Introduction to Part II

Abstract

While it is commonly understood that women have little power in patriarchal society, the matter is more complicated than that: it is particularly married women who are devoid of power. The concept of coverture defines married women as having no separate legal identity, as their existence is ‘covered’, incorporated into their husband’s identity. However, the matter stood differently with regard to single women. Theoretically, in the eighteenth century the single woman was an individual before the law; she had the same legal status, rights and responsibilities as a man. She could own property, make a will, enter into contracts, sue and be sued.¹ These features of single women’s legal status posed several problems for eighteenth-century society which are dramatically depicted in novels about unmarried heiresses. To make matters more critical, these novels usually feature an orphaned or semi-orphaned heiress. The orphaned heiress was a danger to the social order due to the blurring of gender boundaries embodied in her status. Unmarried, she was not only theoretically equal to men under the law, she also derived power from her property, and, if orphaned, she was not sufficiently controlled by a representative of the patriarchal order. These (fictional) heiresses usurp various areas of male privilege including learning, political power, economic power as ‘capitalist entrepreneurs’, patriarchal prerogatives such as dispensing charity or planning alliances, forwardness in sexual choice, initiative and agency.