This article is a case study of female litigants acting in the capacity of mother in the English equity court of Chancery between 1550 and 1700. It starts by asking how prevalent mothers were as plaintiffs and defendants in Chancery, though the burden of the article is a qualitative analysis of maternal narratives in Chancery pleadings and the use of gendered tropes such as “poor mother.” Stepmothers and women acting in loco parentis—aunts, grandmothers, and godmothers—have been included to reflect the full range of women who acted in a maternal role in early modern society and explain how they were portrayed, sometimes through a querelle des femmes lens. The different legal strategies of mothers (and their lawyers) are examined in detail and the question of the “female voice” in the archives is addressed. The intention is to demonstrate how social and legal maternal identities were used to produce strategic storytelling by mothers and their lawyers in a rhetoric that they hoped would advantage their cases. More broadly, the article addresses questions about the structural connections between law and society, especially the construction of social identity and the habitus and doctrine of equity.

中文翻译：

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早期现代英国衡平法院的孕产与司法

本文是 1550 年至 1700 年间在英国衡平法院以母亲身份行事的女性诉讼当事人的案例研究。它首先询问母亲作为原告和被告在衡平法院的普遍性，尽管本文的负担是对衡平法院诉状中母性叙述的定性分析以及“可怜的母亲”等性别比喻的使用。继母和替代父母的女性——阿姨、祖母和教母——被包括在内，以反映在早期现代社会中扮演母亲角色的所有女性，并解释她们是如何被描绘的，有时通过一个女权主义者镜片。详细研究了母亲（及其律师）的不同法律策略，并解决了档案中的“女性声音”问题。目的是展示母亲和她们的律师如何利用社会和法律上的母亲身份来制作战略性的故事讲述，她们希望能够有利于他们的案件。更广泛地说，本文探讨了有关法律与社会之间结构联系的问题，特别是社会认同的构建和惯习和公平原则。