‘If, after years of abuse, you fight back against your husband, make sure that you kill him. If you only injure him, then you cannot use provocation as a defence.’
From the BBC’s ‘Criminal Justice’
‘My husband is allowed to hit me with a stick, providing it is no thicker than his thumb.’
From ‘The Duchess’
The implications behind both of these statements have remained with me long after the exact words were forgotten.
Criminal Justice was an amazing piece of television. Shown over five consecutive nights, its central premise was of a woman who was repeatedly buggered against her will by the husband who had managed to achieve complete control over her life, whilst seeming to be doing it with her best interests at heart. To the outside world, the perfect caring husband but, to his wife, a cold-hearted monster who photographed her life to spot the smallest of differences in her behaviour and punished her for it.
The contrast between her deep shame at being subjected to the act itself and the way that many in the blogging world view anal intercourse as part of their normal sexual bag of tricks was quite striking.
I got Ruf to watch the final episode with me, after spending several minutes setting up what had gone before. I think it really brought home to him the enormity of the gift that I bestow upon him when I allow him to penetrate me through that orifice. That such an act is not part and parcel of normal sexual activity in many relationships. But also that it is just as much a rape if taken non-consensually.
The second statement was from the film, ‘The Duchess’, where Keira Knightley recreates the role of a forebear of Diana, Princess of Wales, in Lady Georgeanna Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire. Beautifully filmed, with a fabulous cast of both personnel and settings, this was a delight to the eye, but a conundrum to the brain.
Yes, she led a pampered and moneyed life, but also a very sad one, married to a man twice her age who is incapable of emotional closeness with her. But worse, takes as his mistress her best friend and forces her to remain in a curious menage a trois in the same house whilst refusing to allow his wife the same freedom with her own lover.
The fact that he could evict her, stop her from seeing her children and close every society door in London to her aspiring politician lover if she did not toe the line that he proscribed was quite frightening and I think the whole ‘stick’ thing just exemplifies the power that men had over their wives during this period of history.
And yet, is it just confined to ‘the olden days’? The husband in ‘Criminal Justice’ could behave with equal cruelty and yet, if she fought back, the wife could not bring up his persistent provocation in her defence… unless she was defending herself against the charge of murdering him.
Sometimes the law does seem to tend towards ass-like.
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