Description
Book SynopsisSpanning the island of Ireland over three centuries, this first history of Irish divorce places the human experience of marriage breakdown centre stage to explore the impact of a highly restrictive and gendered law, and its reform, on Irish society.
Trade Review'Covering the past four hundred years, this is a major contribution to legal, social and gender history. Urquhart's work is highly revealing about the double-standards towards sexual behaviour, Irish exceptionalism, Catholic and Protestant attitudes towards moral questions, and absence of legal uniformity under the Union.' Mary E. Daly, University College Dublin
'This is a superb book - ambitious in scope, yet securely anchored in a formidable array of sources: it is characterised both by judiciousness and by an unflagging empathy. Diane Urquhart has rescued a centrally important theme from neglect and over-simplification - and has thereby consolidated her position within the front rank of modern Irish historians.' Alvin Jackson, University of Edinburgh
'Based on extensive archival research, including parliamentary and court evidence, memoirs, letters, and diaries, Irish Divorce provides a nuanced understanding of a practice that concerned itself with both property and gendered propriety. Urquhart makes a significant contribution to understanding the complicated relationship between church, state, and Irish society since 1700.' Karen Steele, Texas Christian University
'Urquhart's book represents an insightful and compassionate foray into a very new field. The first all-Ireland history of divorce, it demonstrates how marriage breakdown reflected society's need to regulate succession, sexuality, and legitimacy. This exceptional work charts divorce's role in shaping, and reflecting, modern Ireland's attitude to gender and citizenship.' Oonagh Walsh, Glasgow Caledonian University
'(A) balanced and masterful treatment of complex issues.' Brian Maye, Irish Times
'As lucid as it is thorough, Irish Divorce: A History contributes a comprehensive look at a fraught social issue through exhaustive research and careful contextualisation. It offers a profoundly humane and empathetic analysis of what, for many, proved an elusive necessity that was cordoned off—for centuries—by ideological, nationalistic, imperial, and/or political boundaries and further inflected by class and gender. As a result, this study has much to teach us not only about divorce, but also about the ways the self-fashionings and political maneuverings of a nation-state can subvert the very citizens they are purportedly meant to serve …' Kate Costello-Sullivan, Estudios Irlandeses
Irish Divorce: A History contributes a comprehensive look at a fraught social issue through exhaustive research and careful contextualisation.' Kate Costello-Sullivan, Electronic Journal of the Spanish Association for Irish Studies
Table of ContentsIntroduction. The 'anatomy of a divorce'; 1. Divorce in two legislatures: Irish divorce, 1701–1857; 2. The failings of the law: the cases of Talbot and Westmeath; 3. A non-inclusive reform: Ireland and the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857; 4. Divorce in the post-reform era of 1857–1922: 'Like diamonds, gambling, and picture-fancying, a luxury of the rich'?; 5. The widening definition of marital cruelty; 6. Divorce in court, 1857–1922; 7. 'An exotic in very ungenial soil': divorce in the Northern Ireland parliament, 1921–1939; 8. With as 'little provocative as possible': the Northern Ireland move to court; 9. An 'unhappy affair': divorce in independent Ireland, 1922–1950; 10. Marriage law 'in this country is an absolute shambles': the reform agenda; 11. A 'curiosity [and]…an oddity': referenda in 1986 and 1995; 12. The 'last stretch of a long road': the Family (Divorce) Law Act of 1996; Conclusion.
