Marital Cruelty in Antebellum America by Robin C. Sager (review)

In Marital Cruelty in Antebellum America, Robin C. Sager examines antebellum conceptions of marriage and violence through divorce cases in Virginia, Texas, and Wisconsin. Her work illustrates how gender expectations and location impacted the understanding of what was considered cruel in marriage between 1840 and 1860. Rather than reaffirming the antebellum South was more violent, Sager argues that southern states with established gender expectations set greater limitations on the level of violence considered permissible in marriages compared with areas in the process of settlement.

To prove her argument, Sager provides a qualitative analysis of the testimony from husbands, wives, and community members. Four of the chapters examine a particular form of cruelty, including intemperance and verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. Spouses turned to the courts expecting legal help, but plaintiffs needed to prove a decreased quality of life in order to be successful. Witnesses, then, proved indispensable and are the focus of the last chapter. Neighbors upheld the privacy of family to a degree during the period, but when troubled marriages spilled into the public domain or appeared life threatening, any right to privacy was forfeited. Ultimately, in each state a common understanding of gender expectations and boundaries in marriage emerged among husbands, wives, and the wider community.

The strength of Sager's work lies in the comparison of marital conflict in an established southern state with two states plagued by "frontier discord" (p. 8). Sager argues that Virginia's social stability, honor code, and need to appear less violent in the wake of increasing criticisms of slavery led to stricter restrictions on marital cruelty. At the opposite end of the spectrum, spouses in Wisconsin more frequently used lethal weapons such as axes, which Sager asserts was due to Wisconsin's fluid gender expectations and an increased level of violence as the state developed. From these findings, she carefully draws larger generalizations about the regions, but on occasion, using one state as indicative of an entire geographic region obscures significant cultural and legal variations.

Sager also excels in analyzing the dynamics of marital conflict and in challenging previous scholars on the role of women in marital violence as well as on the rise of companionate marriages. Men were expected to master their emotions and conduct themselves with restraint as they enforced submission of their wives. Women, too, could be sued for divorce if they violated gender expectations by drinking, engaging in extramarital sex, or resorting to verbal and physical attacks. By including cases of violent women, Sager provides a well-rounded study of gender and cruelty. She convincingly argues that regardless of the perpetrator, the basis of complaints in the cases rested on violation of duty, not emotion.

Sager has painstakingly examined an astounding 1,541 cases to arrive at her conclusions. Unfortunately, some cases in the states studied were lost over the years, leaving the common problem of missing records. A quantitative analysis of the available data, however, would have assisted in demonstrating the central arguments by establishing the rate of success for these cases. Doing so would clarify the degree of difference among the states as well as the extent to which courts reflected the community's views on cruelty.

Even without statistics, Marital Cruelty in Antebellum Americaadds a needed perspective. The use of lower court records provides a unique window into marriage during the period. Consequently, Sager's work offers critical insight on the role of location, violence, and gender expectations in marital cruelty.