Common Law Coverture

For centuries, the British male elite has served as hysterical vigilantes against assertive women who, like Aishah Azmi, wish to maintain their self-identity in public spaces. In his Commentaries on the Laws of England, William Blackstone defines coverture as follows: “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended or consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs everything.” The law of coverture, though wrapped in the romance of a delightful marriage (for man), drew its vicious logic from colonization as the British male elite fictionalized the household in terms of a small colony under the husband’s viceroyalty, a colony in which the wife’s property came to be vested in husband and in which she was disqualified from entering into separate contracts. These female disabilities were considered necessary to promote the “superior” British culture at home and abroad. Women who refused to get married for fear of losing personal and property rights were regarded as “redundant women.”

The common law coverture gradually lost its grip over the British women. The British male elite is now resurrecting coverture to subjugate immigrant women. The new coverture turns the old coverture on its head. The old coverture coerced white women to promote the Victorian vision of separate spheres---homes for women and markets for men. The new coverture compels immigrant women from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East to abandon their unique identities in public spaces. For white women, the old coverture created and enforced the separation of gender spheres; for immigrant women, the coverture imposes the fusion of gender spheres. In each case, some women must lose their identity. In all cases, coverture forces women, white or black, to constantly adjust their identities to make the British men feel comfortable. 

Obtuse Logic
 
There is yet another irony in the veil controversy. In 1991, Fatima Mernissi’s book Le Harem Politique (1987) was translated into English with a more descriptive title, The Veil and the Male Elite. Analyzing sociological roots of the Islamic veil, Mernissi contends that the Arab male elite of the first few decades of Islam concocted the sacred sources to impose a controlling and oppressive headgear on women. The Prophet was egalitarian, says Mernissii, but his men were not. His men first solicited gender discrimination from the Prophet; and after his death, they fell back into the pre-Islamic days of ignorance and fabricated the Prophet’s sayings to perpetuate gender inequality and the veiling of women. True Islam, Mernissi seems to conclude, would let Muslim women choose whether they want to wear the veil.

Few scholars in the Muslim world agree with Mernissi’s theological or sociological theses, even though the face veil (niqab) is far from a universal value in Muslim countries. Ironically, the British male elite will also hesitate to embrace Mernissi’s book. Mernissi is a feminist who wishes to expand the choices women may exercise in public spaces. Mernissi criticizes the “oppressive veil” as a male imposition. She would nonetheless allow women the freedom to wear the veil.

In condemning the veil, however, the British male elite is not making the freedom argument. They are not quarrelling that women like Azmi are oppressed and that they must have a choice. In fact, these men spurn the choice argument. They are advocating gender integration for personal convenience. Immigrant women must not wear the veil in public, they say, because the veil is a mark of separation, the veil makes British men feel uncomfortable, and the veil does not allow British Jacks and Joes to watch Muslim women’s facial expressions. No self-respecting woman will accept this obtuse logic.

It appears that the British male elite is determined to direct and dictate women according to their personal preferences. They perhaps do not realize that their forced unveiling of Muslim women is no different from their forced domestication of Victorian women.

Ali Khan is a professor of law at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. Professor Khan is a member of the New York Bar..He may be reached at ali.khan@washburn.edu

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