What is it about?
This paper uses 19th c pamphlets and legal commentary to argue that 19th c marital law aimed incoherently at at least two different ends: control sexuality and propagate families. Mill's companionate marriage is offered as an improved vision of marriage.
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Why is it important?
It is absolutely crucial to understand the social use of marriage, especially in an age of frequent divorce. Mill remains sensitive to the subjective aspects of marriage, which must be paramount (given how absorbing it is to live with another and to create a family).
Perspectives
Coverture laws are just as astonishing as one expects, and, from the perspective of a rights-bearing regime, completely self-contradictory.
Dr Christopher Barker
Southwestern College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: JS Mill on Nineteenth Century Marriage and the Common Law, Law Culture and the Humanities, February 2015, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1743872115569223.
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