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- Title
Before the Law: Women's Petitions in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Empire.
- Authors
Premo, Bianca
- Abstract
At first glance, there is nothing unusual about the fact that, in 1790, a woman went to a magistrate in Mexico City to request money from her husband while their divorce case was pending. Everything about the lawsuit seems ordinary, even down to the litigant's name, Doña María García. Decades of historical scholarship on gender have familiarized us with women just like her, women who tactically employed the courts of the Spanish empire in the larger “contest” that made up gender relations in the era. Histories of women veritably brim with female litigants who used the justice system to win small victories in their battles for autonomy from marital obligations or to rein in philandering, shiftless, or abusive lovers.
- Subjects
AMERICA; SPAIN; MEXICO; LEGAL status of women; WOMEN'S history; LEGAL status of married women; SPANISH law; HISTORY of civil law; SPANISH colonies; SPANISH colony, Mexico, 1540-1810; HISTORY of the Americas to 1810; EIGHTEENTH century; HISTORY of the Americas
- Publication
Comparative Studies in Society & History, 2011, Vol 53, Issue 2, p261
- ISSN
0010-4175
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0010417511000053