The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c9.s1.17

c9.s1.17

The Married Women's Property Act (1886) of England is, according to Boutmy in his *Essai d'une psychologie politique du peuple anglais au XIX^e siècle*, essentially distinct from the Napoleonic and continental codes in so far as it gives independence to women proprietors. But even this Act falls short of the Hindu. Because, as Maine² explains it, not only has the Hindu woman "singularly full power of dealing with the *strîdhana*, — not only is the husband debarred from intermeddling with it save in extreme distress, -- but when the proprietress dies, there is a special order of succession³ to her property, which is manifestly intended to give a preference, wherever it is possible, to female relations over males".