Broken engagements
Subtitle: the action for breach of promise of marriage and the feminine ideal, 1800-1940
By: Saskia Lettmaier
Series: Oxford studies in modern legal history; Oxford studies in modern legal history
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 209
ISBN-13: 9780199569977
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [193]-205) and index.
Table of contents: title: Codifying womanhood : the Nineteenth-Century action for breach of promise of marriage as the legal expression of the ideal of true womanhood; title: A structural inconsistency : the true woman and the breach-of-promise plantiff; title: Breach of promise in the early Nineteenth Century (1800-50) : strategies of containment , a created inconsistency, and the aesthetic of the grotesque; title: Breach of promise in the high Victorian Period (1850-1900) : the inconsistency unveiled, pinchbeck angels, and the dominance of satire; title: Breach of promise in the Post-Victorian Period (1900-40) : a changing ideal the action's decline, and the symbolism of breach of promise.