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- Title
'TIL DEATH PARTS US.
- Authors
Locklin, Nancy
- Abstract
This article investigates the legal provision for two adult, unmarried women to create a "perpetual society" with one another found in the customary code of 1725 for the French province of Brittany. This arrangement allowed women who shared a household to designate one another as primary heir and to protect their community property from the claims of others. Evidence of this arrangement demonstrates that single women in some places had options outside of marriage and the convent. The contracts filed by the women also reveal the extent to which this arrangement went beyond considerations of property to express both affection and loyalty. Available to siblings as well as to pairs of unrelated women, this union is likely not the equivalent of same-sex marriage. It does however broaden our knowledge of the meaning of marriage, partnership, and kin in early modern Europe.
- Subjects
BRITTANY (France); FRANCE; SAME-sex relationships; LEGAL status of couples; LEGAL status of single women; MARRIAGE law -- History; MARRIAGE law; PROPERTY; SIBLINGS; LESBIAN relationships; HISTORY of Brittany, France; STATUS (Law)
- Publication
Journal of Women's History, 2011, Vol 23, Issue 4, p36
- ISSN
1042-7961
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/jowh.2011.0053