The Law and the Woman

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Edward Abbott Parry's The Law and the Woman is a lively, practical handbook for general readers, especially women, on how English law has treated them and why that treatment so often lags behind justice. Rather than offering a technical treatise, Parry explains the historical roots of legal custom, arguing that obsolete rules can still create real hardship and that reform should proceed by clear-eyed, incremental change. He begins with "Adam and Eve," tracing the ancient idea of woman's subordination through scripture, classical thought, and early legal systems. From Roman patria potestas to Saxon marriage customs, the book shows how women were long treated as property: bought with bride-price, handed over in ceremony, and even subject to wife-selling in later centuries. Yet Parry also notes the enduring social power of home, wife, and mother. He then turns to divorce, using the Royal Commission's evidence, women's testimony, and cases of ruined homes to argue for equal and humane reform on grounds such as adultery, desertion, insanity, drunkenness, and imprisonment. His case is simple: law should lessen suffering, not preserve it.