The Measure of Woman
eBook - PDF

The Measure of Woman

Law and Female Identity in the Crown of Aragon

  1. 232 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Measure of Woman

Law and Female Identity in the Crown of Aragon

Book details
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

By the end of the Middle Ages, the ius commune—the combination of canon and Roman law—had formed the basis for all law in continental Europe, along with its patriarchal system of categorizing women. Throughout medieval Europe, women regularly found themselves in court, suing or being sued, defending themselves against criminal accusations, or prosecuting others for crimes committed against them or their families. Yet choosing to litigate entailed accepting the conceptual vocabulary of the learned law, thereby reinforcing the very legal and social notions that often subordinated them.In The Measure of Woman Marie A. Kelleher explores the complex relationship between women and legal culture in Spain's Crown of Aragon during the late medieval period. Aragonese courts measured women according to three factors: their status in relation to men, their relative sexual respectability, and their conformity to ideas about the female sex as a whole. Yet in spite of this situation, Kelleher argues, women were able to play a crucial role in shaping their own legal identities while working within the parameters of the written law. The Measure of Woman reveals that women were not passive recipients—or even victims—of the legal system. Rather, medieval women actively used the conceptual vocabulary of the law, engaging with patriarchal legal assumptions as part of their litigation strategies. In the process, they played an important role in the formation of a gendered legal culture that would shape the lives of women throughout Western Europe and beyond for centuries to come.

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Information

Publisher
University of Pennsylvania Press
Year
2011
ISBN
9780812205343
Topic
History
Subtopic
European Medieval History
Index
History

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Table of Contents
  5. A Note on Names
  6. Map
  7. Introduction: Legal Texts and Gendered Contexts
  8. Chapter 1. Drawing Boundaries: Women in the Legal Landscape in the Age of Jaume II
  9. Chapter 2. The Power to Hold: Women and Property
  10. Chapter 3. Crimes of Passion: Sexual Transgression and the Legal Taxonomy of Women
  11. Chapter 4. Gender and Violence
  12. Conclusions
  13. List of Abbreviations
  14. Notes
  15. Bibliography
  16. Index
  17. Acknowledgments