In the Victorian era, women were seen, by the middle classes at least, as belonging to the domestic sphere, and this stereotype required them to provide their husbands with a clean home, to put food on the table and to raise their children. Women's rights were extremely limited in this era, losing ownership of their wages, all of their physical property, excluding land property, and all other cash they generated once married. When a Victorian man and woman married, the rights of the woman were legally given over to her spouse. Under the law the married couple became one entity represented by the husband, placing him in control of all property, earnings, and money. In addition to losing money and material goods to their husbands, Victorian wives became property to their husbands, giving them rights to what their bodies produced: children, sex and domestic labor. Marriage abrogated a woman's right to consent to sexual intercourse with her husband, giving him "ownership" over her body. Their mutual matrimonial consent therefore became a contract to give herself to her husband as he desired according to a modern feminist view.