Courtship, Coverture and Marital Cruelty: Historicising Intimate Violence in the Civil Courts

Simmonds, A

Courtship, Coverture and Marital Cruelty: Historicising Intimate Violence in the Civil Courts

Simmonds, A

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Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Australian Feminist Law Journal, 2019, 45 (1), pp. 131 - 157
Issue Date:: 2019-01-02

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Simmonds, A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8204-2321	en_US
dc.date.issued	2019-01-02	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Australian Feminist Law Journal, 2019, 45 (1), pp. 131 - 157	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	1320-0968	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/138184
dc.description.abstract	© 2019, © 2019 Australian Feminist Law Journal Inc. What would the history of intimate violence look like if we traced it through the civil courts rather than the criminal courts? How did legal categories relevant to civil proceedings, such as a promise, seduction, consent and coverture, interact to create violable female bodies? In a field heavily dominated by studies of criminal trials, this paper redirects scholarly attention to civil actions used by women in the past to protest male violence and female suffering. This article reveals how the law continued to sanction intimate violence at the very moment when it purportedly sought to restrain it, through the case study of disgraced politician Myles McRae, who in the 1890s was petitioned by his wife Clara McRae for divorce on the grounds of marital cruelty and adultery, and whose mistress Ilma Vaughan then sued him for breach of promise of marriage and assault. The 1890s, much like the present, was a time when public space opened up to allow for discussion of gender violence and legal reform promised women change, yet intimate abuse continued to be legitimated through law. I argue that the law’s sanctioning of violence can best be explained through a more complex understanding of coverture–a doctrine that began not at the marital altar, as is usually claimed, but during courtship and whose effects persisted long after divorce and property reform dissolved the doctrine of marital unity. Thinking of coverture more as a constellation of ideas than as a block legal category allows us to more accurately assess its continuation at the very instance of its supposed dissolution.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Australian Feminist Law Journal	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1080/13200968.2019.1650629	en_US
dc.title	Courtship, Coverture and Marital Cruelty: Historicising Intimate Violence in the Civil Courts	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	1	en_US
utslib.citation.volume	45	en_US
utslib.for	1801 Law	en_US
utslib.for	1602 Criminology	en_US
utslib.for	2002 Cultural Studies	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Law
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.issue	1	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.volume	45	en_US

Abstract:

© 2019, © 2019 Australian Feminist Law Journal Inc. What would the history of intimate violence look like if we traced it through the civil courts rather than the criminal courts? How did legal categories relevant to civil proceedings, such as a promise, seduction, consent and coverture, interact to create violable female bodies? In a field heavily dominated by studies of criminal trials, this paper redirects scholarly attention to civil actions used by women in the past to protest male violence and female suffering. This article reveals how the law continued to sanction intimate violence at the very moment when it purportedly sought to restrain it, through the case study of disgraced politician Myles McRae, who in the 1890s was petitioned by his wife Clara McRae for divorce on the grounds of marital cruelty and adultery, and whose mistress Ilma Vaughan then sued him for breach of promise of marriage and assault. The 1890s, much like the present, was a time when public space opened up to allow for discussion of gender violence and legal reform promised women change, yet intimate abuse continued to be legitimated through law. I argue that the law’s sanctioning of violence can best be explained through a more complex understanding of coverture–a doctrine that began not at the marital altar, as is usually claimed, but during courtship and whose effects persisted long after divorce and property reform dissolved the doctrine of marital unity. Thinking of coverture more as a constellation of ideas than as a block legal category allows us to more accurately assess its continuation at the very instance of its supposed dissolution.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/138184