‘For my component I don’t realise why males who ‚ve got wives and want that is don’t, shouldn’t be rid of ‘em since these gipsy fellows do their old horses…Why should not they place ‘em up and offer ‘em by auction to guys that are looking for such articles? Hey? Why, begad, I’d sell mine this moment if anyone would purchase her!’
So claims the young farm labourer Michael Henchard, in just one of probably the most arresting passages in Thomas Hardy’s 1886 novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. Nearby the start of written guide, Michael gets drunk on rum-laced furmity (frumenty), and it has a quarrel along with his spouse, Susan. He chooses to sell Susan and their child child, that are purchased by a sailor for five guineas. Whenever Michael sobers up, the enormity of exactly just what he’s done hits house; he realises he cannot get his daughter and wife straight right straight back, and swears down liquor for the next 21 years because of this.
The scene is shocking, no question, just just what with Michael’s casual brutality, Susan’s misery, together with misogyny that is pervasive. Yet whenever it emerges that Susan normally quite keen to part methods with Michael, i will be struck by there being something oddly modern in just what is basically a fast no-fault divorce proceedings. Pokračování textu ‘I’d sell my spouse if anybody would purchase her’: spouse product sales in England