ITALIAN R5B Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Legal Personality, Coverture, Primogeniture
21 May 2018
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#17 2/28 Wednesday
Historical Background
“My father’s fortune was unsuitable to his rank. That his son might hereafter be enabled to
support the dignity of his family, it was necessary for me to assume the veil. Alas! that heart was
unfit to be offered at an heavenly shrine, which was already devoted to an earthly object. My
affections had long been engaged by the younger son of a neighbouring nobleman, whose
character and accomplishments attracted my early love, and confirmed my latest esteem. Our
families were intimate, and our youthful intercourse occasioned an attachment which
strengthened and expanded with our years. He solicited me of my father, but there appeared an
insuperable barrier to our union. The family of my lover laboured under a circumstance of similar
distress with that of my own—it was noble—but poor! My father, who was ignorant of the
strength of my affection, and who considered a marriage formed in poverty as destructive to
happiness, prohibited his suit” (Radcliffe 119).
Primogeniture
Primogeniture is a doctrine that “limits the rights of the woman to possession, determining that
all the father’s property is bequeathed to the firstborn son… This system, intended to preserve
large estates, and to keep capital within the family, effectively erased the female presence from
the line of property transmission” (Anolik 32).
Ruth Bienstock Anolick, “The Missing Mother: The Meanings of Maternal Absence in the Gothic
Mode,” Modern Language Studies, vol. 33, no. 1/2 (2003): 24-42.
Coverture
“A principle of English common law, written into the Commentaries on the English Constitution
by Blackstone in 1758, states that when a woman married, she became a feme covert and
ceased to exist as a separate legal entity. Under the system of coverture, the woman’s legal
identity was ‘covered’ by that of her husband. She underwent a civil death and forfeited all rights
to possess property, custody of her own children and, indeed, herself” (Anolik 26).
Ruth Bienstock Anolick, “The Missing Mother: The Meanings of Maternal Absence in the Gothic
Mode,” Modern Language Studies, vol. 33, no. 1/2 (2003): 24-42.
Authority
“‘The man shall tremble,’ cried he, ‘who dares defy our power, or question our sacred authority’”
(Radcliffe 130).
“‘Daughter,’ said he, ‘you have been guilty of heinous crimes. You have dared to dispute—nay
openly to rebel, against the lawful authority of your father. You have disobeyed the will of him
whose prerogative yields only to ours. You have questioned his right upon a point of all others
the most decided—the right of a father to dispose of his child in marriage’” (Radcliffe 131-132).
● The Abate is careful to distinguish that his “sacred authority” is above the Marquis’ lawful
authority”, which “yields only to ours”.
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