The Devil Beats His Wife; Petty Treason

[ankhorite]

So, I'm sick again, and I've been reading. I went to let Ace on out this gloomy spring day and as he hesitated in the doorway, the sun came out, though it did not stop raining. This used to be called "when the devil beats his wife" - I don't know why. Perhaps it was thought only a devil would beat his wife on a nice sunshiny day? Pah! The raindrops are her tears.

Learned in childhood, early 1960s:

Did you eeever ever iver
In your leef life lie
See the deeevel devil dover
Kiss his weef wife wye?
No I neeever never nover
In my leef life loe
Saw the deeevel devil dover
Kiss his weef wife woe

Perhaps the original was "beat his wife" and I've laundered it; or my mother did.

So, reading. Anyone into swords, feminism, or derring-do will love these two books by Madeleine Robins: Point of Honour and Petty Treason, in which she establishes Sarah Tolerance, a fallen woman during the Regency period of England who establishes herself as an "agent of inquiry" rather than a prostitute. Robins takes liberties with the actual history of the day in order to make free with, e.g., the royal heirs, in service of her plot points, but you won't notice much, and if you notice, you won't mind.

When a husband murders a wife, it's uxoricide. There is no equivalent term for a woman murdering a husband [but see!*], but the legal term used to be petty treason, arising in the patriarchy of ancient Rome and continuing into nearly-modern British law. I don't know how the U.S. handled this post-colonial days. Robins notes (or rather, has Miss Tolerance note) that the penalty for killing a husband was more severe than that for simple murder: burning instead of hanging. Hmmm! Detect a pattern here? Who else generally got burned, eh? (Though not in the U.S. The "witches" of Salem were hanged, not burned.)

Side note to the Francophone lawyers and feminists on my flist: can you add anything here? Please do!

In Petty Treason, a widow is accused but vigorously defended by Tolerance. Robins is able to set much of the action in the fleshpots and stews of London, without lapsing into the temptation to throw in some porn scenes to make the books sell better. I earnestly hope that these two sold well enough to convince the publisher to come out with a third. Meanwhile, you can still buy Petty Treason new, and Amazon U.S. has Point of Honour used. Libraries may have hardcover copies; mine did, but I'll be buying my own copies regardless, because I want to have these on hand for re-reading when I'm laid up and frustration leads me to feel the need, while lacking the capacity, to duel to the death in a good cause.

Oh, and: Tumblr Garden of Ankh. Mostly animal pics, a few quotes. Heavy on dogs and bears. Changes every day.

*prolixfootle kindly points out mariticide, which, though theoretically applicable to any marital murder, has come to be used mostly for women killing husbands, as an parallel to uxoricide. Thank you, Professor P! I couldn't find an etymology online which would give me the year of coinage. I feel particularly dense for having forgotten this, because I think I ran across it while working on familicide for Wiktionary or Wikipedia some time back. Doh!