Britt Liljewall, Göteborgs stadsmuseum

Femal Legal competence and male legal incompetence

2008-2012

The ultimate aim of the project was to shed light on living conditions of unmarried women in Sweden during the 19th century by combining the theme civil majority status with real life stories. The aim was also to discuss changes in female civil competence in relation to overall modernization. The work was accomplished using other theoretical perspectives and scientific methods than those used in previous research on what is known as the nineteenth-century women's reforms. The main perspective can be described with the concepts of gender and actor, and the main method as biographical on an individual as well as a collective level. In addition, I have worked with different source material than previously used when studying female competence. The image of female living conditions shaped with the help of these perspectives, methods, and sources, I regard as essential supplements, distinctions, and deepenings of previously generated pictures.
The entrance to the focused women has been their own applications for civil majority. Through these documents, the active individuals could be identified, and the reconstructions of their life continued by the use of church records, estate inventories, court documents, etc. Only unmarried women had the opportunity to apply. The married, e.g. the majority of all grown up women, were placed under their husbands' guardianship up till 1921, and the widows had their civil majority automatically.
The main questions of the project were: how did the group of civil competent women develop during the 19th century, quantitatively as well as in more qualitative aspects? How did the meaning of female civil majority change over time? How did the theme of female majority illuminate the relations between sexes and between different categories of women?

RESULTS

From the applications it was possible to calculate the total number of women that got their rights. An overall picture of this amount had previously been missing. Around the 1800 the number of unmarried women who attended their majority may not have exceeded a few hundred in total. There was a moderate increase during the first half of the century, when the competence could be achieved only through applying for exemption to the Government. At the beginning of the century about 60 women annually, and about 200 around 1850 applied. Until 1858, when a new regulatory framework was introduced, it was estimated that around 7,000 to 8,000 applications had been approved. The relatively small number of women requesting majority during the first half of the 19th century can be related to the tedious application rules but also to the requirement of participation of the woman's family and local community, both represented by men. With no such support the women obviously were restrained to apply at all. Only those who could deliver unanimous applications could count upon assent by the Government. The impression that it was easy for women to reach majority status, found in previous research, is questioned in my study.
In 1858, when the exemption procedure was abandoned, women who had reached the age of 25 could report their civil majority in the local court and without the participation of family members. The reform led to that the number of applicants quickly increased from about 200 to about 6 000 per year. During the six years when the notification procedure was in force I calculate that a total of between 30,000 and 40,000 women were formally emancipated. In the new framework the eventual disapproval by family and local community to female authority was made invisible. Potential impact was transferred to private life at informal levels. In reconstructions of individual lives there are signs of continued male resistance to female rights.
In 1865 the regulatory framework were again changed and all unmarried women aged 25 years were automatically given civil majority. At the same time they got the right to register themselves as minors and to have guardians without any other motive than the sex, a right which the men did not have. Few women, however, took "advantage" of this. Around 1900 the civil majority sphere included approximately 46 per cent of the adult female population including widows. This means nearly 730,000 formally emancipated women. The married ones were excluded for another two decades.

The female majority also changed qualitatively in the 19th century. While majority at the beginning of the century was a matter mainly for women from the urban bourgeois strata, it developed to an issue which touched on much broader sections of the population in the middle of the century. The rural maids and women without real property now entered. This indicates a pressure from underneath which have to affect the perception of the driving forces behind the overall development.
In parallel with the social leveling one can follow a change in the argumentation for female majority. While the reasons to apply in the beginning of the century mainly focused on the possibility to independently hold inherited estate in order to be able to maintain established pattern of life, the focus around 1850 was on rights that made it possible to change the future. Time perspective shifted from "the spaces of experience" to "the horizons of expectation".
Formally, the unmarried woman who had attained her majority passed her married sister in rank. The first one, but not the second, could e.g. independently conclude contracts and own and lead a company. For the more informal values of the unmarried women with majority the signs of improve are weaker. Yet a "spinster" was not looked upon as a "single woman".
Many of the women from rural layers without real estate applied for majority in connection with major changes in life patterns, when they replaced countryside to town and work as dependant house maid to wage-earner. However, other women, surprisingly many, acted for the new legal position without altering their external life patterns. The explanations to strive for majority can not only be found in tangible and physical needs, but also in the internal world. The civil position began for a large part of the unmarried women to become a matter of self-confidence and self-esteem. It became an identity issue. In the common application phrase "to manage myself and my property" the first part began to outweigh the last. One can interpret the development as a shift of female authority from mainly a question of property towards a broader question of citizenship.

The changes both in terms of the number of women involved and the content of female majority were significant. However, interlaced with the discontinuity were also more continuous traits which must have subdued the feeling of change and might even have created a security which contributed to that change could take place. Not the least in the life histories these tendencies become visible.
One persistent structure was created by the clear line between real estate, especially land, and loose property throughout the change process. Management of real estate was associated with men, while the loose property could not just be own but also managed by women. Like a main thread through the conflicts that arise around the female competence is the male-coded soil.
The ideological justification of the male-coded soil was patriarchalism. On an almost redundant fashion the strength of patriarchalism is demonstrated by the fact that very few of the women acted for their majority as long as their fathers were alive. The persistence seems to be explained by the fact that the father not only was her biological father, but also her guardian, and usually also her master. Only when the father died the power was divided - and the activity to ask for majority was facilitated.

A FINAL REMARK

In these studies of female civil majority during the 19th century Sweden caught traits that explain part of the societal development as formed by the actors and from underneath. Among the driving-forces are the unmarried women and the men around them who tried to deal with their daily life and its' choices.

FURTHER STUDIES

In the present study certain issues have been elucidated, others have remained unanswered and new ones have emerged. A theme that needs additional lightning is the status of unmarried women during the latter part of the 19th century when female professionals - such as dairymaid, teacher, post clerk, and nurse - may have played a part in terms of changing the values of "single woman" towards "spinster".
Another theme revolves around the divorced women. This group needs to be highlighted and its rank and status has to be discussed and applied in relation to other women's groups. One of my life's histories is about a woman who divorced, and thus in fact did get civil majority to herself. Was divorce for married women, which stood outside the sphere of authority throughout the 19th century, a way to improve their civil rank?
A third theme for further research is the situation of families in which the man/husband/master/guardian - in one and same person - was incapacitated. What happened to his wife's civil competence in this context? In the cases when the wife was the one who was liable of the husband's loss of majority, which was not uncommon, is also a major question of interest in their future relationship.

PUBLISHING

The project will be presented in the form of a monography under the tentative title of "Competent spinsters: a life history perspective of the 19th century's unmarried women". The book contains 15 chapters. In about half of them I try to analyze single individuals and their activity in the civil majority sphere using their whole life as a context. In other studies, which I refer to as collective biographical, I discuss groups of women who acted for or against their authority from social, cultural, and economic aspects.