Wives for Sale: Ethnographic Study of British Popular Divorce

Review "In his meticulously annotated ethnographical study, Samuel Pyeatt Menefee collects more than enough surprising evidence to suggest that wife-selling lasted over five hundred years in Britain as a popular alternative to divorce, and that Hardy's readers had short memories or limited knowledge when they pretended that it did not exist." - The Economist"Scholarly and diligently researched" - Daily Mail"An intriguing chapter in social history. Mr. Menefee has extracted ... a surprising amount of valuable detail, and discusses it with knowledge and imagination." - Agricultural History Review"An absorbing book" - American Historical Review"An intriguing insight into a little-known British institution." - Manchester Evening News From the Inside Flap Addressing a bigamous and indigent hawker in the middle of the last century, Justice Maule declared:I will tell you what you ought to have done. ... You should have instructed your attorney to bring an action against the seducer of your wife for damages ... you should have employed a proctor and instituted a suit in the Ecclesiastical Courts. ... When you had obtained a divorce a mensa et thoro, you had only to obtain a private Act for divorce a vinculo matrimonii ... and altogether these proceedings would cost you L1000. You will probably tell me that you never had a tenth of that sum, but that makes no difference. Sitting here as an English judge it is my duty to tell you that this is not a country in which there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. You will be imprisoned for one day.The judge's ruling was a wry acknowledgement of the dilemma faced by the man in the street, who was normally unable to obtain a divorce sanctioned by Church or State. For centuries such men resorted to informal means of slipping the knot of matrimony, one of which was selling a wife in the open market. Wives for Sale is a fascinating study of this practice, which developed its own traditions, rules and procedures. The author considers the causes and consequences of wife sales and the reactions to the institution of the courts, the press and the public. He draws parallels between wife-selling and other contemporaneous social practices and beliefs and considers the custom as it was reflected in popular culture.From this study the selling of wives emerges as a popularly accepted expedient, often welcomed by husband, purchaser and "merchandise" alike. The author argues that the institution was a conservative and traditional solution to the problems faced by communities denied the practical option of divorce, a solution rooted in the primary mechanisms of social interchange. As a scholarly examination of an informal institution, Wives for Sale makes a valuable contribution to ethnography and social history; as an investigation into an ingenious and pragmatic social practice, the book is an intriguing study for both specialists and general readers.