|
Books > History > American history
|
Buy Now
Marital Cruelty in Antebellum America (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,201
Discovery Miles 12 010
|
|
|
Marital Cruelty in Antebellum America (Hardcover)
Series: Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
|
In Marital Cruelty in Antebellum America, Robin C. Sager probes the
struggles of aggrieved spouses shedding light on the nature of
marriage and violence in the United States in the decades prior to
the Civil War. analysing over 1,500 divorce records that reveal
intimate details of marriages in conflict in Virginia, Texas, and
Wisconsin from 1840--1860, Sager offers a rare glimpse into the
private lives of ordinary Americans shaken by accusations of
cruelty. At a time when the standard for an ideal marriage held
that both partners adequately perform their respective duties,
hostility often arose from ongoing domestic struggles for power.
Despite a rise in the then novel expectation of marriage as a
companionate relationship, and even in the face of liberalised
divorce grounds, marital conflicts often focused on violations of
duty, not lack of love. Sager describes how, in this environment,
cruelty was understood as a failure to fulfill expectations and as
a weapon to brutally enforce more traditional interpretations of
marital duty. Sager's findings also challenge historical
literature's assumptions about the regional influences on violence,
showing that married southerners were no more or less violent than
their midwestern counterparts. Her work reveals how definitions and
perceptions of cruelty varied according to the gender of victim and
perpetrator. Correcting historical mischaracterisations of women's
violence as trivial, rare, or defensive, Sager finds antebellum
wives both capable and willing to commit a wide variety of
cruelties within their marriages. Her research provides details
about the reality of nineteenth-century conjugal unions, including
the deep unhappiness buried within them.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
