Broken engagements : the action for breach of promise of marriage and the feminine ideal, 1800-1940 /

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lettmaier, Saskia
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2010.
Series:Oxford studies in modern legal history.
Subjects:
Table of Contents:
  • Codifying womanhood : the Nineteenth-Century action for breach of promise of marriage as the legal expression of the ideal of true womanhood
  • A structural inconsistency : the true woman and the breach-of-promise plantiff
  • Breach of promise in the early Nineteenth Century (1800-50) : strategies of containment , a created inconsistency, and the aesthetic of the grotesque
  • Breach of promise in the high Victorian Period (1850-1900) : the inconsistency unveiled, pinchbeck angels, and the dominance of satire
  • Breach of promise in the Post-Victorian Period (1900-40) : a changing ideal the action's decline, and the symbolism of breach of promise.