Where the Literary Meets the Political: Influences of Reform in Mid-Victorian England Regarding Women & The Law
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Women and The Law of the Twelve Tables
The Law of the Twelve Tables has come to represent the foundation of Roman Democracy and a significant societal marker in human history. Through inquiry into the traditional scope of the Laws, the only mention of women was denoted to their submission to patriarchal rule and limited rights under guardianship. By researching Roman women’s domestic duties and daily lives, including familial, religious, and other social relationships, I can draw out areas where they had agency and power over themselves and others around them. I believe that this will broaden the scope of how we perceive an ancient powerhouse like Rome; usually, thoughts of strong and intelligent men leading life into new realms of civilization come to mind while women are neglected to an afterthought about the lesser affairs such as housework and family matters.
Examining the background of the Law of the Twelve Tables provides insight into the social order and cultural values of the time period while also highlighting a shift in access to laws. A major change in legal practices was executed with the creation of the Twelve Tables, for example, “laws became statute, that is they were made only after first being decided on by a legislative body and were no longer based on mere custom and tradition.”(Cartwright,1). Written in the years of 451 and 450 BCE, the Twelve Tables were constructed as a mechanism to highlight the crucial aspects of the political and social law of the Roman Republic. Tasked with writing these laws were a group of ten Decemviri commissioners who planned and wrote the first ten tables in 451 BCE then the second group of commissioners wrote the last two in 450 BCE. The two social classes at the time of their construction were the Patricians, citizen families who were a part of the upper-class elite, and the Plebian class, the general public, so to speak, primarily working-class families (Law of the Twelve Tables). A significant element of why the tables were created was due in part to the idea that the Patrician class could “ protect themselves from potential political abuse of the Patricians”(Cartwright, ) by becoming familiar with the laws that would govern their life. Posted on Twelve Bronze Tablets in the Roman Forum, the collection of laws were “visible to all, and outlined in precise language with explicit definitions”(Cartwright, 2 ). Titled I through XII, the areas of law that were covered within the tables focused on the relationship and rights between private individual citizens instead of more common laws for the time period being the individual v. the state. The titles of the Twelve Tables range from “Paternal Power”, “Inheritance and Guardianship”, “Execution of Judgment”(Ancient Roman Statutes), and others. Today, not a single remnant of the Twelve Tables exists, most likely due to the fire started by the Gauls in Rome in 387 BCE(The Twelve Tables (451-450 BCE)). Only from extensive documentation and references to the Twelve Tables in other written works, such as The Digest of Justinian I., do we know what an assortment of the laws entailed (Buchanan).
Examples of women’s lives appear within The Law of the Twelve Tables, yet, one undisputable theme is the portrayal of their utmost submission to patriarchal mandates. While we do not have access to all of the laws, as mentioned previously, the selection we do have access to implies that the only mention of women was to set a precedent in the legal system that the positions they had were incumbent upon men’s decisions. For instance, under Table V. Inheritance and Guardianship, the law states, “…Women, even though they are of full age, because of their levity of mind shall be under guardianship…” (Lefkowitz & Fant,174). The outright assumption from this law is that adult women were not able to make any decision that would typically be in a male area of society, such as law and finance. Due to the patriarchal structure of the Roman Republic, daily life for families was led by the paterfamilias, the oldest living member of a family who had complete control over property, slaves, and all family members(Zumbusch, 4). This structure may have ruled over political life; however, deeper research clarifies that some areas were not solely patriarchal.
Exploring the traditional laws makes it evident that women’s role and agency within the domestic sphere were not regarded as influential or essential enough to society to document in their legal system. What I hope to resurrect is that the accomplishments women achieved every day were a significant act. Much like the phrase popularized in the 1960s within Carol Hanisch’s Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation, “The political is personal” embodies the idea that the daily tasks that women uphold are just as significant to the fabric of political society as stereotypical domestic life women were assumed to take on. If women did not complete such duties and devote their lives to everyday domestic and familiar work, society would not run. The following paragraphs touch on major realms of women’s domestic roles such as marriage, child-rearing, agriculture, religion, and also the tasks of female slaves. Aspects such as these have been historically underdeveloped regarding the breadth of women’s significance to the greater society.
In the Roman Republic, one of the most significant events for women was marriage. Though many works of history indicate women as more passive members within these spheres, paternal rule dictating overwhelmingly, women did hold a notable amount of agency. Arranged marriages were a commonality with the supreme goal of connecting and enlarging families. Yes, “Women may not have had the kind of equality they were entitled to, but many were still able to live… in the comfort of their husband’s love, respect, and admiration”(Mark, 8). This is a crucial point in piecing together how women had agency over themselves, their husbands, and children; by indirectly influencing familiar events, they impact the social fabric of the Roman Republic. For instance, in an excerpt from a eulogy a husband gave for his wife, he expresses her agency within their marriage by saying, “…your faithful attendance to the household duties, your enlightened religion…and refinement of your manners…thus we did share the task of administering it, that I undertook to protect your fortune, and you to guard mind”(Lefkowitz & Fant, 209). A primary source such as this quote provides clues to understand how a woman’s marriage looked without the strict constraints of government. The reality of a relationship in which women were avid advice-givers and obtained knowledge of social customs and traditions to take part in making decisions regarding their family.
Midwifery was one of the most prominent ways a woman had direct agency over child-rearing and influenced the greater community. Given that men assisting in childbirth was seen as less appropriate during this time, the occupation and livelihood surrounding midwifery gave an ample opportunity for women to flourish. A noteworthy gynecologist Soranus of Ephesus, though he lived after the Roman Republic, wrote about the history and characteristics of midwives in ancient Rome that can directly relate to the work of midwives in this time period. Soranus stated that “She should be ‘Literate, with her wits about her, possessed of a good memory, loving work, respectable, sound of limb…”(Todman, 2). One paramount societal value of this time is the continuation of elite family lines, a woman pursuing the duty of ensuring family heirs survived birth illuminates a sector of their lives where incredible amounts of respect and trust were given.
Despite the strict gender norms we perceived to be valid during the Roman Republic, working and lower-class families could not uphold them as the elite class did (Daily Life in Ancient Rome). A domain where women’s achievements truly did dictate her family’s or small community’s survival was within agriculture. The idea of the “Household Life Cycle” explains how in this class of families, as land inheritance, age structures, and crop demands shifted; women, regardless of their broader social standing in Roman culture, “were…called upon to perform all kinds of agricultural work” (Scheidel,10). The realities of women’s domiciliary life seem to be left out of central laws or social values due to the lack of influence the working-class people had on what got documented into history. Ignoring crucial contributions women made, such as farming, promotes the notion that their domestic achievements were trivial when in fact, they directly shaped the lives of their families.
When discussing women’s participation in religious activities during the Roman Republic, the Vestal Virgins found a place in society with a tremendous amount of agency over themselves. In exchange for devoting their life to chastity and worship of the goddess of the hearth, Vesta, they gained rights and privileges that other women could not such as, “emancipation from their fathers’ rule and the ability to handle their own property”(Vestal Virgins). Their power was even exhibited in Table V of the Law of the Twelve Tables when expressing conditions of guardianship, “except vestal virgins, who shall be free from guardianship” (Lefkowitz & Fant, 174).
A crucial element of women’s contributions to Roman life is in regards to enslaved women and also freedwomen. A common practice in upper-class Roman society was the use of slaves as tutors or teachers to young children before any formal education took place, for example, “The nurse, who in practice was the child’s first teacher, would always have been a slave…t it was important for her to speak properly”(Education of Slaves: Ancient Rome). For women who were slaves to have this enormous power to teach the children who would grow up to be active members of society is remarkable. To conduct this endeavor of education and others such as secretaries and clerks, “female slaves were given special training in the wealthy Roman home”(Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, 192) to do those jobs.
Exploring the many spheres of women’s domestic life illustrates how their contributions should not be an afterthought but instead acknowledged as incredibly vital to the foundations of life and the working of society. Addressing the complexities of duties and power between different classes of women, including slaves, mothers, and wives, played unique roles in defining a Roman woman’s life. Though the men who wrote the Law of the Twelve Tables saw these as common knowledge or custom to the times they lived in and did not feel it warranted documentation, the historical record now suffers an immense lack of female representation during the crucial stage in Democracy.
Looking back to an influential time in the United States History of the 1970s Women’s Rights Movement, we see the ramifications of a mindset that portrays women’s domestic duties and inconsequential to society that mirrors the same thought process evident in 450 BCE. Table V in the Law of the Twelve Tables states, “If anyone who has no direct heir dies intestate the nearest male agnate shall have the estate”(Ancient Roman Statutes), meaning if there were no remaining male family members, negate any female relatives and find a man. Now, jump forward 2,420 years to the Iowa Statute argued against by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1971, stating, “Of several persons claiming and equally entitled to administer, males must be preferred to females”(McFadden). The premiere goal of highlighting a piece of history like the Twelve Tables is to emphasize how their voices were silenced then, but their contributions should not continue to go unnoticed today.
Recreation & Sources
For the re-imagining creative portion of this project, I utilized the information I uncovered about the depth of women’s accomplishments in the domestic sphere and synthesized them into laws mirroring the structure of the traditional Law of the Twelve Tables. From this, I illustrated how vital women’s household tasks were to Rome by holding them to the same standard of importance as the original overwhelmingly patriarchal laws that have come to represent the foundation of our legal systems today. When historians, scholars, and others look back to this monumental time when laws became accessible and written in permanent status, women’s actual experiences and participation in daily life are neglected. To showcase women’s influence, I made twelve tables and re-formulated the titles of each to correspond with areas of their lives where they held power and control over themselves and others; then, I created one law for each with an example relating to the heading.
For my research into the background and significance of the Law of the Twelve Tables and women’s roles in the Roman Republic, I used physical books, e-books, and online articles to obtain my information. The most valuable sources in my exploration into the Law of the Twelve Tables were; World History Encyclopedia, the Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy by Yale Law School, Encyclopædia Britannica, and Mary Lefkowitz’s book Women’s Life in Greece and Rome. The two encyclopedia sources were especially beneficial for the subject of the Twelve Tables due to their key facts about dates, origins, and the social climate during the time of their creation. Yale Law School’s website and Lefkowitz’s book were tremendous examples of the original laws that illustrated the depiction of women in the political sphere. I also employed those two sources to help orient the wording of my recreation of the Twelve Tables laws.
The sources that aided best in the examination of women’s domestic duties, as well as their position in the minds of society, were; Sarah Pomeroy’s book Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, Mary Lefkowitz’s book Women’s Life in Greece and Rome and then a few articles regarding midwifery by Donald Todman, religion from the Encyclopædia Britannica, and agriculture by Walter Scheidel. I found that the primary sources from letters or written documentation about women’s duties and practices were incredibly helpful and strengthened the credibility of my sources as well as my own research. The two books about women’s life in Ancient Rome by Sarah Pomeroy and Mary Lefkowitz I found to offer the best contextualization and straightforward factual information.
Works cited
“Ancient Roman Statutes: Translation, with Introduction, Commentary, Glossary, and Index.” Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/twelve_tables.asp.
Buchanan, Kelly. “The Civil Law System – Global Legal Collection Highlights.” The Civil Law System – Global Legal Collection Highlights | In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress, 28 July 2015, https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2015/07/the-civil-law-system-global-legal-collection-highlights/.
Cartwright, Mark. “Twelve Tables.” World History Encyclopedia, World History Encyclopedia, 5 Oct. 2021, https://www.worldhistory.org/Twelve_Tables/.
“Education of Slaves: Ancient Rome.” Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery, edited by Paul Finkelman and Joseph Calder Miller, Macmillan Reference USA, 1998. Gale In Context: World History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2350051124/WHIC?u=bidd97564&sid=summon&xid=93bf12bc.
Firestone, Shulamith. Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation: Women’s Liberation: Major Writings of the Radical Feminists. Women’s Liberation Movement, 1970.
“Law of the Twelve Tables.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/Law-of-the-Twelve-Tables.
Lefkowitz, Mary R., and Maureen B. Fant. Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation. Duckworth, 2005. (book)
McFadden, Chief Justice. “Reed v. Reed.” Legal Research Tools from Casetext, 24 Mar. 1970, https://casetext.com/case/reed-v-reed-94.
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. Dorset Press, 1975.
Scheidel, Walter. “The Most Silent Women of Greece and Rome: Rural Labour and Women’s Life in the Ancient World (I).” Greece & Rome, vol. 42, no. 2, [Classical Association, Cambridge University Press], 1995, pp. 202–17, http://www.jstor.org/stable/643231.
Todman, Donald. “Childbirth in Ancient Rome: From Traditional Folklore to Obstetrics.” The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, vol. 47, no. 2, 2007, pp. 82–85., https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1479-828x.2007.00691.x.
“The Twelve Tables (451-450 BCE).” The Twelve Tables, http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/12tables.html.
“Vestal Virgins.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vestal-Virgins. Zumbusch, Amelie von. Ancient Roman Daily Life. Rosen Publishing Group, 2014.
As this semester comes to an end and my capstone project is complete, I would like to offer a few words that reflect on the project itself but also how completing my capstone project can showcase the range of interdisciplinary coursework and experiences that have been an influence over the past three years. For instance, within my English courses, I have taken four courses that based on their themes and course materials count for my minor in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies – ENG 216 on Women and the Law in Victorian England, ENG 237 Women of the West in U.S literature, ENG 200 on Writing, Resistance and Revolution in U.S Literature, and ENG 326 on Patient Narratives — especially women’s experiences in healthcare. As one of the essential aspects of my revision project is to ask what other forms of writing and discourses outside of literature considered the oppression women faced by the law, I think it is significant to note how my work in English has provided me with a range of perspectives on this topic.
As I explain briefly in my introduction, the course that inspired this project, ENG 216, was an eye-opening experience for me in learning how literature like Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall could be an entry point into debates on legal reform. In other English courses like Writing, Revolution, and Resistance in U.S. Literature, I had the opportunity to see some of these same issues discussed in an American setting. I drew connections from my past work to deepen my knowledge of the subject of how literature can act as a powerful tool for social change. Going back even further to the first semester of my first year of undergrad, I took a History course HIS 276 Women in the Ancient World, and in my final project and research paper I decided to reorient the classical patriarchal dominated Roman Law of the Twelve Tables. This set of laws was one of the first examples of how society began to formulate ideas on what justice, equality, and fairness should be and has influenced our legal system ever since. Even as a freshman, I knew that there was something significant about raising women’s experience within the law – which in this example was virtually wiped from the historical record.
Looking back now that I have completed my capstone project where I expanded my knowledge of political theorists, reform writers, archival material from Parliamentary debates, and actual case law, it has shown how my humanities education has supported me in pursuing my passions and interests while at the same time providing me with the skills I needed to complete this project. While not every English course was on Brontë and law and literature, every course challenged me to engage in literary texts, closely analyzing the explicit themes and significance. They have also to make note of how authors might be subversively challenging the status quo, raising minority perspectives, and promoting discussion that signifies the importance of literature in engaging in historical and cultural contexts.
As I mentioned previously, I had hoped to make my choice of a capstone project as a way to show both my longstanding interest in women and the law and also to showcase my interdisciplinary array of disciplines like my double major in English and Political Science and minors in Writing and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. In selecting a past work to extend upon I selected an essay that I was very proud of and came from that English course on women and the law in Victorian England as the framework for my project. This felt like a way for me to engage again in Brontë’s novel to highlight how my literary skills have developed over two years and also to show that I can engage in political issues from political philosopher John Stuart Mill from my work in Political Science. I have also become more familiar with analyzing case law from law courses which I also felt could be well utilized in my extension into case law from the same period of Brontë’s novel for added depth to my argument. Overall, my past essay was just the beginning of my interest in law and literature and I felt that I had more to say than what that past assignment required.
In revisiting what I could do to extend my capstone project from a past essay, I was able to make the case that Brontë’s novel can go even further than just a fictional example of women’s inequality within marriage and a critique of romanticized ideals of marriage – it can influence real change in the laws. I had a chance to expand my knowledge by looking into archival material from Parliamentary debates and reform bills and digging into political theory with figures like John Stuart Mill. I also took a feminist lens in looking at the work of Frances Power Cobee and raising how these early feminist movements could be placed into conversation with the literary achievements of women like Brontë. I think that these changes showcase how my work outside of English, like Political Science and my minor in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, has made me more aware of the multitude of things that can influence society. Through that, I wanted to test that theory and see what can emerge when one piece of literature, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, is placed in a more expansive discourse of social progress in Victorian England.
One aspect of my project that I feel begins to illustrate how I am extending my past project is my first section which discusses how literature as a practice can be used as a powerful tool in exploring social problems and cultural phenomena. Here I engaged with a framework from Rosemarie Bodenhimer in her piece on “The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction” where I could then assert that by reading Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, she has linked herself with a much larger era of social progress in Victorian England. This then creates an avenue for me to dig into her preface where a female author, although still restricted by her time in publishing under an alias, directly addressed her readers regarding the reception to her novel. As Brontë’s preface speaks to how she wishes literature could become a space where a more honest experience of what difficulties women face, this made way for my extension into those other branches of Victorian writing that dealt with similar issues. For instance, I added a section on John Stuart Mill and his political essay The Subjection of Women, a section on Frances Power Cobbe and her possessive essay on the necessity of reform for laws concerning women, and a section that digs deeper into actual case law from the Victorian era. Another aspect of my project that I think showcases my better understanding of feminist legal theory is how I can propel my project into the contemporary by way of the scholar Robin West and her discussion of the ‘literary woman’ which can draw a line from today back to 1869 when Mill discussed the emergence of the literary woman. I am alleging that this newfound connection proves that we must look to the same opportunities today to draw from the empathetic and humanistic nature of literature to address our contemporary political, feminist, and legal theorists to question and force the uncomfortable realities of the law’s shortcomings.
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch: Why this unsettling, bleak, and daring novel should take its place as the Booker Prize winner.
Slideshow:
Outline:
Citations:
Alter, Alexandra. “No Paragraphs, Much Acclaim. .” The New York Times, 5 Dec. 2023.
Chapman, Ryan. “Good grief: On the 2023 Booker prize.” Sewanee Review, vol. 132, no. 1, Jan. 2024, pp. 104–127, https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a919143.
Lynch, Paul. Prophet Song. Grove Press, 2023.
Studemann, Frederick. “Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch: ‘Civilisation is a thin veneer. It’s so easily lost’.” FT.com, 2023. ProQuest, https://une.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/booker-prize-winner-paul-lynch-civilisation-is/docview/2895675391/se-2
