Workshops: Goods

Workshop 18: Wife, Husband and Their Goods:
A North/South Comparison

Conveners:

• Ann Crabb, History, James Madison University
• Marian Matrician, History, University of Arkansas

Quality of life for early modern women depended heavily on their goods, that is, on their property and right to control it. This workshop examined the impact on wives and widows of property arrangements between wife and husband, giving special attention to comparing the dotal system of Mediterranean Europe and the community property system of northern Europe. Because there were many local variations, Ann Crabb proposed a model of marital property as ranging between two poles, the "pure" dowry system and the "pure" communal property system, with most places falling in between, and briefly indicated how the Italian dowry system reflected a strongly patrilineal family. Marian Matrician emphasized the impact of change from customary law to formal written law on community property arrangements in sixteenth-century Germany. She suggested factors of regional variation and forces moving towards uniformity. Workshop participants brought their knowledge of related issues for diverse regions and their individual reactions to the readings. We hoped discussion would clarify the following: To what degree and in which ways did different property systems affect the lives of women ( for example, in matters of debt, remarriage, and business)? What factors encouraged the creation of particular marital property systems and changes in them?