With regard to English common law, medieval women were able to participate
in the curial process in only a limited way. This is not true of
women as defendants: women could be sued for almost any civil or criminal
plaint, but their privileges as plaintiffs were broadly curtailed by
marital status and cultural expectation. The legal fiction of unity of person
saw a wife’s legal personality merge into her husband’s; he assumed the
responsibility for representing them both at law. A married woman was a
lawful dependent; the only time she appeared as plaintiff in a civil suit
was when she stood in as attorney for her husband. The single woman
(a category that includes also the feme sole, a married woman whom
the law treated as single for business purposes) was the exception to
the rule: the courts acceded to her full legal personhood. She was capable
of representing herself at law, although that concession existed more in
theory than in practice.