Description
Book SynopsisWounded Feelings is the first legal history of emotions in Canada. Through detailed histories of how people litigated emotional injuries like dishonour, humiliation, grief, and betrayal before the Quebec civil courts from 1870 to 1950, Eric H. Reiter explores the confrontation between people’s lived experience of emotion and the legal categories and terminology of lawyers, judges, and courts. Drawing on archival case files, newspapers, and contemporary legal writings, he examines how individuals narrated their claims of injured feelings and how the courts assessed those claims using legal rules, social norms, and the judges’ own feelings to validate certain emotional injuries and reject others.
The cases reveal both contemporary views of emotion as well as the family, gender, class, linguistic, and racial dynamics that shaped those understandings and their adjudication. Examples include a family’s grief over their infant sonȁ
Trade Review
"Wounded Feelings is a very rich book that less seeks to provide a simple explanation of what emotional suffering was meant to be than to use discussions of such feeling as an access point to how people considered questions of self, reputation, bodily autonomy, and personal rights." -- Katie Barclay, University of Adelaide * Borealia *
"This book masterfully blends jurisprudence and legislation, with emphasis on the Quebec Civil Code, to elucidate how the subjectivity of emotions has been legally interpreted over time. […] Wounded Feelings provides a uniquely Canadian perspective on the interrelated topics of litigation, social history, legal history, and human sentiment. Upon reading, it is clear why this book has been so well received. This book comes highly recommended for academic law libraries, as well as the history collections of academic libraries." -- Mary Hemmings, Thompson Rivers University * Canadian Law Library Review *
Table of Contents
Illustrations Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Feelings and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Quebec 2. Shame, Mortification, Disgrace, Dishonour 3. Family Dishonour 4. Bodily Intrusion 5. Betrayal 6. Grief and Mourning 7. Indignation, Anger, Fear 8. Conclusion: From Wounded Feelings to Violated Rights Abbreviations Case Citations Notes Bibliography Index
