Wives Not Slaves: Patriarchy and Modernity in the Age of Revolutions by Kirsten Sword

Abstract

Wives Not Slaves places marital disputes at the center of the history of patriarchy in the British Atlantic and early United States. Tales of deserting wives and abusive husbands, local court battles, and public accusations—the gendered conflicts of everyday life—show how patriarchy retained its grip and resisted efforts to transform it. The book’s subtitle raises expectations of a broader study and even an interdisciplinary one. Instead, Sword focuses on patriarchal law and legal culture in the context of economic change, racial slavery, revolutionary ideology, and the press. Her detailed analysis historicizes the workings of patriarchy and women’s defiance in ways that feminist theory and other disciplinary perspectives may overlook.Sword examines local legal cases in England and the American colonies that reveal a patchwork of jurisdictions, courts, and decisions addressing domestic disputes. Despite their femme covert status, wives not only had a degree of legal redress in the seventeenth century, but courts were also inclined to take a back seat to kin and neighbors who mediated conflicts. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, published legal commentaries, especially about the precedent set by Manby v. Scott (1663), narrowed wives’ ability to claim consideration under coverture. Invoking “ancient precedents” of male privilege masked legal innovations that deepened husbands’ authority over dependent wives, children, servants, and enslaved people. Legal commentaries thus created essentialized understandings of patriarchy, even as they reshaped it for a modern world.Husbands and wives had another way to address their domestic grievances, the press. They advertised against each other to avoid the legal system, influence public opinion, and reach beyond local communities. Modeled on advertisements for runaway slaves, husbands’ ads addressed deserting wives. They accused women of shirking their duty, announced their refusal to pay their wives’ bills, and offered forgiveness to wives who returned. These ads especially reveal men’s increased vulnerability in a risky credit-based economy, a significant context for understanding patriarchal law. Women, in turn, condemned husbands’ abusive behavior and attempts to control their property. As Sword emphasizes, such was the disruptive “new media” in early America. When legal remedies were unavailing, women articulated their oppression through advertising.“If I am your Wife, I am not your Slave,” declared Eunice Davis in a 1762 advertisement (3). Such statements opened possibilities for changing the balance of gendered power. They reflect the revolutionary rhetoric of the eighteenth century, as well as the culture of sensibility, which condemned male violence and women’s powerlessness, urging marital love and companionship. Some women writers, however, offered a pointed call for greater female autonomy, joining sentimental fiction to the revolutionary ideology of independence. Although largely the purview of elite women, these sentiments sometimes appeared in the language of ordinary women’s advertised complaints. Their claims made little headway, however, except to move men toward enlightened paternalism. “Revolutionary legal culture gave husbands and masters expansive rights,” Sword explains. “The culture of sensibility pushed them to exercise them quietly” (284).Nineteenth-century feminists saw the emancipation of wives and slaves as parallel paths to modernity, but Sword shows how much the interests of white wives and enslaved people were at odds as racial slavery became entrenched in the early United States. Affluent white women claimed property rights in the enslaved as they resisted despotic husbands. Free Black men sued for their wives’ freedom, arguing that their own patriarchal authority took precedence over slaveholders’ rights. Ironically, slave states and antislavery activists both had their reasons for opposing divorce.What is most striking in Sword’s analysis, indeed dispiriting, is how much the stories of male abuse and marital conflict repeat themselves over time, even as women found new ways to give voice to their discontent. Progress narratives and Enlightenment assumptions notwithstanding, patriarchy has been a shape-shifter, adapting to legal, political, and economic challenges yet continuing to maintain masculine authority. This excellent, fine-grained study connects legal regimes to patriarchy’s quotidian preservation.