Overview
Historian Eliza Earle Ferguson's meticulously researched study of domestic violence among the working class in France uncovers the intimate details of daily life and the complex workings of court proceedings in fin-de-siecle Paris. With detective-like methods, Ferguson pores through hundreds of court records to understand why so many perpetrators of violent crime were fully acquitted. She finds that court verdicts depended on community standards for violence between couples. Her search uncovers voluminous testimony from witnesses, defendants, and victims documenting the conflicts and connections among men and women who struggled to balance love, desire, and economic need in their relationships. Ferguson's detailed analysis of these cases enables her to reconstruct the social, cultural, and legal conditions in which they took place. Her ethnographic approach offers unprecedented insight into the daily lives of nineteenth-century Parisians, revealing how they chose their partners, what they fought about, and what drove them to violence. In their battles over money and sex, couples were in effect testing, stretching, and enforcing gender roles. Gender and Justice will interest social and legal historians for its explanation of how the working class of fin-de-siecle Paris went about their lives and navigated the judicial system. Gender studies scholars will find Ferguson's analysis of the construction of gender particularly trenchant.
Full Product Details
Author: Eliza Earle Ferguson (Assistant Professor, University of New Mexico)
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press
Volume: 128
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.522kg
ISBN: 9780801894282
ISBN 10: 080189428
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 14 May 2010
Recommended Age: From 17
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Awaiting stock
The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you.
Reviews
<p>Careful and beautifully written study.--Robert A. Nye The Journal of Law and History Review (01/01/0001)
<p>Careful and beautifully written study.--Robert A. Nye The Journal of Law and History Review (01/01/2010)
<p>[An] innovative study. This book is indispensable to scholars working in legal and social history, gender studies, and the history of modern France.--Holly Grout
Careful and beautifully written study. -- Robert A. Nye The Journal of Law and History Review 2010
Author Information
Eliza Earle Ferguson is an assistant professor of history at the University of New Mexico.
