Province & Local, Women in History, Administrative Law, Property, Gender & the Law, Legal History, Women and the law 

Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History 

"The overwhelming theme to emerge out of this study is that despite considerable judicial sympathy for abused and abandoned wives and popular support for property law reform, the new laws did not serve women's needs. I have sought to understand not only why this was the case, but also the ways in which women attempted to use the legal system, despite its flaws, to their individual advantage. some of the women whose stories are told in the following pages suffered severe mistreatment at the hands of men, but they were not simply passive victims. they courageously asserted their right to decent treatment and sought punishment for irresponsible and violent husbands, making the court a forum for the articulation of new standards of manliness. Some of them, moreover, astutely manipulated the statutes, acting as partners in fraud, defying stereotypes of feminine behavior and thereby illustrating for posterity the potentially enormous variation in nineteenth-century marital behavior. The law, as these cases illustrate, is not a dry subject removed from everyday life." -Cover 

Content:

1. 'So Entirely under His Power and Control': The Status of Wives before Reform -- 2. 'A Life That Is Simply Intolerable': Alimony and the Protection of Wives -- 3. 'To Properly Protect Her Property': Marriage Settlements in Upper Canada -- 4. 'If the Laws Were Made More Salutary': The Act of 1859 -- 5. 'The Difference between Women's Rights and Women's Wrongs': The Acts of 1872 and 1873 -- 6. 'Many Frauds Not Previously Practicable': Creditors and the Acts of 1859 and 1872 -- 7. 'But How Are You to Exempt it from His Control?': Abuse of Trust by Husbands -- 8. 'A Thing of Shreds and Patches': The Act of 1884 -- 9. 'Lending Aid or Encouragement to Fraudulent and Dishonest Practices': Wives and Their Creditors after 1884 -- 10. 'Being Terrified and in Fear of Violence': The Limitations of Separate Property as a Protective Device. 

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-232) and index.