The Language of Abuse: Marital Violence in Later Medieval England
- Author / Editor
- Butler, Sara M.
The Language of Abuse: Marital Violence in Later Medieval England
- Published
- Boston: Brill, 2007.
- Physical Description
- x, 286 pp.; 4 b&w illus.
- Series
- Later Medieval Europe, no. 02.
- Description
- Social and legal history of violence against women in the medieval family, including discussion of case studies. Comments briefly on MerT and ClT, and discusses at greater length (pp. 230-36) WBP which indicates that "failure to internalise and impose social roles of governance may have been thought to produce scolding wives." Viewed as a scold, the Wife "confirms the need for husbands to govern judiciously and even-handedly"; otherwise they hazard a "lifetime of misery."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale
- Clerk and His Tale
- Merchant and His Tale