Women in the Court of Justice: Ecclesiastical Justice, Emotions and Sentences in Southern Transylvania at the End of the 19th Century

Why should we care about women’s divorce in modern Transylvania? Although it was relatively marginal and difficult-to-measure phenomenon, it is about time to open the floor for an inspiring debate and to take few steps further. Until now remarkably little interest has been devoted to investigate the women’s ordinary life, especially the “rule-breaking family women”. Couples in difficulty usually had recourse to divorce and 528 cases of this type were found in Săliște ecclesiastical archive for the period 1860 to 1890. Women were the plaintiffs 57% of the time and complained of the leaving the marital home, adultery, brutality and alcoholism of their spouses. This article intends to reconstruct the divorce proceedings by observing them through the lens of female experience. The article aims to fill in the gap in historical family demographic research by describing and explaining the status and roles of women in Romanian family.