THE LEGAL POSITION OF MARRIED WOMEN. 649 



ried woman, except the one supreme right of holding her husband true 

 to the monogamic type of marriage. The legal position of married 

 women to-day represents as many different views of woman's legal 

 rights in marriage as there are States in our Union. But all those 

 States recognize that she has some rights of independent action, not 

 only when her husband is bad or imbecile, but when he is good or 

 competent. The confusing varieties of legislation on this point make 

 summarizing extremely difficult. No generally received principle re- 

 specting the just legal relation between husband and wife has con- 

 trolled the sweeping changes which the legislation of the last thirty 

 years records. These changes have been simply irregular, fitful, and 

 detached attempts to make the domestic yoke of women easier, in 

 places where it Avas found specially to hurt. We find, however, that 

 there is some approach to uniformity in the changes of the statute 

 laws of old States, and that the legal codes of the new States take 

 counsel generally of the old constitutions which have departed most 

 widely from the original common-law slavery of women in the domestic 

 relation. 



Let us see what rights of independent action are now insured, or 

 partially so, to married women. 



We have thirty-eigh^ States in our Union. In twenty-eight of 

 these a married woman has legal ownership and sepai'ate control of all 

 property owned by her before, or descending to her after, marriage. 

 In ten States her property owned before marriage is secured against 

 any attempt of her husband to alienate it without her consent, but he 

 has full control of incomes resulting from it ; and in two of these 

 States the husband receives property which, were she single, would 

 descend to her. In twenty-one States a married woman's earnings are 

 her separate property ; in eight States her right to such earnings is 

 legally restricted in various ways, as in Georgia, where a married 

 woman can own absolutely as separate j^roperty her own and her chil- 

 dren's earnings deposited in a savings-bank " if the same do not exceed 

 two thousand dollars " ; and in nine States a woman can hold abso- 

 lutely in her own control all propei'ty coming to her from any source 

 save by gift of her husband as in Massachusetts, where a recent de- 

 cision of the Court under this law was that a woman could not own her 

 own wardrobe if her husband gave her the money to buy it ! This 

 decision, we may add, a legislative enactment has very recently at- 

 tempted to overrule by ordaining that a woman may oicn her personal 

 apparel in Massachusetts. 



In twenty-one States a married woman is solely liable for her 

 antenuptial debts ; in five States her husband is liable for them to the 

 extent of the property she brought to the common stock at marriage. 



In sixteen States a married woman can make a will .devising her 

 separate property according to her wish ; in twelve States she can so 

 will her estate, provided she gives her husband as much as the law of 



