‘‘An old quarrel between us that will never be at an end": Middleton’s Women Beware Women and Late Jacobean Religious Politics

In this article, I examine Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women as a response to the particular religio-political context in the years surrounding 1621. The onset of the Thirty Years War in 1618 and the subsequent humiliation of James' son-in-law Frederick, Elector of Palatine, the vexed question of a possible Catholic marriage for Charles, Prince of Wales, the ever present difficulty of Anglo-Catholic relations, particularly with Spain, as well as growing religious factionalism within the Church of England between Calvinists and Arminians: all contributed towards a culturally febrile atmosphere, one to which, as I will argue, Middleton was well placed to respond. Given Middleton's Calvinistic beliefs, I suggest that Women Beware Women offers an acerbic examination of contemporary debates concerning human will, especially women's will, as well as promoting a sceptically apocalyptic anti-Catholic agenda throughout. I also examine the religious language and imagery used to construct Bianca as the whore of Babylon, and argue that her emergence and fall offer a political commentary on the precarious position of the English Church around 1621.

How could Human Rights Law be used by the Courts to assist Victims of Domestic Violence? A Comparative Study

It has been increasingly recognised in recent years that domestic violence constitutes a human rights issue. This article seeks to shed light on the question of how human rights law may be used in the area of domestic violence through the medium of a litigation strategy. The method used is a comparative assessment of the approaches taken towards gender issues by the Constitutional Courts in three states that have famously dynamic judiciaries- India, South Africa and Canada. A number of the obstacles to the effectiveness of human rights law are also examined.

Becoming private property: custom, law, and the geographies of ‘ownership’ in 18th- and 19th-century England

The making private of hitherto public goods is a central tenet of neoliberalism. From land in Africa, Asia, and South America to the assertion of property rights over genes and cells by corporations, the process(es) of making private property matters more than ever. And yet, despite this importance, we know remarkably little about the spatial plays through which things become private property. In this paper I seek to address this imbalance by focusing upon the formative context of 18th- and early-19th-century England. The specific lens is wood, that most critical of all ‘natural’ things other than land in the transition to market-driven economies. It is shown that the interplay between custom, law, and local practices rendered stable and aspatial definitions of property impossible. Whilst law was the key technology through which property was mediated, the cadence of particular places gave these mediations distinctive forms. I conclude that not only must we take property seriously, but we must also take the conditions and contexts of its making seriously too.