The Case of Mistress Mary Hampson: Her Story of Marital Abuse and Defiance in Seventeenth-Century England by Jessica L. Malay (review)

Perhaps no category of social, political, and legal thought is as incendiary, persistent, and elusive as “abuse.” In her edition of the autobiography of Mary Hampson, Jessica Malay narrates the story of a seventeenth-century wife whose violent marriage led her to spend years suffering at the hands (literally and figuratively) of her husband, and decades legally attempting to secure financial maintenance from him. Worn down by the process of resisting Robert Hampson’s repeated characterizations of her as a shrewish deserter, and frustrated by the failings of the legal system, Mistress Hampson went so far as to publish an exposé of her marriage in 1684: A Plain and Compendious Relation of the Case of Mrs. Mary Hampson as it now is and formerly Printed for the satisfaction of a Private Friend but now is set forth for her Relief. Allowing that this kind of sensational reading was popular in the later seventeenth century, Malay argues that the Hampson autobiography — at 13,000 words long — is unusual in being “a fully developed autobiographical narrative that provides extensive context and detail” (19). Examining the pamphlet, which is only one of several accounts of the marriage, in relation to historical and cultural norms, testimony in two courts (the Court of Arches and the Court of Delegates), and Mary’s correspondence with her supporters, Malay mines the often-conflicting versions of the Hampson marriage and its after-effects, and documents the controversial perceptions and consequences of the desacralizing of marriage.

Her “book,” as Mary called it, tells a troublesome story. Robert Hampson had represented himself falsely as a man of considerable estate (27), easily persuading her mother and uncle to allow him to wed Mary. Soon after, Robert began what would become a lifelong battle with Mary about selling her jointures; as she repeatedly resisted, he in turn repeatedly resorted to physical, emotional, and financial abuse, and continuously joined in a series of financially suspect arrangements. With Robert’s permission, Mary moved to France, supporting herself by selling some of her jewelry; yet he deliberately misled Mary’s mother, who was living in London, into believing that Mary had abandoned her in order to inherit from her. Robert defied court orders to pay Mary alimony, and circulated a rumor that she was dead; in turn, Mary wrote to a high-ranking friend in England suggesting Robert might be involved with a mistress or new wife, thus committing bigamy (25–54). Readers, however, are advised to greet the story with a healthy dose of skepticism since, as Malay points out, this is Mary’s self-representation, a depiction written to position herself strategically as a victim of physical and financial abuse in the sustained contest with her husband.

Acknowledging emergent views on marriage (including Milton’s in favor of allowing unhappily married couples to separate and seek happier marriages with new partners [118]), Malay focuses on its heavy social investment in this period: “the household, through the marital bond, was seen as a bulwark of social stability. . . . Because of the centrality of marriage within society, the arrangement of marriages involved not only family members but often members of the wider community” (2). And while community involvement might work in the aggrieved wife’s favor on some occasions, as it does when a friend delivers letters from Mary to a high-ranking figure, it might also work against her, since among basic assumptions was the notion that “from time to time physical chastisement was an essential corrective to a wayward wife” (3). Even public theater might participate in reinforcing these cultural norms: in comedies such as Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and John Fletcher’s Rule a Wife and Have a Wife (1624), the abuse “visited on the wife is emptied of its horror through the dramatic...