Environment
The following passage dating from 1863 portrays the environment within which political feminism arose in the United Kingdom and is an excerpt from a treatise on international commercial law, part of a section describing conditions under which a person may be considered unable to enter into a commercial contract. Following the discussion of individuals unfit due to "want of understanding" – covering minors as well as "lunatics and drunkards" is a heading covering individuals unable due to "want of free-will": married women. Levi was a barrister and his words give his opinion of the legal situation, one which was prevalent at the time.
| “ | By marriage, the personal identity of the woman is lost. Her person is completely sunk in that of her husband, and he acquires an absolute mastery over her person and effects. Hence her complete disability to contract legal obligations; and except in the event of separation by divorce, or other causes, a married woman in the United Kingdom cannot engage in trade. | ” |
|
—Leone Levi, International Commercial Law, 1863 |
||
Read more about this topic: Women's Suffrage In The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the word environment:
“In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. This is as true for the infant moving from kicking to crawling to walking as it is for the scientist with his equations. If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn; and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach.”
—Viola Spolin (b. 1911)
“Autonomy means women defining themselves and the values by which they will live, and beginning to think of institutional arrangements which will order their environment in line with their needs.... Autonomy means moving out from a world in which one is born to marginality, to a past without meaning, and a future determined by others—into a world in which one acts and chooses, aware of a meaningful past and free to shape one’s future.”
—Gerda Lerner (b. 1920)