Marital Violence
An English Family History, 1660–1857

Exposing the 'hidden' history of marital violence between the Restoration and the mid-nineteenth century.

Elizabeth Foyster (Author)

9780521619127, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 August 2005

296 pages
22.8 x 15.3 x 2.3 cm, 0.472 kg

'As well as revising previous analyses of wife-beating Marital Violence also addresses some of its little-studied and disturbing features … with flair, sympathy and intelligence, Foyster has moved the field far beyond current platitudes and given historians of interpersonal violence, family relationships and gender new avenues of research to explore.' Journal of Continuity and Change

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.

1. Rethinking the histories of violence
2. Resisting violence
3. Children and marital violence
4. Beyond conjugal ties and spaces
5. The origins of professional responses.

Subject Areas: Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]