HST 222 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Man Man, Self-Determination, Criminal Conversation
Document Summary
Increased importance of marital choice for love, not parent choice, money. 30-40% of brides pregnant at marriage nonmarital sex broadly defined as prostitution. Vibrant pleasure culture, urban diverse context philadelphia. Prostitution: expanded after amer rev, very few courts against prost, trials, newspaper articles. Only when some other crime occurred (present at murder/theft: brothels in philadelphia increase after 1800, english law didn"t allow for divorce, couples asserted independence on their own, runaway wife advertisements. Placed my men, announcement of no responsibility of her and her actions. Economic instrument, not paying for her finances: wives placed ads as response to husbands. Heres what a good husband should be like. Happening enough, legal forces got involved: increase in late 1700s, 1/3 women left husbands for other men. Some mutual agreement: adultery anatomized trials published for entertainment. Sue other man for taking wife, criminal conversation. Out of town businessmen: women and men participating, by 1830s only white men sexual autonomy remained in place.
