The concluding volume of Stone's excellent trilogy on marriage in
early modern England (Uncertain Unions, 1992; Road to Divorce,
1990). Starting with a summary of the legal background - the laws
and rituals governing divorce when it required an act of Parliament
- Stone introduces two aspects of English life that figure
prominently in the cases that follow: the role of servants in
family life, and the absence of privacy. Although the substance of
the cases is essentially lurid - tales of infidelity, betrayal,
retribution, abuse, and humiliation - Stone's style is technical
and scholarly, true to its sources in the detailed documentation
that the divorces of the rich produced, revealing the lives of
prominent but not famous people who otherwise hold no place in
history. The cases demonstrate the shifts in society from status to
contract, from religious to secular understanding, as well as the
shift in power from men (who in the early years held women and
their children as property) to women. They demonstrate the
increased demands that both men and women made on marriage,
transforming it from a merely economic arrangement to a source of
pleasure, recreation, and companionship, especially in the large
country houses where infidelity seemed as inevitable as boredom.
One woman sued her husband for impotence, and Stone reveals the
various ways that men were required to demonstrate their virility
in public. Among the author's many insights is his noting of
romantic fiction's disruptive role in family life, implying that,
in some hands, literacy and access to popular romance were
dangerous. A fascinating and factual introduction to the history of
domestic life. (Kirkus Reviews)
Lawrence Stone's trilogy on marriage in early modern England has
been widely praised. The New York Times Book Review hailed the
first volume, Road to Divorce as "sure-footed and fascinating
commentary" and chose it as a Notable Book of 1990. Christopher
Hibbert in the Independent found that the "absorbing and often
extraordinary" stories in volume two, Uncertain Unions "throw a
clear, bright light not only upon the making and breaking of
marriages in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but also on
social customs and the intimacies of private lives." Now, in Broken
Lives, the third and final book, Stone sets out to examine the
various ways people ended marriages and the lengths to which they
would go to do so.
Drawing from a massive archive of court cases, Stone presents
stories that paint a revealing portrait of divorce in the period
before 1857. Divorce could only be obtained by Act of Parliament,
and often at great expense and with much difficulty. As Stone
writes, however extreme the circumstances, the legal breaking of a
marriage on the grounds of cruelty was not easy to obtain in
seventeenth-century England. For instance, in Boteler v. Boteler,
Anne Boteler, wife of Sir Oliver Boteler, had overwhelming evidence
of her husband's abuse (which included death threats and physical
attacks on Anne and her children). Yet even though Sir Oliver's own
relatives testified against him, it took Anne three years to obtain
a legal separation. Of course, in some instances, the wife had the
upperhand. In Lovedon v. Lovedon, we see an instance in which a
wife could repeatedly appeal her husband's suit for divorce at his
expense. By law, Edward Lovedon was obliged to pay all of his wife
Anne's bills until they were officially divorced. And in Beaufort
v. Beaufort we learn that women would often successfully countersue
their husbands for divorce on the grounds of impotence--in those
days, it was more than likely that a man would fail the public test
he underwent to prove his virility. Other cases reveal intriguing
and often spiteful aspects of marital breakdown: servants
blackmailing their adulterous masters and mistresses; and husbands
suing their wives' lovers for property damage (i.e. to the wives'
bodies).
One of the world's leading authorities on the history of the
family, Lawrence Stone has mapped the arduous routes which people
took to break marriages--from private separation agreements to
Parliamentary ruling. And as he does so, he provides a fascinating
glimpse into daily life and marital conduct, and allows us to
eavesdrop on the testimony and conversations of men and women of
all sorts and conditions--from the serving girl to the served--in
the changing social world of early modern England.
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