| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Thomas E. Buckley S.J. The Great Catastrophe of My Life: Divorce in the Old Dominion. (Studies in Legal History.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2002. Pp. xi, 346. Cloth $59.95, paper $19.95.
Although antebellum southern legal history has attracted much attention in recent years, divorce remains a surprisingly neglected area of study. Thomas E. Buckley's book thus comes as a welcome contribution to our understanding of this critical issue. Divorce, as Buckley points out, raised fundamental questions about the foundations of social order in the Old South, challenging the organic conception of "a close-knit, slaveholding society based on the hierarchy and solidarity of the household unit" (p. 7). The debate over divorce and changes in the laws regulating it disclosed the cultural values of southerners and the interplay of race, gender, and class.	1
This book focuses on the dynamics of legislative divorce in Virginia after the American Revolution. In the first section, Buckley examines the political, religious, and social contexts of legislative divorce. The next section explores some of the main causes of divorce in antebellum Virginia—interracial sex, physical abuse, adultery, and desertion—and the legal process within which women and men sought to end their marriages. Buckley turns to the consequences of divorce in the final portion of the book, providing a detailed case study of the social ostracism experienced by a southern woman following the breakup of her marriage.	. . .

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