Introduction

Part 1: Marriage, Identity, and the Law

1 Marriage Metropole: Mobility and Marriage in Early-Nineteenth-Century Montreal

2 Companionate Patriarchies: Money Matters and Marriage

3 Marriage Trajectories: Class, Choices, and Chance

4 “Dower This Barbarous Law”: Debating Marriage and Widows’ Rights

5 Imagining Widowhood and Death: Marriage Contracts, Wills, and Funeral Provisions

Part 2: Individual Itineraries of Widowhood

6 Diverse Demographies: Death, Widowhood, and Remarriage

7 In the Shadow of Their Husbands: The First Days of Widowhood

8 “Within a Year and a Day”: The First Year of Widowhood

9 Widows’ Votes: Marguerite Paris, Émilie Tavernier, Sarah Harrison, and the Montreal By-Elections of 1832

10 Widow to Mother Superior: Émilie Tavernier Gamelin and Catholic Institution Building

11 Patchworks of the Possible: Widows’ Wealth, Work, and Children

12 Final Years, Final Wishes: Care, Connections, Old Age and Death

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index