SELFISH INTENTIONS - K-REx - Kansas State University

etween the promise of the law and the actual escape was too far, particularly for a woman with
virtually no economic resources.
While not all Kansas women experienced the level of violence that Mrs. Lee had, the
divorce statistics of the era suggest that her story was more typical of Kansas women than that of
the three propertied women in Clay Center. When over two-thirds of the Kansas women who
filed for divorce listed abandonment or extreme cruelty as grounds, then we know that behind
many of those petitions, there must be a story with only the slightest chance of a happy ending.
Unlike Selts and Holtzgang, for many discarded wives, the word “abandonment” meant absolute
destitution. Unlike Sanders Downing, but for many women like Clara Lee, the words “extreme
cruelty” meant, unambiguously, a story of terror.
And yet even a story as extreme as Clara Lee’s points to the meaning of Kansas’ more
liberal provisions for women who sought to escape the bonds of marriage. Even in her situation,
Lee understood that she had a right to be free of her abuser. And even a woman as poor as Clara
Lee, had she succeeded, had a property stake in the outcome: once free of an abusive husband
who stole food from his family’s table, the pittance that she earned from doing laundry would at
least belong to her and her alone, and she could use it to meet the needs of her children.
Unfortunately, the law could not react fast enough for her nor could it act as a bodyguard. But in
a world in which the remnants of coverture still existed and a woman’s rights as an individual
were only partially recognized, Kansas women were no longer inescapably tied to horrible
marriages. They could, and frequently did, use the court system to find a remedy for their
personal situations. Prior to this study, the changes in Kansas divorce law were virtually
unknown. Clearly, divorce law in Kansas played a major role in women’s lives. As a state, the
Kansas Constitution led the way in the mid-nineteenth century for states to begin giving more
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