In this study Harris argues that the roles of aristocratic wives, mothers, and widows constituted careers for women that had as much public and political significance and were as crucial for the survival and prosperity of their families and class as their husbands' careers. Aristocratic women, she demonstrates, were trained from an early age to manage their families' property and households: arrange the marriages and careers of their children: create, sustain, and exploit the client-patron relationships that were an essential element in politics at the regional and national levels: and finally manage the transmission and distribution of property from one generation to another, since most wives outlived their husbands.