Description
Book SynopsisBringing key Shakespeare texts into dialogue with feminist socio-legal research, this book investigates the notion of a âcrime of passionâ â indicatively, wife-killing.
Its key concern is to bring attention to a cultural and legal revolution widely overlooked even in the law field where it occurred. In 2009, the English Parliament passed a controversial law abolishing the defence of provocation. Explaining the new law, reformers said that this so-called âheat of passionâ defence had allowed men to get away with murder by blaming the victim. Abolishing it in cases of alleged âinfidelityâ would âend the culture of excusesâ. Unpacking what was at stake in the reformersâ revolutionary challenge to the English law of murderâs age-old concession to âhuman frailtyâ in âred mistâ rage cases, this book charts passionâs progress in wife-killing cases over the centuries. It commences in the early modern era when jurists were busy distinguishing murder from manslaughter and, contemporaneo
