Two Early Feminist Historians on English Marriage and Divorce in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Nancy F. Cott, "Divorce and the Changing Status of Women in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts," The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Oct., 1976), pp. 586-614.  Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1921717.  [Published in the same year as Harris's study below, Cott's work in the legal records of the recently independent state of Massachusetts takes time to compare the American divorce process (much easier) with the law followed by English courts (much, much more difficult and expensive--basically for nobles only).

Barbara J. Harris, "Recent Work on the History of the Family: A Review Article," Feminist Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3/4 (Spring - Summer, 1976), pp. 159-172  Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177734.  [See especially pp. 167-8.  This article's publication in 1976 requires us to use caution with respect to the adjective "recent" in its title, but it marks an interesting point in the third year of this pioneering feminist journal's engagement with historians and sociologists attempting to understand what happened to Anglo-European families during the C15-19.  At the time this article was published, Astell had not yet made it into the Norton.]