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1 Tex. J. Women & L. 315 (1992)
Common Law Metaphors of Coverture: Conceptions of Women and Children as Property in Legal and Literary Contexts

handle is hein.journals/tjwl1 and id is 323 raw text is: Texas Journal of Women and the Law Volume I Common Law Metaphors of Coverture: Conceptions of Women and Children as Property in Legal and Literary Contexts William Coyle* The common-law concept of coverture, which suspended a married woman's legal existence, also functioned as a powerful social construct, subordinating women by restricting their right to own real and personal property. This paper begins by tracing and analyzing some of the reasons this concept became entrenched within the legal, social, and political landscapes of England and the United States after its canonization into law by William Blackstone. While other legal fictions were created out of convenience, the fiction of coverture originated as propaganda to subjugate women, and was perpetuated by unquestioning adherence to tradition. Although Blackstone's common-law metaphor of coverture is not singularly responsible for the continuing social, legal, and economic obstacles women face, certain vestiges of the long-lived legal fiction have managed to survive its formal dissolution. Coverture, which is premised on the unity of husband and wife, is arguably the supreme example of a legal fiction having profound effects upon the lives of married women and their families. This paper will trace the sociocultural responses to the negative legal treatment of women in the common law in other linguistic contexts, including nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. Also, the traditional use of surnames will be examined as a device for claiming children as property and for rendering women invisible. SB.A., 1986 from the State University of New York at Binghamton; J.D., 1991 from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law; M.A. in English, 1992 from the State University of New Yosk at Buffalo. 315

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