from wiki:
Selling a Wife (1812–1814), by Thomas Rowlandson. The painting gives the viewer the impression that the wife was a willing party to the sale, which was "a genial affair" marked by laughter.[1]
The English custom of wife selling was a way of ending an unsatisfactory marriage by mutual agreement that began in the late 17th century, when divorce was a practical impossibility for all but the very wealthiest. After parading his wife with a halter around her neck, arm, or waist, a husband would publicly auction her to the highest bidder. Wife selling provides the backdrop for Thomas Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, in which the central character sells his wife at the beginning of the story, an act that haunts him for the rest of his life, and ultimately destroys him.
Although the custom had no basis in law and frequently resulted in prosecution, particularly from the mid-19th century onwards, the attitude of the authorities was equivocal. At least one early 19th-century magistrate is on record as stating that he did not believe he had the right to prevent wife sales, and there were cases of local Poor Law Commissioners forcing husbands to sell their wives, rather than having to maintain the family in workhouses.
Wife selling persisted in some form until the early 20th century; according to the jurist and historian James Bryce, writing in 1901, wife sales were still occasionally taking place during his time. Giving evidence in a Leeds police court in 1913, a woman claimed that she had been sold to one of her husband's workmates for £1, one of the last reported instances of a wife sale in England.
- Re: Auction your wife!posted on 04/03/2010
看到这段英国历史,感叹,即便是西方文明也才离开野蛮一百多年。这一百多年人类进步太快了,那么多的positive improvements, 还是对人有点信心吧。
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