You May Beat Your Wife

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 84, 30 June 1927, Page 13

You May Beat Your Wife

The Parisian Way A husband is entitled to beat his wife if her conduct is such as to irritate him beyond control, and the wife canhot in. such circumstances plead cruelty as ground for divorce. This principle in jurisprudence was laid down by the Paris Divorce Court in a suit in which the wife alleged that her husband had struck her. The husband's counsel retorted that if the man had struck the woman the latter had well deserved it by her flighty conduct, and the court incorporated into modern law the ancient code that the husband has the right to punish his wife in case of dereliction of duty. The case has excited keen interest among women, who are up in arms against the divorce judge’s finding. Mme. Freaud, one of the first women to be admitted to the Paris Bar, said: The ruling is absurd, and is not justified in law. The three causes for divorce admitted by French law are adultery, grievous insult, and assault and battery. French courts generally take into consideration the social status of the parties in deciding grounds for divorce. Words that would be regarded as “grievous insult” among refined people would not be regarded as insulting in circles where they are commonly employed and where not much attention is paid to them. But no article of law grants the husband the right to beat his wife, nor has the wife the right to beat her husband, though I remember one amazing case in which a delicate little woman exercised a veritable reign of terror over a man who was so big that it was some time before I could bring myself to believe this could possibly be true.