7 - Marital estate

Summary

They both describe how their marital affection toward each other has lasted for a long time, and how they cannot avoid taking it to their hearts and have taken thought about how they can reward each other.

- Will of Michael Hauer and his wife (1731)

A great deal of discussion between husbands and wives in Neckarhausen turned on issues having to do with property. We have already seen that one public justification for divorce was the threat a husband posed to the wife's portion. Perhaps this theme runs through so many cases before the courts in part because state officials were willing to entertain that argument. Any threat to life or to property became the business of the state, and much of the discourse about violence and idleness may have been shaped by what its agents were willing to listen to. There seems to have been a window for a few decades after the turn of the century in which officials were concerned with redefining property rights and destroying all kinds of encumbrances on property and the cracks in marital relations were allowed to develop into severe ruptures. Once officials saw what was happening, they began to subject women to a new discipline, putting them in prison for ever-increasing periods on short rations or bread and water to encourage them to think better about their demands for divorce. This reading of the situation requires more research into the details of official family ideology and practical policy. But various matters do seem interconnected.