Coverture

Again, as part of the marriage contract, that was something that was an obligation that women held toward their husbands.

Coverture was considered to be the number one enemy of women's rights activists.

And most of these women were not anti-marriage.

They just believed that marriage needed to be reformed and that it needed to be reformed in ways that made it less coercive toward women and that um especially gave women more opportunities when they found themselves in bad situations so it was really abusive husbands were the people that were kind of targeted by this so they didn't before the civil war they didn't really want to touch divorce divorce reform was considered too extreme um but certainly you know giving women say so a woman who worked for wages which a lot of women did in the 19th century poor women working-class women The entire textile industry, the Lowell Mills, they were based on women's labor.