Sexual Forensics in Victorian and Edwardian England: age, crime and consent in the courts, by Victoria Bates

however, be helpful to know also about married women’s agency in the family, the homes of neighbours and the community; these were private and public spaces in which there was a strong presence of women building power through everyday interactions and negotiating family life in ways that differed from the institutional ideal of the wife. In these contexts, it would be useful to know if women had authority over other women and how they used it, whether and how they contributed to resolving the marital conflicts of other women or if they added their weight to the powers of the justice system. In early modern history, family and marriage were the result of the interactions of social networks. The success or failure of marriage was, therefore, interpreted as the success or failure of kin, neighbours or community to advise on marital strategy. Just as guilt and punishment affect the social body, the domestic space was always open to the community. To understand domestic violence, we need to join micro-stories of domestic life with the study of family relationships that were part of daily life before and after the punishable acts. We need to know more about domestic violence as conflict built outside the home. The personal and the public were not separate, but intertwined in family relationships, kinship networks and neighbourhood. It is not possible to understand the husband’s role in domestic violence isolated from elements of social life such as family hierarchies, kinship ties and neighbours: everybody could participate in daily negotiations about patriarchy. All these elements are important if we are to understand the impact of violence, the enormous variety of spaces for everyday violent interactions and collective discipline. Uribe-Uran demonstrates a very good understanding of the strategies adopted by spousal killers. He opens the way for thinking about women’s participation in criminal cases in and out of court: being witnesses; exchanging opinions about criminal acts and procedures and thereby developing their views on violence and ‘justice’; finally, in cases where they committed crimes or were the victims, negotiating their place in the judicial system. But the women who are the focus of this book probably did not act alone; surely, in many cases, they acted within a social network. This and other questions remain open, but Fatal Love allows us to think about them.