Language In Clarissa, Evelina And Pride And Prejudice

money were affixed rather than a man and a woman agreeing
to marry. Today, we "settle" a divorce, which is still
the apportionment of money and land.
In order to marry into a parcel of land, one had to
conform to the rules of aristocratic marriage. Marriage
practices involved the virtue and qualifications of
marriageable women. Spring tells us that a womanf s
qualifications were so important, portions, (parcels of
land being tantamount to money), became synonymous with
fortune in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Law,
Land and Family 172-173).
Purity and innocence were female necessities. As
James Thompson points out, "Despite transformation from
status to contract, and shifts from dower to jointure,
the legal system continued to figure the female as a
conduit through which property passes from one male to
another" (156). To become a "conduit," a young woman had
to be "virtuous," a standard set by the male socio-
political body to ensure pure bloodlines and proper
succession in inheritance.
Although women were "conduits" of marriage,
primogeniture and strict settlement were legal acts
protecting the rights of the eldest male child to
inherit. Females were nearly excluded from the brokerage