Broken Lives: Separation and Divorce in England, 1660-1857 - Hardcover

Stone, Lawrence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198202547 ISBN 13: 9780198202547

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1993

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

About the Author: Lawrence Stone is the author of many highly acclaimed books, including Road to Divorce, Uncertain Unions, and The Crisis of the Aristocracy.

Reviews

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. (Illustrations) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198202547
• ISBN 13: 9780198202547
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 355