Marital Violence

Abstract

This book exposes the 'hidden' history of marital violence and explores its place in English family life between the Restoration and the mid-nineteenth century. In a time before divorce was easily available and when husbands were popularly believed to have the right to beat their wives, Elizabeth Foyster examines the variety of ways in which men, women and children responded to marital violence. For contemporaries this was an issue that raised central questions about family life: the extent of men's authority over other family members, the limitations of women's property rights, and the problems of access to divorce and child custody. Opinion about the legitimacy of marital violence continued to be divided but by the nineteenth century ideas about what was intolerable or cruel violence had changed significantly. This accessible study will be invaluable reading for anyone interested in gender studies, feminism, social history and family history.

Changing Discourses of Marital Violence in Sweden from the Age of Reformation to the Late Nineteenth Century

“…While eighteenth-century English public discourse is said to have focused more and more on the condemnation of the husband's violence as a moral and social wrong and the victimisation of the battered wife as helpless and defenceless, the eighteenth-century Swedish public discourse on women's rule and domination bears all the obvious signs of a backlash compared with the preceding century. 65 The change in tone can even be noted in the theological literature. In his Biblical Mirror of Women ('Biblisk Qwinnospegel') from 1723, Magnus Sahlstedt, chaplain to the king, constantly revisits the theme of wives who treat their men without respect and refuse to accept their natural subordination.…”

When a Woman Hates Her Husband: Love, Sex and Fruitful Marriages in Early Modern England

“…Courts had to sort through the narratives of husbands, wives and witnesses to determine whether force or coercion was deemed appropriate, or unreasonable. 114 Elizabeth Foyster suggests that the fluidity of the definition of cruelty, which did not always distinguish between direct and indirect bodily harm through emotional viciousness, could at times be used by women to their advantage in courts, provided they might be able to show themselves meek and discreet in the face of this treatment. 115 The imperative of wifely submission meant that these women in unhappy marriages stressed their silence and passivity in the face of torment.…”

Comunidad y cencerrada en el control de la vida matrimonial: Navarra siglos XVI-XVII

“…3.1. EL CONTROL DE LA VIDA MATRIMONIAL EN NAVARRA Según hemos podido comprobar para el caso navarro, las cencerradas se erigieron, en ocasiones, en actos de reprobación colectiva gracias a los cuales los vecinos alzaron sus voces contra los malos tratos y las agresiones que se producían en el seno familiar, cuando estos tenían un carácter excesivo e injustificado, como también se ha puesto de manifiesto en otros puntos del continente europeo 35 . Los ejemplos que utilizamos contienen, todos ellos, los componentes comunes que hemos descrito para cualquier cencerrada.…”

“…Como se ha podido apreciar, las comunidades vecinales se dedicaron a sancionar a través de condenas populares -como eran las cencerradas o matracas-los maltratos físicos que ejercieron los maridos sobre sus esposas y otros comportamientos, puesto que sus participantes tenían la intención de avergonzar a quienes transgredían las normas y conductas comunitarias 92 . Sin duda, el dominio público del ámbito privado era tal que nada escapaba a los ojos inquisitivos de la introspección vecinal a través del rumor, componente cultural básico de la comunicación popular 93 .…”