On Tuesday, November 11, 2003, at 02:42 PM, Kelley wrote:
> At 12:25 PM 11/11/03 -0500, jeffrey fisher wrote:
>> ah. not very conclusive, is it? but my read was that it all adds up
>> to the usual story here being unlikely . . . but not because men
>> weren't allowed (or even supposed) to beat their wives.
>
> it seems to me that the "rule of thumb" was something already in
> common parlance, so the phrase doesn't originally refer to the switch
> as thick as a thumb myth. this section, below, seems most likely to
> present the most balanced view. as someone who leans toward
> foucauldian analysis, i suspect, too, that the references to the story
> as, possibly, a 'reverse formation' to justify increasing use of dv is
> likely. but, just a gut instinct...no firm commitment to it. At any
> rate, here's the section to which i was referring in my first response
> to you.
>
> "What
> Blackstone says is that moderate violence used to be allowed, but
> not after the time of Charles II, though the lower rank of people
> still claimed it as a right; but the courts did still allow husbands
> (of all ranks) to restrain their wives in cases of gross
> misbehavior.
>
> I document all this in an article, "Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw
> of the Husband's Stick," to appear in the September issue of the
> Journal of Legal Education. I unpack all of Blackstone's sources,
> including Roman civil law, and analyze the American cases in which
> thumb-measurements or other criteria for the husband's stick are
> mentioned, and I also deal with an English judge of the king's
> bench, Sir Francis Buller, who in 1782 was lampooned for his view
> that husbands could use a smaller-than-thumb stick.
>
> Andy Kelly (aka Henry Ansgar Kelly, English Department, UCLA)
> http://englishwww.humnet.ucla.edu/faculty/kelly/
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