Coverture
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Coverture was a legal doctrine in English common law under which a married woman's legal existence was considered to be merged with that of her husband. Upon marriage, she had no independent legal exi
Portrait of an English married couple, circa 1780
Early feminist historian Mary Ritter Beard
Writer, lawyer, women's rights advocate, and early coverture opponent, John Neal
Dowry
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A dowry is a payment such as land, property, money, livestock, or a commercial asset that is paid by the bride's family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage.
Coverture
…of most matters concerned with the ownership and management of land, of payment for goods, and the obtaining of credit. Where a woman had brought a dowry into the marriage, simply as property, this would also be absorbed into her husband's ownership and control; except that freehold title to any dowered…
Aussteuerschrank – a dowry cabinet, currently in a German museum in Hauenstein.
Jadeite Cabbage – Jin received it as part of her dowry for her wedding to Guangxu, in 1889; originally displayed in Forbidden City (Beijing), it is now in National Palace Museum (Taipei City).
The dowry for the three virgins (Gentile da Fabriano, c. 1425, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome), part of the Saint Nicholas legend.
In an 1828 "Wife Wanted" advertisement in Cornwall, England, a man claiming a "great taste for building" pledges to apply a prospective wife's dowry-like £1,000+ to build property that will be "settled on her for life".