The Marital Economy in Scandinavia and Britain 1400-1900 (review)

The essays in this volume argue for the centrality of the "marital economy" in the early modern period. Amy Louise Erickson defines the marital economy as economic negotiations surrounding the establishment, maintenance, and dissolution of marriage. Michael Roberts argues that the importance and understanding of the concept has been obscured from economists because the development of economics as a field of study occurred at a time (late seventeenth century) when the discourses of the market and the family were increasingly divergent. The geographic coverage of the essays, Scandinavia and Britain, provides an enlightening perspective on northern European culture and society and a regional pattern of quite extensive customary rights for women emerges.

The first part deals with aspects of the formation of marital economies. Using consistory court records, Hanne Marie Johansen looks at breaches of marriage contracts in Norway. Until legal changes occurred in 1734, many women were able to receive financial compensation in these cases. Catherine Frances urges readers to rethink the family/individual dichotomy created by the arguments of Lawrence Stone and Alan Macfarlane when looking at the making of marriages in England: she argues that both family and individuals were involved in the negotiations and that both groups usually had similar goals. Jane Whittle, studying wills, inventories, and account books of farmers in England, finds that while servants often saved enough of their wages to enable them to create independent households once they married, upward social mobility was unusual. Analyzing estate inventories in the Swedish town of Arboga, Gudrun Andersson argues that inheritance, crucial for the creation of new marital economies, was not a one-time settlement, but rather a process, begun during the lifetime of the parents and completed after their deaths.

The second part concerns the maintenance of the marital economy. Hilde Sandvik and Inger Dübeck find that law codes gave married women substantial legal authority over inherited property in Denmark and Norway. However, the law changed in 1678, granting husbands full authority over their wives' property. Laws did not always reflect reality: Anu Pylkkänen argues that married women in Finland could rely on more extensive customary property rights than the law provided, primarily because of their vital contribution to the household through their labor. The gender division of labor is also the topic of Rosemarie Fiebranz's and Ann-Catrin Östman's essays. Fiebranz, focusing on rural Sweden in the period 1750-1850, argues that the early nineteenth century was a time of change, with outdoor work increasingly being viewed as masculine, whereas indoor work was connected with femininity. Östman sees a similar shift in Ostrobothnia in Finland, where women had traditionally performed heavy field work in addition to their indoor duties.

The final part of the collection deals with dissolution of the marital economy: separation, divorce, and death. Johansen finds that divorce proceedings in Norway were open to both sexes and to most social classes, unlike in England, where divorce was usually only possibly for the elite. Furthermore, marital property was commonly divided equally between spouses when they divorced. Elizabeth Ewan and Agnes Arnórsdóttir look at property transfers on the occasion or the anticipation of the death of a marital partner in Scotland and Iceland, respectively. In general, the transfers "aimed to sustain the marital economy over time" (204) and create new economies by providing for children, both legitimate and illegitimate. Ågren argues that the system of property transfers in Sweden was increasingly affected by the growing market of the mid-nineteenth century: inherited property became a market commodity rather than a family responsibility.

Some problems naturally exist in a collection of this kind. In a few essays, the authors make rather large claims based on small samples or do not offer full citation of sources. There are instances where readers are presented with facts...