Indexers select an article or essay at the beginning of each month that is outstanding in its line of argument, wealth of significances, and writing style. We particularly look for pieces that would be useful as course readings.

January 2010

Lightfoot, Dana Wessell. "The Projects of Marriage: Spousal Choice, Dowries, and Domestic Service in Early Fifteenth-Century Valencia."
Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 40, 1 (2009): 333-353.
The journal is sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.

Abstract: Using notarial records and civil court cases from the city of Valencia during the fifteenth century, this article explores the marital strategies of laboring-status women who worked as domestic servants prior to marrying. Analyzing the extant evidence through the concept of “agency of intentions” (developed by Sherry Ortner), I argue that the act of marriage and the gathering of dotal assets were culturally constituted projects that infused the lives of laboring-status women with meaning and purpose. While traditionally marriage has been seen as an institution dominated by women’s families, I contend that the women focused upon in my study exercised greater agency than elite women in contracting their marriages, providing dotal assets and challenging their husbands’ authority over this property in dowry restitution cases due to their laboring-status, immigrant and domestic service backgrounds.
[Reproduced from the journal web site at Brepols Publishers.]

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