English common law defined the role of the wife as a feme covert, emphasising her subordination to her husband, and putting her under the "protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord". Upon marriage, the husband and wife became one person under the law, as the property of the wife was surrendered to her husband, and her status as a separate legal personality, with the ability to own property, and sue and be sued solely in her own name, ceased to exist. Any personal property acquired by the wife during the marriage, unless specified that it was for her own separate use, went automatically to her husband. If a woman writer had copyright before marriage, the copyright would pass to the husband afterwards, for instance. Further, a married woman was unable to draft a will or dispose of any property without her husband's consent.Bridget Hill, Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-century England (London: Blackwell, 1989), 1988.
