Catching up

Although I have not blogged as much lately, I have been reading "The Brothers Karamazov" and have marked the pages that had a passage that interested me. The first page that I have marked is 95. Something that I found interesting on this page is that Grigory is described as being such a great husband who "had only beaten Marfa but once, and then only slightly". This just makes me think about how much times have changed since the 1800's. These days any husband who has beaten his husband no matter how slightly it was could be sent to jail. I wonder what kind of trouble men who had beaten their wives more thoroughly would have gotten into in those days. Was spousal abuse a punishable crime, or was it just never talked about much? www.pacwcbt.pitt.edu has some interesting facts about spousal abuse in America. In the early 1500's early settlers based their laws on an Old-English common-law that explicitly permits wife-beating for correctional purposes. The states tried to break away from that law by saying that the husband is only allowed to whip his wife with a switch no bigger than his thumb. In 1824 Mississippi’s Supreme Court allows a husband to administer “moderate
chastisement in case of emergencies”. Finally in 1882 Maryland is the first state to make wife beating a crime. Looking at all of this information on spousal abuse in America, maybe Grigory was one of the better husbands! All I can say is thank goodness we live in the present day ladies!