4
while marriage is a ubiquitous social institution, it cannot be properly understood if taken out of its legal and cultural context. The ways in which legal systems and cultural conceptions of gender define the roles and rights of spouses have significant repercussions not only on people’s lives but also on society as a whole.”
7
“It was not until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that the economic importance of women’s work was placed on the agenda.
In 1770, for instance, an anonymous pamphlet was printed in Stockholm, addressing women’s situation in society. The author exhorted “public opinion” to realize and acknowledge the economic value of women’s contributions to society and to improve women’s conditions by giving them access to better education”
12
“in the early modern world family law was one of the main regulators of the redistribution of wealth in society.”
27
“The husband was not the owner of his wife’s lands, the law instructed, nor could the wife inherit lineage property from her husband. Within this context, the marital union was seen merely as a temporary constellation of two persons and their property”
28
“People were deeply rooted in a concrete local context, where kinsmen, neighbors, and friends affected their lives and what claims could be made with respect to the property”
94
“Women were, […], “the weaker vessel”, for whom men (husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons) had special responsibility.”
95
“those who wanted to change the law saw the husband as the obvious and (usually) unproblematic head of household, for whom the law should show a certain amount of respect, even though they admitted that special rules were required with respect to men who were profligate” (lasterhaft)
97
“In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Swedish law underwent a number of important changes […] the general tendencies are compared to other legal trends at wirk in the same period, it is clear that this change had a great potential for shifting the balance of power in society. It affected and reorganized the relations between generations, between kinsmen and couples, between creditors and debtors, and between husbands and wives”
Im Gegensatz zu den höheren Schichten:”Within the peasantry, it was self-evident that husband and wife had to work together in order to support themselves.”
103
die Ehepartner hatten nicht das Recht auf das Land des anderen, das sollte auch 1806 nicht geändert werden
163
“The importance of public opinion for political life is commonly accepted for the nineteenth century with its “bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit”. A recent study has shown that public opinion was a vital factor in Swedish political life as early as the 1760s.”
(Das bürgerliche Publikum war als Kollektiv von Privatleuten von der Sphäre des Staatsapparats ausgeschlossen. Dies löste eine Resonanz aus, die es sich seiner Selbst als „bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit“ und Rolle als Gegenspieler der staatlichen Gewalt bewusst werden ließ. Bis Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts verschwanden die feudalen Gewalten (Kirche, Fürstentum, Herrenstand) und die repräsentative Öffentlichkeit im Zuge der Trennung von öffentlicher und privater Sphäre. Die Grundherrschaft wurde in Deutschland erst mit dem 18. Jahrhundert im Zuge der Bauernbefreiung und Grundentlastung zu privatem Grundbesitz und aus den herrschenden Ständen ging schließlich das Publikum in Form des Parlament als „öffentliche Gewalt“ hervor […] Die „bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit“ als „Sphäre der zum Publikum versammelten Privatleute“ setzte sich kritisch mit der öffentlichen Gewalt auseinander. Ihr Medium war das „öffentliche Räsonnement“, also die Berufung auf Vernunft im Sinne der Aufklärung zur Sicherung des Gemeinwohls. Jürgen Habermas)
