Creating a veil of silence? Politeness and marital violence in the English household

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Volumn 12, Issue , 2002, Pages 395-415

  Foyster, Elizabeth ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; DOMESTIC VIOLENCE; ETHNOLOGY; FEMALE; HISTORY; HYSTERIA; INFORMATION PROCESSING; LEGAL ASPECT; MARRIAGE; METHODOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL CLASS; SOCIAL CONTROL; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; STATISTICS; UNITED KINGDOM;

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HYSTERIA; MARRIAGE; RECORDS; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL CLASS; SOCIAL CONTROL, INFORMAL; SOCIAL VALUES; WOMEN;

EID: 33745961228     PISSN: 00804401     EISSN: 14740648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0080440102000166     Document Type: Review

References (62)

1. For example, Paul Langford explains how William Blackstone used the phrase 'a polite and commercial people' to describe the English in his influential Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-9), in A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989), 1
2. See for example, L. E. Klein, 'Gender, Conversation and the Public Sphere in Early Eighteenth-Century England', in Textuality and Sexuality: Reading Theories and Practices, ed. J. Still and M. Worton (Manchester, 1993), 100-15
3. M. Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity: National Identity and Language in the Eighteenth Century (1996)
4. and P. Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society in Britain 1660-1800 (2001)
5. L. Stone, 'A Rejoinder', Past and Present, 108 (1985), 219, 220
6. The rejoinder was to the criticisms aired by J. A. Sharpe, 'The History of Violence in England: Some Observations', Past and Present, 108 (1985), 206-15
7. The debate had been triggered by Stone's article, 'Interpersonal Violence in English Society 1300-1980', Past and Present, 101 (1983), 22-33
8. J. M. Beattie, 'Violence and Society in Early-Modern England', in Perspectives in Criminal Law: Essays in Honour of John L. J. Edwards, ed. A. N. Doob and E. L. Greenspan (Ontario, 1985), 45
9. and idem, Crime and the Courts in England 1660-1800 (Princeton, 1986), 112
10. C. W. Brooks, 'Interpersonal Conflict and Social Tension: Civil Litigation in England, 1640-1830', in The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone, ed. A. L. Beier, D. Cannadine and J. M. Rosenheim (Cambridge, 1989), 384-5, 396-7
11. J. S. Cockburn, 'Patterns of Violence in English Society: Homicide in Kent 1560-1985', Past and Present, 130 (1991), 103-4
12. P. King, 'Punishing Assault: The Transformation of Attitudes in the English Courts', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 27 (1996), 57-62, 72-4
13. Cockburn, 'Patterns of Violence', 96, 105
14. M. Hunt, 'Wife Beating, Domesticity and Women's Independence in Eighteenth-Century London', Gender and History, 4, 1 (1992), 10-33
15. A. J. Hammerton follows this line of argument in Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life (1992), and believes that it was only in the late nineteenth century that the middle classes recognised that there was a problem of marital violence in their own social rank
16. A good introduction to the history of marital violence is provided in M. E. Doggett, Marriage, Wife-Beating and the Law in Victorian England (Columbia, 1993)
17. H. Berry, 'Rethinking Politeness in Eighteenth-Century England: Moll King's Coffee House and the Significance of "Flash Talk"', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 11 (2001), 65-81
18. A. Clark, 'Humanity or Justice? Wifebeating and the Law in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries', in Regulating Womanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood and Sexuality, ed. C. Smart (1992), 192
19. Times, 7 Oct. 1824, 3c
20. Mrs Marshall, The Child's Guide to Good-Breeding, Founded on Christian Principles; Or, Seven Chapters on Politeness (1839), 27
21. see also, Spectator, no. 149 (21 Aug. 1711), ed. D. F. Bond (5 vols., Oxford, 1965), II, 87
22. The Etiquette of Love, Courtship, and Marriage (Halifax, 1859), 122
23. Westmeath v. Westmeath (1827), in English Reports (187 vols., 1900-30), CLXII, 1026
24. P. Carter, 'Polite "Persons": Character, Biography and the Gentleman', in this volume
25. See, for example, J. Harris, An Essay on Politeness (1775), 23
26. J. Trusler, Principles of Politeness (1775), 102
27. Treatise on Politeness, 102
28. For discussion of the 'traditional' qualities of manhood, see E. A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (1999), ch. 2
29. E. Foyster, 'At the Limits of Liberty: Married Women and Confinement in Eighteenth-Century England', Continuity and Change, 17, 1 (2002), 39-62
30. CA, Case 2068 (1750), D435, fos. 86r, 120r; in the early eighteenth century the Verney women looked forward to their visits to London, believing that the 'dull country affords no diversion', but the male members of the family complained of the costs of such trips, see S. E. Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural World of the Verneys 1660-1720 (Oxford, 1999), 58
31. for the attractions which urban living held for women, see J. Ellis, '"On the town": Women in Augustan England', History Today, 45 (1995), 20-7
32. The disputes which could arise between elite couples when women wished to relinquish the restrictions of life in a country house for urban living were longstanding, see A. T. Friedman, 'Inside/Out: Women, Domesticity, and the Pleasures of the City', in Material London ca. 1600, ed. L. Cowen Orlin (Philadelphia, 2000), 232-50
33. See, for example, Public Record Office, High Court of Delegates [hereafter DEL] 1/361 (1722), fo. 50v; London Metropolitan Archives, London Consistory Court [hereafter DL/C] 179 (1783), fo. 148v
34. Whyman, Sociability and Power, ch. 4
35. A. Vickery, The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England (1998), ch. 6
36. L. Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996), passim
37. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England, 181-2
38. F. N. Dabhoiwala, 'Prostitution and Police in London, c. 1660-c. 1760' (DPhil thesis, Oxford University, 1995), part I
39. A. Clark, 'Whores and Gossips: Sexual Reputation in London 1770-1825', in Current Issues in Women's History, ed. A. Angerman, G. Binnema, A. Keunen, V. Poels and J. Zirkzee (1989), 239-40
40. P. Morris shows how the polite sensibilities of court officials and government commissioners were offended by the sexual nature of defamation cases brought by the lower orders by this period in 'Defamation and Sexual Reputation in Somerset, 1733-1850' (PhD thesis, Warwick University, 1985), 13, 233, 236-42, 438-40
41. For conflicting judgements see, for example, Holmes v. Holmes (1755) in English Reports, CLXI, 284
42. E. Foyster, 'Boys Will Be Boys? Manhood and Aggression, 1660-1800', in English Masculinities 1660-1800, ed. T. Hitchcock and M. Cohen (1999), 151-66
43. R. B. Shoemaker, 'The Decline of Public Insult in London 1660-1800', Past and Present, 169 (2000), 97-131
44. Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity, 25
45. J. Oppenheim, 'Shattered Nerves': Doctors, Patients, and Depression in Victorian England (Oxford, 1991), ch. 5
46. G. S. Rousseau, '"A Strange Pathology": Hysteria in the Early Modern World, 1500-1800', in S. L. Gilman et al., Hysteria beyond Freud (Berkeley, 1993), p. 164
47. G. S. Rousseau, 'Towards a Semiotics of the Nerve: The Social History of Language in a New Key', in Language, Self and Society, ed. P. Burke and R. Porter (Oxford, 1991), 214-75
48. G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, 1992), 23-36
49. K. E. Williams, 'Hysteria in Seventeenth-Century Case Records and Unpublished Manuscripts', History of Psychiatry, 1 (1990), 383-401
50. M. S. Micale, Approaching Hysteria: Disease and its Interpretations (Princeton, 1995), 19-29
51. N. Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners, trans. E. Jephcott (Oxford, 1978), especially 190
52. A. Clark, Women's Silence Men's Violence: Sexual Assault in England 1770-1845 (1987), 2, 8, 47, 59-60, 63-5, 75
53. CA, Case 7828 (1817), H272/26-7, 35; the statement '29 November 1819 Party dismissed' is written on the outside of the papers for this case. It is impossible to know from this whether the court rejected Sophia's accusations, she voluntarily withdrew them, or if the couple came to an out of courtroom 'private' separation agreement. The involvement of parents in their children's marriages was not unusual, see E. Foyster, 'Parenting Was for Life, not just for Childhood: The Role of Parents in the Married Lives of their Children in Early Modern England', History, 86 (2001), 313-27
54. A. Fletcher, 'Courses in Politeness: The Upbringing and Experiences of Five Teenage Diarists, 1671-1860', in this volume
55. see also Rousseau, '"A Strange Pathology"', and R. Porter, 'The Body and the Mind, the Doctor and the Patient: Negotiating Hysteria', both in Gilman et al., Hysteria beyond Freud, 161, 243
56. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility, xviii
57. For the effeminising effects of nervous illness upon men see Oppenheim, 'Shattered Nerves', 141, 143
58. See, for example, C. Smith-Rosenberg, 'The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in 19th-Century America', Social Research, 39 (1972), 652-78
59. As cited in Oppenheim, 'Shattered Nerves', 209
60. Francis Roper said that if Sophia had been in a 'stupor and delirium' it was because of 'her own ungovernable passions', CA, Case 7828, (1817), H272/27; for husbands accused who said that their wives suffered from nervous afflictions because of drunkenness, see, for example, CA, Case 4407 (1737), D997, fos. 46v-7r; and CA, Case 7468 (1739), Ee10/66
61. As cited in Clark, Women's Silence, 66
62. Vickery, The Gentleman's Daughter, 214-22