Cruelty and Companionship

`This book contains more insights into the realities of Victorian sexual politics than most recent work in the field .... an originality of analysis and a sureness of method which ought to be models of their kind. For students of masculinity, marriage and feminist discourse, this is an indispensable text.' - John Tosh, History Workshop Journal`Admirable, with many features that immediately put it in a different class ... fascinatingly subtle.' - Michael Mason, London Review of Books`A stimulating, critical and cogent contribution to an important debate.' - Martin Pugh, History`This fascinating account ... is important background reading for all who rae concerned about marital violence today.' - Gwyneth Price, Every Woman`This original, imaginative and important book brings together concerns about gender, the family, and wider currents in British social, cultural and even political experience in the second half of the nineteenth century.' - Leonore Davidoff, University of Essex

• Section One: Working-Class Marriage, 1. The Targets of `Rough Music': Respectability and Domestic Violence, 2. `Rough Usage', Section Two: Middle-Class Marriage, 3. Companionate Marriage and the Challenge to Patriarchy, 4. Cruelty and Divorce, 5. The Adaptation of Patriarchy in Late-Victorian Marriage Conclusion