Match.com launched in 1995 as the first internet dating website, searching for spouses online has rapidly proliferated. Today, over 91 million people around the world use such websites, spending nearly $1.75 billion annually. Spousal matching is based on objective factors, with users inputting a list of what they are seeking in a spouse, such as age, distance, height, body type, education, job status, relationship status, religious background, and ethnicity. A computer algorithm then begins the matchmaking process. Statistics show that women “click” more on men with a higher income and it is axiomatic that better physical looks engender more responses for all users. This leaves the perplexing question: if women are still, at least initially, seeking the same things in a man that they have for generations — such as wealth, good looks, and social status — have the changes in women’s legal status and economic opportunities actually changed the spousal selection process or have we functionally returned to arranged marriage, only now arranged by computer algorithms instead of the village matchmaker? This Article suggests that women’s dramatic change in legal status has not changed the criteria for initially evaluating a potential spouse but it may have fundamentally changed the reasons for marriage. Part I traces the changes in a women’s legal and economic status throughout the last two centuries. Part II explores the historic changes in spousal selection from arranged marriage to online dating. Finally, Part III analyzes how a women’s reason for marriage has changed when her initial filtering criteria for a spouse remains the same. Part III concludes that while once women married for economic necessity, women today marry instead in an effort to find happiness. And for Jane Austen, marrying for happiness would probably make a lot of sense — after all, she turned down Mr. Harris Bigg-Wither because she did not think that they would be happy together. Would she be on eHarmony today?

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Bailey On Marriage Law in Jane Austen's World

Martha Bailey, Queen's University Faculty of Law, is publishing The Marriage Law of Jane Austen's World in volume 36 of Persuasions On-line (Winter 2015). Here is the abstract.

Marriage is the central theme and conclusion of Jane Austen’s novels. But marriage in Regency England was a very different institution from what it is here and now, in large part because of changes in the law relating to marriage. Knowledge of the marriage law of Austen’s world gives a deeper understanding of her books. More importantly, the books give us a richer appreciation of how marriage laws structured the lives of men and women. Austen conveys the lived reality of those subject to early nineteenth century laws relating to the economic arrangements of marriage, pre-marital sex, the marriage of relatives, clandestine and underage marriage, divorce, and adulterine bastardy.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

It Is a Fact Universally Acknowledged That Everybody Wants Jane's Vote

The Atlanticwire brings word of a new debate--the fight over Jane Austen's relevance to conservatives. Should they be claiming her as a politico-philosophical progenitor--like Ayn Rand? More here.

Pride and Prejudice and Bodies

From the New York Times: a review of P.D. James' newest novel, Death at Pemberley. It's Darcy and Elizabeth six years on, dealing with a murder.

More on Jane Austen

Quiet Jane Austen seems to be of renewed interest these days. Linda Ross Meyer, Quinnipiac University School of Law, has published "Jane Austen on Persuasion and Authority" as a working paper. Here is the abstract.

Taking the novels of Jane Austen as an exploration of Joseph Raz's problem of authority in law, this paper explores whether a positivist account of authority maps onto Austen's account of human experience. While both Austen and Raz agree that the source of authority cannot itself be an exclusionary reason, Austen's novels suggest that social role and emotional connection play a bigger role in evaluating authority than Raz's account would suggest. Most notably, Austen's characterization of her heroine Fanny Price suggests that a non-positivist stance toward authority may generate more moral criticism of law than a positivist approach.

Download the entire paper from SSRN here.