Intimate violence
Subtitle: gender and justice in fin-de siècle Paris
By: Eliza Earle Ferguson.
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press; Brand: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 280
ISBN-13: 9780801894282
Subjects: Crimes of passion -- France -- Paris -- History -- 19th century; Marital violence -- France -- Paris -- History -- 19th century; Women -- Crimes against -- France -- Paris -- History -- 19th century; Working class -- France -- Paris -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Murder -- France -- Paris -- History -- 19th century
Description: "Historian Eliza Earle Ferguson's meticulously researched study of domestic violence among the working class in France uncovers the intimate details of daily life and the complex workings of court proceedings in fin-de-siecle Paris." "With detective-like methods, Ferguson pores through hundreds of court records to understand why so many perpetrators of violent crime were fully acquitted. She finds that court verdicts depended on community standards for violence between couples. Her search uncovers voluminous testimony from witnesses, defendants, and victims documenting the conflicts and connections among men and women who struggled to balance love, desire, and economic need in their relationships." "Ferguson's detailed analysis of these cases enables her to reconstruct the social, cultural, and legal conditions in which they took place. Her ethnographic approach offers unprecedented insight into the daily lives of nineteenth-century Parisians, revealing how they chose their partners, what they fought about, and what drove them to violence. In their battles over money and sex, couples were in effect testing, stretching, and enforcing gender roles." "Gender and Justice will interest social and legal historians for its explanation of how the working class of fin-de-siecle Paris went about their lives and navigated the judicial system. Gender studies scholars will find Ferguson's analysis of the construction of gender particularly trenchant."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: La vie intime; title: Material and symbolic household management; title: Networks of knowledge; title: Reciprocity and retribution; title: Local knowledge and state power; title: Reading and writing stories of intimate violence; title: Conclusion : "Men who kill and women who vote".