The Marital Knot: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648–1850

What kind of reality was imposed on Jewish women who found themselves agunot, literally "chained women," and what could they do to extricate themselves from their plight? How did rabbinic experts with the authority to free agunot discharge their task and what were the outcomes of the fact that the agunot were dependent on the male rabbinic establishment?