Bibliograph

Men of blood, violence, manliness and criminal justice in Victorian England, Martin J. Wiener

Type

Label

Men of blood, violence, manliness and criminal justice in Victorian England, Martin J. Wiener

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Men of blood

Nature of contents

bibliography

Responsibility statement

Martin J. Wiener

Series statement

History of Britain after 1450

Sub title

violence, manliness and criminal justice in Victorian England

Summary

This Book Examines far more thoroughly than ever before the treatment of serious violence by men against women in nineteenth-century England. During Victoria's reign the criminal law came to punish such violence more systematically and heavily, while propagating a new, more pacific ideal of manliness. Yet this apparently progressive legal development called forth strong resistance, not only from violent men themselves but from others who drew upon discourses of democracy, humanitarianism, and patriarchy to establish sympathy with "men of blood." In exploring this development and the contest it generated, Professor Wiener, author of several important works in British history, analyzes the cultural logic underlying shifting practices in nineteenth-century courts and Whitehall and locates competing cultural discourses in the everyday life of criminal justice. The tensions and dilemmas highlighted by this book are more than simply "Victorian" ones; to an important degree they remain with us. Consequently this work speaks not only to historians and to students of gender but also to criminologists and legal theorists

Table Of Contents

Violence and law, gender and law. -- When men killed men. -- Sexual violence. -- Homicidal women and homicidal men: a growing contrast. -- Bad wives: drunkenness and other provocations. -- Bad wives II: adultery and the unwritten law. -- Establishing intention: probing the mind of a wife killer. -- Conclusion: The new "reasonable man" and twentieth-century Britain

Classification