Man and Wife in America

"In nineteenth-century America, the law insisted that marriage was a permanent relationship defined by the husband's authority and the wife's dependence. Yet at the same time the law created unprecedented opportunities to escape that relationship. How was this possible? And how did wives and husbands experience marriage and separation within that legal regime? These are the complexities that Hendrik Hartog plumbs in a study of the powers of law and its limits."--BOOK JACKET.