The Prospects of Change in the Legal Status of Women Seen through the Newly Women-related Legislation in North Korea

The prospect of legalizing Afro-Caribbean marriage in order to promote fertility raised troubling issues for abolitionist reformers. The previously obscure legal case of Mary Hylas illustrates the legal quagmire created by the uncertain legal status of women who were both married and enslaved. Mary was an enslaved Afro-Barbadian woman who traveled to England with her mistress; while there, she married an Afro-Caribbean man. After her return to Barbados, Mary’s husband sued for her return on the basis that, as her husband, he had greater claim to her person than her master. This case, and the closely related Somerset case, resulted in a legal fracas in which abolitionist and pro-planter lawyers each struggled to define the relationship between marriage and slavery. Mary’s story thus allows us to think more deeply about the world of problems that British reformers faced as they contemplated promoting fertility among the enslaved by encouraging Christian marriage.

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Man and Wife

10.1093/owc/9780199538171.001.0001 ◽

2008 ◽

Author(s):

Wilkie Collins

Keyword(s):

Legal Status ◽

Wilkie Collins ◽

The Novel ◽

Country House ◽

Radical Critique ◽

Starting Point ◽

Marriage Laws ◽

Woman In White ◽

The Moonstone ◽

Status Of Women

This time the fiction is founded upon facts' stated Wilkie Collins in his Preface to Man and Wife (1870). Many Victorian writers responded to contemporary debates on the rights and the legal status of women, and here Collins questions the deeply inequitable marriage laws of his day. Man and Wife examines the plight of a woman who, promised marriage by one man, comes to believe that she may inadvertently have gone through a form of marriage with his friend, as recognized by the archaic laws of Scotland and Ireland. From this starting-point Collins develops a radical critique of the values and conventions of Victorian society. Collins had already developed a reputation as the master of the 'sensation novel', and Man and Wife is as fast moving and unpredictable as The Moonstone and The Woman in White. During the novel the atmosphere grows increasingly sinister as the setting moves from a country house to a London suburb and a world of confinement, plotting, and murder.

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Rhetoric Versus Reality for the Women of North Korea: Mothers of the Revolution

Asian Survey ◽

10.1525/as.2006.46.5.741 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 46 (5) ◽

pp. 741-760 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Kyungja Jung ◽

Bronwen Dalton

Keyword(s):

North Korea ◽

Local Markets ◽

New Challenges ◽

Status Of Women ◽

The Revolution

The role and status of women in North Korea have changed in recent years. Reports suggest that women, more than men, have become active players in emerging capitalist processes, particularly those centered on local markets, thus creating new opportunities for themselves and new challenges for the regime.

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