Regulating the Unstable Family: Eliza Haywood's Fiction and the Development of Family Law.
This essay examines Eliza Haywood's interrogation of the legal structuring of the family, arguing that her fiction articulates the need to serve the "best interests" of the child well before early modern British law enacted that goal. Haywood's amatory fiction, including Love in Excess; or, The Fata...
| Published in: | Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies Vol. 14; no. 4; pp. 49 - 79 |
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| Format: | Article |
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University of Pennsylvania Press
Fall2014
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=98384111&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 98384111 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 15310485 DBLW jtl: Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies issn: 15310485 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Fall2014 vid: 14 iid: 4 pid: 4636 pub: University of Pennsylvania Press artinfo: ui: 98384111 10.1353/jem.2014.0040 ppf: 49 ppct: 30 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 2.1MB tig: atl: Regulating the Unstable Family: Eliza Haywood's Fiction and the Development of Family Law. aug: au: NIXON, CHERYL su: Domestic relations in literature Haywood, Eliza Fowler, ca. 1693-1756 English fiction Domestic relations Parent-child relationships in literature Parent-child legal relationship United Kingdom sug: subj: United Kingdom Domestic relations in literature Haywood, Eliza Fowler, ca. 1693-1756 English fiction Domestic relations Parent-child relationships in literature Parent-child legal relationship ab: This essay examines Eliza Haywood's interrogation of the legal structuring of the family, arguing that her fiction articulates the need to serve the "best interests" of the child well before early modern British law enacted that goal. Haywood's amatory fiction, including Love in Excess; or, The Fatal Enquiry (1719), The Rash Resolve: Or, The Untimely Discovery (1724), and The Distress'd Orphan, or Love in a Madhouse (1726), depicts the family's mistreatment of the daughter-figure and anticipates the law's as-yet unrealized potential to protect these most vulnerable of women. A comparison of Haywood's fiction to the Court of Chancery's equity case reports, commentaries, and treatises reveals Haywood's participation in now- forgotten debates about the rights and responsibilities that define the parent/child and, more specifically, the guardian/ward relationship. Guardianship allows Haywood to imagine and the law to enact interventions in the structuring of the family. his essay focuses on Haywood's and equity's definition of three parental powers over the child: the custody of the child, the care and maintenance of the child, and the management of an account of the child's estate. In her fiction, Haywood consistently depicts the need for a more equitable structuring of the family--a structuring that the legal system of equity itself seems unable to uphold. By criticizing the law, specifically its need to create more caring family structures for the underage daughter, Haywood's fiction anticipates new understandings of the family that would take equity another half- century to develop. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies is the property of University of Pennsylvania Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies holder: University of Pennsylvania Press dt: @attributes: year: 2014 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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