Women, Sex and Marriage in Early Modern Venice by Daniela Hacke

Author:Daniela Hacke [Hacke, Daniela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780754607632
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2004-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

Private matters: a public concern

In early modern Venice the household was not yet a private and intimate sphere and marital discord was the object of public evaluation. The breakdown of households was a public concern, and neighbours, particularly if they had become friends, were inclined to exchange details from private life and to lament about a cruel husband, for example, or a lascivious and disobedient wife. When households were in danger of collapse, relatives (both natal and those related through marriage), friends, neighbours and acquaintances were actively involved and, in expressing their disregard, also exercised moral and social control. The community’s assessment of marital life was, however, never unanimous, and sometimes contradictory. Long before cases of marital discord reached court they would form their own opinions about who was in the right and thus decide which party to support: the wife accusing her husband of the disspipation of household resources and cruelty or the husband explaining that he had only punished his wife’s disobedience ‘moderately’. Their moral judgement was harsh when the marital crisis resulted from immoral behaviour, as in the case of Natalino mentioned earlier, who was held responsible for the breakdown of his marriage.

Because marital behaviour and the accusations between spouses were measured in relation to personal virtue and moral integrity, neighbours were especially supportive and compassionate towards the wife when the husband had a ‘bad’ reputation. To restrict such sources of support, husbands tried to limit their wives’ contacts with the outside world. As Margaret Hunt has argued, husbands ‘were perfectly aware that a woman’s connection to her relatives and to the world beyond the conjugal household represented her main source of power’.73 Domestic confinement could thus be understood as an abuse of patriarchal power and as a strategic method to restore the husband’s authority and power in marital disputes. In the cases that came to court, however, husbands only rarely succeeded in their aim. Although they tried their best to prevent having their marital problems noticed by the outside world, domestic disputes were very much a public concern in Venetian neighbourhoods of the time. Because outside observers played a crucial role in the assessment of domestic violence, the more unhappy wives relied on their neighbours, the more insightful or even compassionate witnesses they were able to call on later in court.

As we have seen, when the disobedience of children provoked violence against them, witnesses – at least initially – criticised the childs misconduct. Wives who had become victims of male aggression were, however, more readily supported by fellow parishioners, because, in contrast to children, wives possessed some degree of authority in their duty as co-governors of the household. Thus, misrule by a husband considered or known in his neighbourhood to be a bad Christian legitimised any resistance by his wife, as the following cases demonstrate. In the lawsuit that Paola Furlan initiated in 1610 against her husband Giacomo in the parish of S. Barnaba, Paola referred to the verbal abuse she had been suffering. Her allegation

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