La Narrativa de Henry Fielding y la Sociedad Inglesa del Siglo XVIII

La Narrativa de Henry Fielding y la Sociedad Inglesa del Siglo XVIII
Smithfield match
© Corporation of London
FINUCANE, MATTHIAS, "John Hobbs, John Hobbs"; scene of John Hobbs trying
to sell his wife at Smithfield Market. (1811)
It would appear to have been mainly an 18th-century practice, both rural and urban. There
was a common procedure for selling a wife. She would be led to a market place or inn with a
symbolic halter around her neck, sometimes made out of ribbon or straw. Professor Alun Howkins
of the University of Sussex, said that wife-selling had been looked at as an alternative way to end a
marriage other than by divorce. In most cases, he said, the wife knew and had a relationship with the
man to whom, by mutual agreement, she was going. By this unofficial folk custom marriage could
end by mutual consent with a wife sale. The procedure was based on the way cattle were sold. It was
part of an old order in which a wife had been seen as the property of her husband. This old order
was winning social disapproval by the early 19th century.
Fuente: www.bbc.co.uk./education/ factsheets/makhist/makhist7