How Was Domestic Violence Viewed Prior To The Women’s Rights Movement?
PROTECTING VULNERABLE POPULATIONS OF WOMEN IN THE AGE OF 21st CENTURY ADVANCING TECHNOLOGY
It is my understanding that the Woman’s Rights Movement is a progressive movement that is still in play, just like the Civil Rights Movement is still in play with the latest “Black Lives Matter” campaign following the killing of George Floyd. The Women’s Rights Movement initially began in 1848, when women organizing themselves for: the right to vote (1920), sought the right to control pregnancy (1914–1973), and the right to abortion is something some women in some states are still trying to obtain for themselves, in addition to the right for fair wages and equal pay.
Women were primarily seen as “property” like black slaves. I am not aware there were really any “laws” governing acts of domestic violence, that is to say, laws that governed acts of violence men committed against their wives, short of murder. But even in cases of murder, if the man was a prominent individual within society, he might be protected by his “friendly associations, influences, and reputation.” During the late 19th century, in the developing war of science and philosophy against the shortcomings of women, many ordinary housewives as well were falling victim to a form of domestic violence, ambush zealously advocated by some of the period’s leading medical authorities. This new medical science offered a practice called “Therapeutic Rape” in which men believed this form of “aggressive discipline,” which was nothing short of sexual assault, could “tame” and subdue a woman who would not listen to her husband. In response to declining birthrates among the middle classes, the very backbone of developing civilization, these authorities called upon husbands everywhere to assert their masculinity behind the drawn curtains of their dignified homes, and to do so by force if necessary. For the newly popular theories of human evolution held that in women signs of evolutionary progress were accompanied by a diminished sexual drive: “The sexual instinct in the civilized woman is, I believe, tending to atrophy,” declared Harry Campbell, a prominent London pathologist, in his book Differences in the Nervous Organization of Man and Woman (1891). The nymph with the broken back depicted in statue relief during the late nineteenth-century was the most graphic casualty of the concept of therapeutic rape. These statues depicted scantly clothed women, breasts exposed, white sheet crossed over her lap no doubt the bed sheet, her hands in a defensive posture, thrown above her head trying to escape. The image of JonBenet Ramsey comes to mind, the child beauty queen found in her basement bound and strangled with her hands tied above her head. Men were expected to take control of their wives and wives were expected to obey their husbands as “children” subdue to their parents. Since men were the ones who earned income, they went out to work while women were expected to assume their roles as non-wage earners, providing a service in the care of their husbands and children, attending to their needs, health, and well-being. If the domestic violence was brutal enough to leave marks and scars, the woman, if she was lucky, might be awarded a divorce. But where was she go? If she was lucky enough, she’d have some friends who would take her in and help her establish some mode of independence, but most women stayed with their abusive husbands, a problematic that still resonates into modern-day as well, though perhaps not as prevalent as many avenues have opened for women’s independence.
Right around this time, as the woman’s movement began to gain momentum (the late 1800s), women began to be depicted in art and literature as “primal beasts” which makes one suspect if this was not due to the tensions and anxieties of the movement. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) is a very carefully constructed cautionary tale directed to men of the modern temper, warning them not to yield to the bloodlust of the feminist, she who bears the degenerative stamp of the “new woman” and to take every precaution in protecting himself by securing the purity of his bloodline. All this outpouring of angst resulting from “a battle between the sexes.” Prior to the women’s rights movement, gender roles had pretty much remained the same as they did in Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, in my opinion.
Similar to the ancient women of Athens in the 5th century BC, “the glory of women was to have no glory.” Human history is a history of wars and political decisions, acts of domination and power in which women, historically speaking, rarely found themselves playing any part unless it was through a clandestine act of seduction. If a woman was attractive enough and rose to a position of power, she could use her sexuality, just like men used their position of political power, to attempt a coup. The only power women had over men, was her provocative sexual allure. Even Cleopatra used her sexual allure to entrap Caesar into marriage and a political arrangement that was designed to serve her continued rule and protect her beloved Egypt. In ancient Greek literature, Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, recorded only women who were barbarians or the wives of tyrants, or who died violent deaths; or he made a woman’s death an excuse for mentioning as an unusual funeral rite. They were never depicted in ancient Greek literature as holding any office, position of status, or influence over politics other than wife and mother. Thus, their glory was to have no glory. We could recount the tale of Hatshepsut, the mother regent who kinged herself Pharoah, and the ensuing destruction after her reign ended with all images, statues, and written text speaking her name were removed from the Egyptian archives.
Women have historically been held down, cast into roles of mythical evil. In Rosemary Balsam’s book, Women’s Bodies in Psychoanalysis, she writes:
“….the historian Merry Weisner-Hanks draws a connection between silence and virtue in women: ‘Because Eve tempted Adam by using words, women’s speech becomes linked with sin and disobedience, and female silence is thus interpreted as a divine command.’ She goes on to say that, “Italian, English, and German, Protestant, Jewish and Catholic men all agreed that the ideal woman was……’ chaste, silent and obedient.’
If we were to analyze the nymph with the broken back depicted in statue relief during the late 19th century, would not its image convey to us those exact same sentiments of punishments handed down to the disobedient woman who refused to remain in silent subjection and play her role as the virtuous wife and mother?
References:
Bram Dijkstra. (1986) Idols of Perversity; Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture. New York. Oxford University Press.
Nicole Loraux. (1992) Tragic Ways of Killing A Woman. Cambridge, Mass: London: Harvard University Press.
Balsam, Rosemary. (2012). Women’s Bodies in Psychoanalysis. East Essex, Canada. Routledge.
