In some jurisdictions, there is the concept of a legal separation that doesn’t amount to divorce, but means that the parties aren’t liable for each other’s bills, aren’t living together, and so on. Almost a divorce, but you’re still married. It has some significance for adherents of some religions, that a party is not seeking a divorce but is legally separated.
Isn’t the whole point of the movie that the family functions outside the law? I mean, would they have gone to the law for anything?
More broadly, I think that attitude–that the family should deal with it–protects abusers because the subtext is "if a woman isn’t being protected, either her family approves–so who are we to judge?–or she doesn’t have a woman to protect her, and that means she must not deserve protecting. It’s very rooted in the idea that good girls from good families deserve respect, but other girls and women do not.
1871 temperance movement illustration of a drunkard hitting his wife:
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/media/photos/S0564-lg.jpg
Which was one of the driving force for the temperance movement: the link between alcohol and domestic violence.
I always kind of found the idea sort of bizarre. I mean I have a short temper and it’s still rate that I encounter someone that annoys me to a level that would drive me to violence (regardless if I act on it or not). Let alone my actual wife.
A section of Action Comics #1, Superman’s debut, from 1938:
Perhaps, or perhaps members of the Italian Mafia might have some entirely unrelated reason why they wouldn’t want the police involved in their affairs.
There still remains some of that attitude in the elderly Italian migrant community in Melbourne. Social Security is not a state or religious responsibility: it’s a family responsibility. Revenge killing is only justified if a member of your family has been hurt. A women out walking without a member of her family is a prostitute.
And we had a politician outed for being an Italian citizen (a critical technical error). His mother had enrolled him. As Senator Richard Di Natale observed: “You can tell he’s not actually Italian: If he was Italian, he’d know that you never blame your mother for anything”.
Just so you know, the old people aren’t all out there acting on these beliefs. They only tell you if the subject comes up.
Family is everything
Can confirm. My husband has a big, wealthy, incredibly powerful Italian family and nothing is worse than “betraying” the family.
Which is why I’m going to shut my mouth now!
On the other hand, “hitting on” (attempting to seduce) one’s wife is still quite acceptable. It’s a curious phrase for such a friendly act.
Even in the time of Blackstone it was considered mostly illegal and a low class thing to do:
But, with us, in the politer reign of Charles the Second, this power of correction began to be doubted; and a wife may now have security of the peace against her husband; or, in return, a husband against his wife. Yet the lower rank of people, who were always fond of the old common law, still claim and exert their ancient privilege: and the courts of law will still permit a husband to restrain a wife of her
liberty, in case of any gross misbehaviour.
Even so, people tended to think of such things as a family matter and not one that others should be concerned about. In a post civil war North Carolina case, the Court ruled that wife beating was illegal yet refused to intervene. State v. Rhodes, 61 N.C. 453 (1868):
Our conclusion is that family government is recognized by law as being as complete in itself as the State government is in recognized by the law as subordinate to it; and that we will not interfere with or attempt to control it, in favor of either husband or wife, unless in cases where permanent or malicious injury is inflicted or threatened, to the condition of the party is intolerable. for, however great are the evils of ill temper, quarrels, and even personal conflicts inflicting only temporary pain, they are not comparable with the evils which would result from raising the curtain, and exposing to public curiosity and criticism, the nursery and the bed chamber. Every household has and must have, a government of its own, modeled to suit the temper, disposition and condition of its inmates. Mere ebullitions of passion, impulsive violence, and temporary pain, affection will soon forget and forgive, and each member will find excuse for the other in his own frailties. But when trifles are taken hold of by the public, and the parties are exposed and disgraced, and each endeavors to justify himself or herself by criminating the other, that which ought to be forgotten in a day, will be remembered for life.
I think that tendency to “balance” the two competing ideals: privacy of the family v. protection of battered women is a thing that largely continues to this day. It is far better than it used to be, some say that it has even went too far as to remove the agency of a woman who makes an informed choice to forgive and forget, but it still has not been uprooted. And as Blackstone said, generally the lower classes find the privacy aspect, or indeed the violence itself, more compelling.
I was married to a woman for 20 years, she grew increasingly violent as the years wore on. I finally got fed up about year 17 and put her over my knee, pulled down her panties and paddled her ass till it was purple, about 5 good swats. She stayed turned on for the better part of a month and from that point on would continually try to push me into spanking her again. I never did but ended up leaving her. We remained close friends over the years and she would often tell me that if I would have spanked her more often we would have had a better marriage. She grew up in poverty with a very abusive mother and no father. It didn’t work for me but it seemed to work for her.