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Intimate Partner Violence in New Orleans: Gender, Race, and Reform, 1840-1900

Amazon.com Price:  $18.74 (as of 26/03/2019 21:05 PST- Details)

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Description

Ashley Baggett uncovers the voices of abused women who utilized the legal system in New Orleans to address their grievances from the antebellum era to the end of the nineteenth century. Poring over 26,000 records, Baggett analyzes 421 criminal cases involving intimate partner violence– physical or emotional abuse of a partner in a romantic relationship– revealing a significant demand among women, the community, and the courts for reform within the postbellum decades.

Before the Civil War, some challenges and limits to the male privilege of chastisement existed, however the gendered power structure and the veil of privacy for families within the courts in large part shielded abusers from criminal prosecution. Alternatively, the war upended gender expectations and increased female autonomy, leading to the demand for and brief recognition of women’s right to be free from violence. Baggett demonstrates how postbellum decades offered a fleeting opportunity for change before the gender and racial expectations hardened with the upward thrust of Jim Crow.

Her findings reveal up to now unseen dimensions of women’s lives both outside and inside legal marriage and women’s attempts to renegotiate power in relationships. Highlighting the lived experiences of these women, Baggett tracks how gender, race, and location worked together to define and redefine gender expectations and legal rights. Moreover, she demonstrates recognition of women’s legal personhood in addition to differences between northern and southern states’ trajectories in keeping with intimate partner violence all the way through the nineteenth century.

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