Table of Contents

* Foreword - R. Roy McMurtry and Peter N. Oliver* Acknowledgments* Introduction* Part I: The Regulation Of Marriage, Courtship, And Sexual Violence*1. The Ceremony of Marriage*2. Seduction*3. Rape* Part II: Fertility*4. Infanticide*5. Abortion* Part III: The Nineteenth-Century Family*6. Divorce and Separation*7. Child Custody* Part IV: Women's Work In The Paid Labour Force*8. Prostitution*9. Protective Labour Legislation*10. Lawyering: Clara Brett Martin, Canada's First Woman Lawyer* Conclusion* Notes* Selected Bibliography* Index

About the Author

Constance Backhouse is Distinguished Professor and Research Chair in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa and co-founder of the Feminist History Society.

Reviews

These richly textured and grippingly recreated trials - battered women who fought back, self-respecting prostitutes and saleswomen beaten down, trailblazers ostracized, defiant daughters subdued, domestic servants commodified and mothers denied their children or compelled to let their newborns die - will both fire and break your heart. In weaving nineteenth-century social history with the seamless fabric of laws and legal institutions that enforced the reproductive, sexual, racial and occupational inequalities shaping women's oppression today. Professor Backhouse raises provocative questions about the limits of reformers and reformism. Whether to discover lost heroines come alive or to confront the maleness of law, curl up with Petticoats and Prejudice for a memorable read." - Sheila McIntyre, Faculty of Law, Queen's University