[MGSA-L] Doxiadis on women & the law, late Ottoman period

DANIEL P. TOMPKINS pericles at temple.edu
Thu Jan 20 05:50:59 PST 2011


This interesting essay just appeared online:

Evdoxios Doxiadis
Legal Trickery: Men, Women, and Justice in Late Ottoman Greece
Past and Present 2011 210: 129-153

The article concerns women's successful though apparently sometimes
dishonest use of their rights in this period, sometimes to the
discomfort of spouses (at least one unhappy soul died in prison).

Sample quote:

"[These] cases... were hardly representative of women’s involvement in
the dispute-settling mechanisms of late Ottoman
Greece, but they are indicative of the possibilities available to
enterprising women, and the overall capacity of women to
defend their interests in very convoluted and overlapping systems of
justice — even without the benefit of literacy, the aid of attorneys,
or even the support of husbands or other male members of their family.
Even though the establishment of the Modern Greek state would
eventually change matters and slowly exclude women from the judicial
system, in the early post-Independence period Greek women continued to
use the modern courts aggressively, as in the case of Aggeliki Douvli"
who in 1836 got her husband imprisoned for 3 months for adultery,
despite his claim that the law should not apply to men (and indeed, in
much of Europe it did not).

Best,

Dan Tompkins



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