Cynthia A. Kierner

“Marriage was a particularly high-stakes proposition for women because the English common law at least theoretically gave men virtually limitless power within their households. Under the common-law doctrine of coverture, a wife's legal rights and duties – including her control of property and liability for debts and other contractual obligations – were subsumed by those of her husband; by law and custom, fathers also governed their children with near-absolute authority. Because men's powers within marriage derived in part from the belief that women and children were inherently weak and inferior, they were also at least notionally tied to men's corresponding responsibility to protect and provide for their domestic dependents. In reality, however, both law and custom less rigorously enforced men's protective obligations than the authority they wielded over their wives and other subordinates.”
― Cynthia A. Kierner, The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America