Law, Sex, Cruelty, and Divorce in Victorian America, 1840-1900

Bibliographic Data

ID2730282
AuthorsRobert L Griswold (corresponding author)
Year1986
Volume38
Issue5
Pages721
Publication date1986-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2712820
PMID11616543
OpenAlexW2326622623
LanguageEN
Citations received10

IN 1874, JUSTICE JOHN M. SCOTT OF THE ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT DESCRIBED THE damage a husband inflicted upon his wife by his false allegations of infidelity: Cruel treatment does not always consist of actual violence. There are words of false accusation that inflict deeper anguish than physical injuries to the personmore enduring and lacerating to the wounded spirit of a gentle woman, than actual violence to the person, though severe.' Sometime later the Oregon Supreme Court addressed the same issue and underscored the dire impact such accusations had on innocent wives: To charge a woman, in the presence and hearing of others, with the commission of the crime of adultery, is to render her subject to the gross insults of lustful men who may hear and believe the rumor, which, whether true or false, tends to rob her of her good name, alienate her friends and acquaintances, and deprive her of their society and companionship.2 Both justices then proceeded in each case to sunder the bonds of matrimony, the very foundation of Victorian social order. Their decisions, while restrained and wedded to precedent, nevertheless directly or obliquely reflected contemporary debates over family stability, marital cruelty, conceptions of manhood, woman's place in nineteenth-century society, and Victorian attitudes about sexuality. The two judges were no more immune to these issues than anyone else and probably less so, for they held the responsibility of reconciling middle-class hopes for family cohesion with changing sex roles, marital expectations, and legal definitions of domestic cruelty.3 These two appellate decisions, supplemented by about one hundred others dealing with sexual cruelty, thus provide a way to investigate the complicated connections among Victorian ideology, sexual behavior, and acceptable marital conduct. If the judges were not always consistent, if they sometimes favored marital indissolubility over freedom from objectionable marriage bonds and at other times preferred the reverse, their ambivalence or inconsistency surely reflected wider confusion over the competing claims of family life and personal autonomy.4 Despite this ambivalence, judges during the nineteenth century nevertheless

Criminology · Cruelty · Political science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · American Sports and Literature · Gender Studies · Law

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub