Widows' lives and rights over family property in the Tang and Song dynasties

By investigating the Tang-Song examples of widows remaining chastity or inviting a jiejiaofu (second husband) into the deceased husbands’ families, this article analyzes widows’ lives and their right to inherit their deceased husbands’ family properties. The conclusion is that widows had only “rights of management,” but not the “possessive right,” over their deceased husbands’ properties. Moreover, the qualities of widows’ lives in their in-law’s families depended on their relationships with the deceased husbands’ brothers. When being treated unfairly, widows often resorted to “the power of the maternal uncle” in order to defend their benefits.     

Slanted histories,Hesperian fables: material form and royalist prophecy in John Ogilby’s The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro

ABSTRACT

This article considers the status of John Ogilby’s Virgil translations as royalist texts. The paratextual material to the 1649 and 1654 editions provides a framework which invites a royalist reading; the translation promotes this by manipulating Virgil’s text and contemporary typographic conventions. These factors combine in passages that depict the death of kings. The volume follows the Virgilian precedent of foretelling events that had already occurred by presenting the passage on the death of Priam in such a manner to imply that it anticipated Charles I’s execution. This allowed Ogilby to grant a sense of inevitability to the prophecies his translation offers regarding events that he hoped lay in the near future. The 1654 edition subtly draws on Caroline-era royalist literary tropes to suggest a permanent revival of the monarchy under Charles II. Ogilby’s contributions to Charles II’s coronation celebrations draw on the Virgil translations in vindication of such prophecies.     

Veteran Politics in Restoration England, 1660–1670

This article calls attention to the political and social significance of the military during the first decade of Charles II's reign. The “Old Army” of the Commonwealth continued to be a sensitive issue long after 1660, and its disposal was neither as unproblematic nor as bloodless as oft-quoted sources such as Pepys might suggest. The redeployment of thousands of troops in Portugal, Tangier and Bombay is presented as a decisive episode in the consolidation of royal power. This redeployment, together with the great demobilisation of 1660–1662 had a significant impact on local communities, where demobilised veterans, maimed soldiers and war widows (both royalist and parliamentarian) had already become catalysts for economic and cultural tension. The author argues that the various issues concerning veterans were inextricably intertwined with wider political issues and had far-reaching consequences for the Restoration regime.     

Locating widows in mid-nineteenth century Pictou County,Nova Scotia

This article takes up the challenge of how to begin to include women in the historical geography of the Maritimes. It makes an intervention through a case study of the place of widows in one mid-19th century county in Nova Scotia. For women, widowhood was a life-phase of conflicting emotions, replete with the contradiction that came from the loss of a patriarch. While it offered potential freedom, widowhood could also signal uncertainty, and often, dependence. The cultural identity and economic and legal treatment of widows represented a strongly patriarchal age in which the doctrines of a ‘cult of domesticity’ and an ideology of ‘separate spheres’ influenced the life-course of widows. Spatial change often accompanied widowhood, with widows moving into a room in their old house, or to a new location.     

Gendered struggles over land: shifting inheritance practices among the Serer in rural Senegal

Although women’s land rights are often affirmed unequivocally in constitutions and international human rights conventions in many African countries, customary practices usually prevail on the ground and often deny women’s land inheritance. Yet land inheritance often goes unnoticed in wider policy and development initiatives to promote women’s equal access to land. This article draws on feminist ethnographic research among the Serer ethnic group in two contrasting rural communities in Senegal. Through analysis of land governance, power relations and ‘technologies of the self’, this article shows how land inheritance rights are contingent on the specific effects of intersectionality in particular places. The contradictions of legal pluralism, greater adherence to Islam and decentralisation led to greater application of patrilineal inheritance practices. Gender, religion and ethnicity intersected with individuals’ marital position, status, generation and socio-ecological change to constrain land inheritance rights for women, particularly daughters, and widows who had been in polygamous unions and who remarried. Although some women were aware that they were legally entitled to inherit a share of the land, they tended not to ‘demand their rights’. In participatory workshops, micro-scale shifts in women’s and men’s positionings reveal a recognition of the gender discriminatory nature of customary and Islamic laws and a desire to ‘change with the times’. While the effects of ‘reverse’ discourses are ambiguous and potentially reinforce prevailing patriarchal power regimes, ‘counter’ discourses, which emerged in participatory spaces, may challenge customary practices and move closer to a rights-based approach to gender equality and women’s land inheritance.     

Loving Friends: Surviving Widowhood in Late Medieval Westminster

Although medieval moralists routinely warned against women socialising with either men or women, this article argues that friendships were instrumental in helping women survive widowhood. In medieval Europe, widowhood was frequently a time of vulnerability and poverty. Unscrupulous businessmen and other opportunists often preyed upon widows. Looking at the different ways men and women in Westminster made their wills and analysing those chosen to administer them reveals that widows frequently turned to the husbands of their friends to execute their wills and oversee their estates.     

Jane Holt,Milliner, and Other Women in Business: Apprentices,Freewomen and Mistresses in The Clothworkers’ Company, 1606–1800

Abstract

This article uses the newly digitised Registers of Apprentices and Freedom Admissions of The Clothworkers’ Company to provide a comprehensive survey of female membership in one City of London Livery Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By analysing who these apprentices, Freewomen and mistresses were and what they did, it aims to shed new light on women’s work in this period. It shows that apprenticeship was used by girls of middling and genteel social status to enter the textile trades and, although few went on to take up their Freedom of the Company, the Clothworkers’ records show an increasing level of female membership over time. Freewomen required membership in order to operate businesses within the City — although patrimony may also have been used to gain access to Company alms — and most mistresses operated through the Company as the wives or widows of Freemen, demonstrating that marriage was no bar to economic activity. Textile-related occupations predominated, with a significant cluster of female milliners in business in prominent City locations, charging high premiums to train apprentices in one of the few genteel and potentially lucrative trades open to women in this period.     

‘NOBLESSE DE ROBE’ IN A CLASSLESS SOCIETY

This article deals with the effect of ownership and control of land on women's remarriages in early modern Western Norway. Marrying a tenant widow gave her new husband the right to tenure. On freeholder farms the eldest son, according to Norwegian odelsrett and åseterett, had the right to inherit the farm. When land-seeking youngsters obtained tenure by marrying tenant widows, these widows became highly attractive marriage partners, in contrast to widows of freeholder peasants where no secure position could be obtained for the new husband. Legal succession rights thus highly restricted the decisions of freeholder peasants' widows. Tenant widows had a wider range of choices closely linked to their control over land and land transfer. They were not mere passive marriage objects. In an open tenant land market widows could choose between running their farm by hired labour or with assistance from their children, they could remarry and thus acquire male labour in their household or they might benefit from giving up their tenure. Their decisions to a considerable degree influenced succession patterns on Norwegian tenant farms in the early modern period.     

Gender and Post‐war Relief: Support for War‐Widowed Mothers in Occupied Japan (1945–52)

This article analyses the gender implications that emerged through welfare support for the war‐bereaved in post‐Asia‐Pacific War Japan. It follows the foundation, activities and dissolution of the Federation of Bereaved War Victims, the first support group for the war‐bereaved that initially began as an organisation for military widows. After its dissolution, members of the Federation went on to create two separate groups – the Victims’ Federation and Widows’ Federation – whose members, scope and objectives presented stark gendered divisions. By examining this divide, and by analysing the earlier histories of the organisations, this article explores the relationships among gender, military, death and bereavement, and post‐war relief. The article pays particular attention to the tensions and negotiations among various interest groups, including military widows, women widowed from other causes, feminist activists, male lawmakers, bereaved fathers and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. I place the dissolution of the Federation in its social and political contexts and analyse its relationship to the contemporaneous discussions on female citizenship. In particular, I focus on two areas mobilised by Japanese feminist activists since the early twentieth century: suffrage and motherhood. The short history of the Federation provides a means to examine the reconfiguration of the connection between gender and citizenship during the demilitarisation and democratisation processes that occurred in occupied Japan.     

Tory anti-exclusionism in church and state: Richard Thompson of Bristol in 1678–85

This article examines the career of Richard Thompson, briefly dean of Bristol in 1685, as an example of a clergyman of Tory royalist and anti-exclusion principles. Thompson’s public attack on the Popish plot and impugning of the exclusionist cause led to his attempted impeachment by the House of Commons in December 1680. Only the prorogation of parliament in January prevented his impeachment. Nevertheless, Thompson remained a figure strongly associated with the anti-exclusion cause in Bristol. His fractious behaviour brought him to the attention of Archbishop Sancroft on a number of occasions. But this did not prevent his advancement to a prebend and then the deanery of Bristol. His sermon during the Monmouth rebellion is one of the highest expressions of Tory theology. Thompson’s extreme High Tory position therefore also serves to illustrate the spectrum of views within Toryism in the late 1670s and 1680s.     

Widows’ Men: The Admiralty Board,Precedent, and Pensions for the Widows of the Lost Franklin Expedition

When the British Admiralty announced in January, 1854 that it intended to strike the names of the officers of Sir John Franklin's missing polar expedition off the active Navy List, it had years of legal precedent to support its right to do so. The Board used such precedent to its advantage in ending a search its members had considered fruitless since 1849, the year the expedition's food would have run out. However, in their treatment of the widows made from that decision, Board members consistently pushed against established practice in order to do what they felt was right: to give the widows as generous a pension as the Treasury would approve, and to do so in defiance of the strict rules of eligibility. In 1844, only months before Franklin and 128 men set forth to discover the Northwest Passage, new eligibility guidelines were set that both limited women's access to pensions, and hampered the Board's ability to grant them. Archival evidence that forms the core of this article shows, however, that compassionate treatment of the expedition's widows was central to all discussions of how the Admiralty might move forward on the Franklin disaster, between promoting officers in absentia in order to augment pensions, to waiving the need for proving the date of death in order for families to collect the explorers’ back pay. As this article argues, the 1854 Admiralty Board had powerfully split loyalties: on the one hand, as the press acknowledged, the Board had a duty to perform on behalf of the public, to avoid wasting the nation's money on frivolous or useless searches for men assumed to be long dead; on the other hand, it felt equally strongly the obligation to support those widows who were the product of such imperial adventuring, even in defiance of its own rules. Through an analysis of legal precedent, Naval Instructions, and private Admiralty Board documents, in the case of the Franklin expedition's widows one can perceive a few naval administrators who tried to keep some of the nation's most vulnerable citizens in view even as they managed the bottom line.     

Women in Genoese commenda contracts, 1155–1216

An examination of the earliest notarial documents preserved in the State Archive of Genoa reveals that Genoese women were regular and active participants in their city's commercial operations through the use of the popular commenda partnership contract. In fact, women recorded investments in nearly one-quarter of over 4000 surviving contracts dating from 1155 to 1216. Nearly three-quarters of all women named in commenda contracts were investing their own property within the act and most of the remainder were proctoring investments for someone else. Women's individual investments were, on the average, less than half as large as men's, and women tended to concentrate their commercial involvement into long-distance trade rather than local or regional ventures. Study of family investment patterns reveals two especially important connections involving women. Women married to travelling merchants invested their husbands' property during their spouses' long periods of absence, and widows sought to increase both their own property and the patrimony left to their sons by putting capital from both sources into trading ventures.     

‘Shades of grey’: spaces in and beyond trafficking for Thai Women involved in commercial sexual labour in Sydney and Singapore

In this article I explore the migration trajectories of some Thai women trafficked internationally for commercial sexual exploitation, suggesting that many figuratively ‘cross the border’ between coerced and consensual existence in volatile migrant sex industries during the course of their migration experiences, thus complicating debates around the notion of choice in ‘sex’ trafficking. In exploring these women's transitions I seek to understand why women who had either never previously been sex workers or who were sex workers operating without duress, but who were then trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation remain in, or re-enter volatile forms of migrant sex work at a later point under voluntary arrangements. In answering this question I focus on the temporal and spatial aspects of individual women's experiences in migrant sex industries drawing in detail on the narratives of two Thai women trafficked to Sydney, Australia and Singapore. I make some suggestions about methodologies used in trafficking research that can assist in bringing to light some of these complex time–space dimensions of women's experiences through their shifting positions in commercial sexual labour. The article also reflects on the implications of these women's trajectories for the ‘prostitution debate’ as it relates to trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation by suggesting that many trafficked women occupy ambiguous or in-between positions in migrant sex industries, neither easily distinguishable by the label of victim of trafficking or migrant sex worker.     

Stepping into the Public World： Cases of Guixiu Philanthropic Activities in Late Qing China

This article explores the of certain elite women during late little-known public philanthropic activities Qing China. By examining contemporary newspapers, it traces the new development of women＇s philanthropic engagement and further analyzes two cases, one on disaster relief and the other on women＇s education, to illustrate the issues, controversies and achievements that went along with women＇s philanthropy. It demonstrates how philanthropy, a traditionally-sanctioned field for women＇s activism, legitimatized women to move out of domestic seclusion and reposition themselves in the public sphere in a crucial transitional era when for ＂good women＂ to appear in public was something hotly debated, and how through philanthropic opportunities some were able to engage with political affairs. The broad social impact of their initiatives suggests the continued importance of traditional elite women during China＇s transition to the modern era; it challenges some of our previous notions, which often unthinkingly accepted the verdict of ＂New Women＂ that those who did not embrace their path to modernity were parasitic, unproductive, and backward. By looking carefully at philanthropy, the article reveals fascinating issues and rich details of women＇s public activities that previous historical narratives have often overlooked. It helps to understand how reconfigured traditions became essential components of modernity in the development of modern Chinese gender roles. It also adds a gender perspective to the burgeoning historiography on Chinese philanthropy.     

Women in Genoese commenda contracts, 1155–1216

An examination of the earliest notarial documents preserved in the State Archive of Genoa reveals that Genoese women were regular and active participants in their city's commercial operations through the use of the popular commenda partnership contract. In fact, women recorded investments in nearly one-quarter of over 4000 surviving contracts dating from 1155 to 1216. Nearly three-quarters of all women named in commenda contracts were investing their own property within the act and most of the remainder were proctoring investments for someone else. Women's individual investments were, on the average, less than half as large as men's, and women tended to concentrate their commercial involvement into long-distance trade rather than local or regional ventures. Study of family investment patterns reveals two especially important connections involving women. Women married to travelling merchants invested their husbands' property during their spouses' long periods of absence, and widows sought to increase both their own property and the patrimony left to their sons by putting capital from both sources into trading ventures.     

Gamming Chairs and Gimballed Beds: Seafaring Women on Board Nineteenth-Century Ships

During the nineteenth century, many captains’ wives from New England took up residence on the ships their husbands commanded. This article focuses on how those women at sea attempted to use material culture to domesticate their voyaging space. While writing in their journals, they referred to not only the small personal things such as books and knitting needles that they brought in their trunks, but also large items, built for and used by women, such as gamming chairs, deckhouses, parlor organs, sewing machines, and gimballed beds. Mary Brewster attempted to retreat from the ship’s officers in her small deckhouse, Annie Brassey slept in the gimballed bed, and Lucy Lord Howes disembarked in a gamming chair when captured by Confederates during the Civil War. Evidence of these artifacts found during shipwreck archaeology could be used to further what is known of the culture aboard ships on which women lived. Analysis of the material culture reveals how a captain’s wife domesticated space, altered her environment, and made a home on the ship for her family.     

‘Dead dads’: memory narratives of war-related fatherlessness in Germany

After the Second World War, there were estimated to be around 20 million half-orphans in Europe. In Germany alone, 5.3 million soldiers killed in action left behind approximately 1.2 million widows, nearly 2.5 million half-orphans and about 100,000 complete orphans. This article examines how men and women from various social strata in western and eastern Germany remember their fathers who died in the war and in what way he has been stored in the family's collective memory. The analysis focuses on 30 life-history interviews with men and women from eastern and western Germany with various social and religious backgrounds, all of whom were born between 1935 and 1945 and had little or no memory of their fathers. The following questions are relevant: what memories did children have of their fathers, and what images of them were related by mothers and relatives? What individual, political, social and memory-cultural factors characterise a child's memory of her or his father? The article also analyses trans-generational transmissions and conflicts of how the father's past is remembered.     

谈《出师颂》的历史背景

隋人书《史孝山出师颂》原为清内府珍藏,被溥仪携出宫后流落民间,而今时隔80年又重回故宫,引起社会广泛关注。本文撇开作品的书法意蕴,简要探讨了《出师颂》所描述的东汉王朝派邓骘讨伐羌人的历史事件,及其发生的历史背景。为艺术研究者提供了一个深入研究的文本。