In the second half of the 19th century, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony headed the National Woman`s Suffrage Association, which also published a newspaper, Anthony had to sign contracts for the organization and the newspaper, Stanton could not. Stanton, a married woman, was an undercover woman. and Anthony, mature and single, was a Feme sole, so Anthony could sign contracts under the law and Stanton couldn`t. Stanton`s husband should have signed instead of Stanton. The concealment, and thus the need for a category of female soles, began to change in the 19th century, including in the various married women`s property laws passed by states. One version of the veil survived in American law until the second half of the 20th century. In the nineteenth century, husbands shielded themselves from responsibility for their wives` large financial obligations and allowed wives to use as a defence in court that their husbands had ordered them to take legal action. feme sole, in Anglo-American common law, a woman in the unmarried state or in the legal equivalent of that state. The concept stemmed from Norman feudal custom and was widespread at a time when marriage restricted women`s rights. Feme sole (French Norman means “single woman”) referred to a woman who had never been married or who was divorced or widowed, or a woman whose legal subordination to her husband had become invalid by a trust, marriage contract or court decision. In some cases, a woman could enter into contracts independently of her husband as sole proprietorship, but in general, legal action was required to prove the legal separation of a married woman from her husband.
See also Coverture. Ellis` patented trunk bolts to protect the Euknemida or concave-convex sole and mounting springs are the latest innovations. The concept of the female sole developed in England during the feudal Middle Ages. A woman`s position over a husband was considered somewhat parallel to that of a man to his baron (a man`s power over his wife was still called baron`s cogreen. When the concept of the female sole developed from the 11th to the 14th century, any woman who worked independently in a trade or craft, rather than working with a husband, was considered a female sole. But this status, when held by a married woman, was at odds with notions that debt is a family debt, and eventually the common law evolved so that married women could not do their own business without their husbands` permission. “Feme sole.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feme%20sole. Retrieved 16 October 2022. A woman with Feme sole status could thus conclude contracts and sign legal documents in her own name. She could own property and dispose of it in her own name. She also had the right to make her own decisions about her studies and could make decisions about how she wanted to dispose of her own salary.
What made this status special and what did it mean? Blackstone does not consider it a violation of Feme Covert`s principle for a woman to act as a lawyer for her husband, as if he were out of town, “because it does not imply separation from her master, but rather a representation of… Feme sole literally means “a single woman”. According to the law, an adult woman who is not married, or who, with regard to her property and property, acts alone and not as a hidden woman. The plural is femes sole. The expression is also spelled femme sole in French. Symbolically, the tradition of feme sole versus feme covert continues when women choose to marry to keep their name or take the husband`s name. Today, a woman is considered to retain her status as a sole woman even after marriage. An example of the current law is section 451.290 of the revised laws of the State of Missouri, as they existed in 1997: under certain legal conditions, a married woman could act in her own name with respect to property and estate. Blackstone, for example, mentions that if the husband is legally banned, he is “dead in the law” and therefore the wife would have no legal defense if sued. In civil law, husband and wife were considered separate persons. In law enforcement, husband and wife could be prosecuted and punished separately, but could not be witnesses for each other. The exception to the witness rule, according to Blackstone, would be if the husband forced her to marry him. Start your free trial today and get unlimited access to America`s largest dictionary with: You must – there are over 200,000 words in our free online dictionary, but you`re looking for one that`s only included in the full Merriam-Webster dictionary.
In medieval Europe, canon law was also important. Under canon law, a woman married in the 14th century could not draw up a will specifying how property inherited from her could be distributed, as she could not own real estate in her own name. However, she was able to decide how her personal belongings should be distributed. If she is a widow, she is bound by certain dowry rules. At common law, an adult single woman (never married, widowed or divorced) was independent of a husband and was therefore not “covered” by him by the law, but became a person with him. These civil and religious laws were influenced by a key letter of Paul to the Corinthians in Christian Scripture, 1 Corinthians 7:3-6, reproduced here in the King James Version.
