Read Time:4 Minute, 34 Second
As I was researching Gotz von Berlichingen and his hand made of iron in early modern Germany as a potential basis for a novel, I ran into something I found even more interesting: widows clawing back their dowries in order to keep their businesses alive.
In much of early modern Germany, woman in many industries could not be held to a contract. They could not make them under most circumstances, but they could not be forced into them or held to them except under certain well-defined circumstances. In addition, at the death of their husbands could claw back some aspects of the business, usually the equivalent of the dowry they brought with them to the marriage, from the business’s creditors:
The special status of market women is evident in inheritance laws. On the death of a spouse, most cities allowed the survivor to separate all his or her goods from those of the deceased and pay off the heirs and creditors only form the goods of the deceased. … This was intended primarily as a protection for women, who could thus at least take back and live off the dowry …
Working Women in Renaissance Germany, pg. 27
This was allowed out of a combination of sexism and charity. Sexism, because woman obviously could not be a critical part of a business and charity because you don’t want to impoverish women who could otherwise use their dowries to take of themselves (relieving the various localities from having to take on that responsibility). Now, this was apparently never meant to cover every woman. Women who worked as sellers generally did not have these protections. But at the beginning of the early modern period, there was some protection for women. And this was not just honored in the breach: women did in fact successfully fend off creditors:
Basically, this meant that women had the “freedom” to declare their signature invalid on contracts and agreements … They could simply say that they had been misled or pressured or had not understood what they were doing and thus should not be held liable..
Ibid, pg. 26
So of course, as time went on, it became harder for women to take advantage of this rule:
Originally, it appears that any women could claim weibliche Freiheit (the freedom of women from contract and the ability to separate her goods from her husband’s upon death — ed.), no matter what her occupation. Gradually city councils realized (or claimed) that woman were using the privilege to their own advantage to make contracts and then break them … market women were gradually excluded ….
Ibid, pg.30
Once it became clear that women were benefiting from these rules at the expense of the capital in general, the people in charge tightened the rules to limit that advantage more and more. By the time we get to the end of the early modern period, this rule was largely gone in practice, if not necessarily officially.
Why was this more interesting to me than a man with a mechanical hand made out of iron than could write and hold a lance? In part because I am convinced that at least some women took advantage of these rules to get rid of unwanted and abusive husbands to set themselves free in a way that the laws of the time would not:
… when a Wildberg tanner’whipped his wife until her teeth rattled … because she would not
deliver her property as stated in the inventoryl although he had been repeatedly
warned and gaoled for ‘bad householding’ and wife-beating, and his wife had left
him on at Ieast one occasion, the community court ordered her to deliver up her
property
MARRIED WOMEN, WORK AND THE LAW: EVIDENCE FROM EARLY MODERN GERMANY, Ogilve
I honestly have no proof of this, but it makes a certain amount of sense, and it would provide some justification for the change in rules. Plus, we know that women in other parts of Europe at this time were actively helping other women dispose of their abusive husbands. It seems reasonable to read between the lines a bit. A stretch? Perhaps, but a plausible one.
More concretely, it is because this kind of history is not well known. Generally, when we think of the 16th through 19th centuries in Europe (and other parts of the world as the age of colonialism starts to ramp up), we assume a wasteland for everyone not white, wealthy, and male. The existence of these rules and court case shows that people who were none of those things did their best to carve out an existence for themselves better than what their society wanted for them — and were often successful in their attempts.
We often think of history as the story of big events of large upheavals, of revolutions and counterrevolutions. But most people do not live in interesting times. Most people who face injustice do not have the cavalry coming to save. Most people have to do what these women did: carve out a life as best as they are able. Those kinds of stories of quiet struggle, of bending society to your needs with your wits and your quiet allies, are just as compelling as the moments when the quiet struggles snowball into society changing revolutions.
But they aren’t told as often. My novel, then, will use these stories as its foundation and hope to do them justice.
And if that doesn’t sell, well, a dude with a mechanical arm made of iron is pretty cool, too.
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