| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Women, Money, and the Law: Nineteenth- Century Fiction, Gender, and the Courts. By Joyce W. Warren. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005. x, 373 pp. $44.95, ISBN 0-87745-953-3.)
Joyce W. Warren's Women, Money, and the Law intends to shift our image of nineteenth- century women from noneconomic beings into active participants in both family and community economies. While recognizing that some historians have reevaluated the extent to which "separate spheres" ideology barred women from public action, Warren contends that "few commentators have recognized the extent to which middle-class women were themselves engaged in economic pursuits" (p. 3). Though I think Warren significantly overstates that claim, it is always a worthwhile endeavor to add to our knowledge of how cultural prescriptions, gender, law, and money interacted in nineteenth-century America.	1
Warren's tools are remarkably varied, from female-authored novels of the mid-nineteenth century to New York City trial court records— rescued from a dumpster and stored at Hofstra University. According to her methodological theory, the narratives in the novels and the case files combine to provide a context for evaluating the culture of nineteenth-century women. The theory works much better for the study of novels than for the case files.	. . .

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