ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the family position of the daughter-in-law and the possibility of redress of grievance in the peasant courts established after emancipation. Russian folk wisdom regarded the daughter-in-law, the snokha (a word that also meant sister-in-law), as a source of family friction. A daughter-in-law’s personal property, over which she had exclusive control, might need to be protected from the avarice of her new relatives. The more complex cases involved the demands of the widowed daughter-in-law against the jointly held property of the husband’s family. In dealing with the peasant household it is important to distinguish between two kinds of property: land and household. The daughter-in-law, denying the charges, argued that her mother-in-law and husband continually called her insulting names and beat her and that it all started when her brother-in-law raped her. The daughter-in-law’s plight was due in part to the implicit assumption that she deserved nothing because she was an outsider.
