ABSTRACT
The power to chastise and physically punish was in many ways integrated into the relationships between spouses and the sexes. Even if the aim was peace, love and harmony, in practice the gender order facilitated acts that would be recognized as intimate-partner violence. Due to the intimate relationship of trust between spouses, the home should be a very special stage of regard and love between them. In the patriarchal gender logic, the escalation of spousal disagreements into public scandals and the events becoming known to a larger public could be interpreted as the failure of the man to control his wife. Sometimes the significance of spousal violence was ignored even if it came up during legal proceedings, which indicates the society's level of acceptance. Spousal violence might be considered as an unfortunate by-product of other misbehaviour and drunkenness, and was not taken into consideration as a separate problem, or as a violation of the wife's rights.
