Reading comp PrepTest 103 · Section 4 · Question 23

Topic: Legal

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Susan Staves contends that, contrary to the traditional view that women in England gained property rights after 1660 through marriage contracts, their rights were soon undermined by judges.
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Before 1660 in England, husbands controlled their wives’ property (first sentence)
  • A change took place in late 1600s and early 1700s whereby marriages were accompanied by contracts (second sentence)
    • Old Approach/traditional historical interpretation: this represented a major gain for women as notions of democracy and property rights became more widespread (third sentence)
  • Susan Staves: this change did not represent as large a gain for women as is traditionally thought, because any gains women made through marriage contracts were quickly taken away by judicial decisions (fourth sentence)
  • Author’s attitude: “traditionally argued’ (third sentence); “represented a gain” (third sentence); “contests this view” (fourth sentence); “whatever gains” (fourth sentence); “undermined” (fourth sentence)

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Staves argues that changes in favor of women were only superficial; in practice, even new contractual concepts were interpreted in the courts in favor of men, and women gained little, if at all.
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Staves contends any changes in favor of women were superficial: such changes included rhetoric and occasional pro-women judicial decisions (first sentence)
  • Staves: property rights remained unequal and weighted in favor of men (first sentence)
    • Dower lands (inherited by wives) could not be sold, but curtesy lands (inherited by husbands) could (second sentence)
    • New contractual concepts like jointure, pin money, and separate maintenance were interpreted in favor of men (third sentence)
      • Pin money: if a woman spent pin money (allowance given by husband to wife for personal purchases) on items other than clothes, couldn’t sell them (fourth sentence)
        • Wife could sue for pin money up to a year in arrears, which took away the incentive to file suit in the first place (fifth sentence)
      • Separate maintenance: sum of money for wife’s support if couple lived separately; courts didn’t recognize a couple’s trying to agree on an amount in a marriage contract because marriage couldn’t be dissolved (sixth sentence)
    • Historians of 1700s dismissed these problems (seventh sentence)
    • Staves: judges gained ascendancy over how these contractual provisions worked in practice and interpreted them in accordance with pre-1660 notions of property (eighth sentence)
    • Author’s attitude: “tangled details” (first sentence); “despite surface changes” (first sentence); “remained inconsistent” (first sentence); “to women’s detriment” (first sentence); “compromised” (third sentence); “complicated” (sixth sentence); “underplayed” (seventh sentence); “gained power” (eighth sentence)

Paragraph 3

• Paragraph note
  • Staves' research illuminates other topics related to women in 1700s England.
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Staves contends that separate maintenance allowances didn’t necessarily indicate that the patriarchal system was weakening (second sentence)
  • Staves challenges view of Jeanne and Lawrence Stone that in the late 1700s, wealthy men married widows less often because people began marrying for love rather than money (third sentence)
    • Staves counters the Stones’ assumption that widows had more money than never-married women, because jointure property (money specified in a marriage contract that could be used by a widow during her lifetime) was lost if she remarried (fourth-fifth sentences)
  • Author’s attitude: “general implications” (first sentence); “Staves revises” (second sentence); “oversimplification: (second sentence); “challenges” (third sentence); “counter their assumption” (fourth sentence); “often lost” (fifth sentence)

Main Point: Susan Staves contends that whatever property rights English women may have gained in the late 1600s and 1700s through the rise of certain provisions in marriage contracts were quickly damaged by reactionary judicial interpretations of those contracts.

Paragraph 1, Sentence 2 (P1 S2) - Topic of passage

P1 S2 - Old approach

P1 S3 - New approach

P2 S1 - Summary of evidence for new approach

P3 S1 - Wider implications of new approach

Old Approach/New Approach: This passage uses an Old Approach/New Approach Meta-Structure. The author first describes the view traditionally held by historians that the emergence of marriage contracts in England in the late 1600s and 1700s led to an advancement of women’s rights through more enlightened treatment of their property in the legal system. This view we may think of as the “old approach.” The passage then summarizes Susan Staves' view of this historical development: it did not represent the dramatic sea change that is usually thought in the field of women’s rights. Indeed, Staves argues, whatever property rights women gained on paper were soon diminished once judges began interpreting the contracts in accordance with the earlier notion that women’s property rights should be inferior to men’s. This is what we may think of as the “new approach.” The passage then points out that Staves' work on property rights sheds light on other areas of women’s lives in 1700s England.

This passage has been classified as Old Approach/New Approach rather than Criticizing a Viewpoint, Rebutting Critics, or Correcting the Record because the author seems to endorse Staves' view of history, which provides a “new approach” to the topic of how marriage contracts impacted women’s lives in England in the 1700s. The views that Staves is rebutting are not critical views, but rather, established views, so it is not properly classified as Rebutting Critics. And, while this passage can nearly be considered a Correcting the Record passage because it describes a common misconception, there is enough emphasis on how the views Staves criticizes are “traditional” and rooted in the writings of eighteenth-century historians to classify them as “old” views, which plays to the Old Approach/New Approach time element.