| 单词 | wife sale |
| 释义 | > as lemmaswife sale wife sale n. now historical the sale of a wife; spec. an informal divorce ritual in which a married woman is offered by her husband for sale to male bidders at a public auction.Wife sales, often held with the woman's consent, sometimes occurred among the poorer classes of Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries when divorce was not readily available or affordable. The phenomenon was brought to wider public attention by the depiction of such an auction in the opening chapter of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), though the term itself does not appear in Hardy's work. ΚΠ 1859 G. T. Robertson & J. R. Green Oxf. during Last Cent. 124/1 A curious instance of the low morality of the times may be seen in the frequency of the ‘Wife Sales’. In August, 1786, we find that ‘one Broom..sold his wife to a person of the name of Panton.’ 1863 Bradford Observer 19 Mar. 3/4 A wife sale took place in Merthyr Tydvil a few days ago... The price for which the man sold his wife was £3; £2 10s. 1946 E. Blunden Shelley 20 An occasional wife-sale produced lots of fun. 2014 M. Nicolaou Divorced, Beheaded, Sold vi. 149 In general, people seem to have grown more and more hostile towards wife sales from the late eighteenth century onwards. < as lemmas |
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