1. Objectifs

Intentions :
Ce chapitre porte sur le rôle et sur le statut légal des femmes mariées dans le commerce et les entreprises au 18e siècle au Québec.

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
L’analyse présentée dans ce chapitre s’appuie sur des archives judiciaires québécoises de l’époque.

Type de traitement des données :
Réflexion critique

3. Résumé

According to the authors, «[w]hen we are attentive to the female voice within the marital economy a very different picture of the concept of the ''deputy husband'' emerges. From the point of view of wives, authorizations, far from reinforcing their subordination within the household, actually conferred a great deal of power upon them, permitting them to enter into networks of credit that would have been denied them as single women. There are countless examples within the judicial archives in which married women who worked in their husbands’ trade nevertheless displayed a strong sense of occupational identity and often characterized both the business and their earnings as belonging to themselves personally. Far from assuming that they were subsumed under the husband’s authority, these women were very proud of the substantive economic contribution they had made to the household. […] Husband and wife may have been sued together, but in a large proportion of cases it is clear that it was the wife who had procured the goods and had engaged the instruments of credit that were so critical to the business, even though by law the husband was deemed in strict legal terms as individually liable for debts incurred by the marital economy.» (p. 343)