Marriage, Property, and Women's Narratives

Marriage, Property, and Women's Narratives addresses Virginia Woolf's question, 'Why are women poor?' Drawing from three different time periods and three distinct legal models of female property ownership, this study investigates how women writers frame their responses to both owning property and being property within the context of marriage. Beginning with the Middle Ages, Sally A. Livingston traces the loss of women's economic rights and skillfully argues that literary narratives allow these writers to take possession of property they would not otherwise be able to own.