Wives Not Slaves places marital disputes at the center of the history of patriarchy in the British Atlantic and early United States. Tales of deserting wives and abusive husbands, local court battles, and public accusations—the gendered conflicts of everyday life—show how patriarchy retained its grip and resisted efforts to transform it. The book’s subtitle raises expectations of a broader study and even an interdisciplinary one. Instead, Sword focuses on patriarchal law and legal culture in the context of economic change, racial slavery, revolutionary ideology, and the press. Her detailed analysis historicizes the workings of patriarchy and women’s defiance in ways that feminist theory and other disciplinary perspectives may overlook.
Sword examines local legal cases in England and the American colonies that reveal a patchwork of jurisdictions, courts, and decisions addressing domestic disputes. Despite their femme covert status, wives not only had a degree of legal redress in the seventeenth century,...