SELFISH INTENTIONS - K-REx - Kansas State University

permitted as an option to end the marriage only when the union was being violated and the law
required that one of the parties be held responsible for the rupture.
VanBurkleo has analyzed the results of these legal concepts and argues that “the
remapping of marriage as a predominantly social institution infused with the public interest put
women at the mercy of many common law judges who were known to be hostile to divorce, and
legislators often granted judges extraordinary discretion in divorce cases.” 49 Most judges and
members of the population still held the belief that each family unit worked as a model of
government. Within each family unit, the male was supreme. If the male could maintain order
within their household, the unit would be productive. Furthermore, each productive family unit
helped to contribute to the overall growth of the state. Thus, the state had a vested interest in
maintaining the sanctity of male sovereignty in the household. Overtime this would change, but
this was the reality of nineteenth century family life and divorce law. As the numbers of
divorces increased, some states even took action to discourage women from suing for divorce.
North Carolina lawmakers, for example, began to revise family law in the 1870s. They did so in
a way that favored the husbands. These new statutes encouraged women to stay in their
marriages by allowing them to sue for alimony without obtaining a divorce. The grounds for
which a person could sue for divorce also changed. As VanBurkleo explains, “While adultery
and impotence continued to be the sole grounds for dissolution, male ‘adultery’ came to be
defined as sexual misconduct combined with abandonment. Elsewhere, legislators sometimes
yielded to conservative pressure and scaled back statutes that had permitted judges to exercise
considerable discretion.” 50 The results of these actions limited women who could file for
49 VanBurkleo, 71.
50 Ibid., 166.
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