Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 252
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-4422-1840-6 • Hardback • November 2012 • $128.00 • (£98.00)
978-1-4422-1842-0 • eBook • November 2012 • $121.50 • (£94.00)
Margaret Kuo is associate professor in the Department of History at California State University, Long Beach and EDS-Stewart Fellow at the Center for the Pacific Rim, University of San Francisco.
Part I: Law and the State
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: GMD Legal Exceptionalism: Conceptual Underpinnings of the Republican Civil Code
Chapter 3: The Rise of Public Opinion: The Case of GMD Surname Legislation
Chapter 4: The Process of Civil Adjudication: Marital Justice and the Republican Civil Court System
Part II: Law and Society
Chapter 5: Spousal Abuse: Divorce Litigation and the Emergence of Rights Consciousness
Chapter 6: Running Away: Cohabitation Litigation and the Reconfiguration of Husband Patriarchy
Chapter 7: Bourgeois Affairs: Separation and Support Litigation and Injury to Reputation
Chapter 8: Natural Eunuchs: Husband Impotence Annulment Litigation and Legal Opportunism
Chapter 9: Conclusion
Kuo’s book challenges us to recognize the 'liberal triumph' of the Republican Civil Code as it established 'a socially progressive agenda in the context of an indisputably authoritarian regime,' created a functional judiciary, and reshaped individual lives and world views at all social levels (199). Through expert organization, incisive and nuanced reading of the sources, tight focus, and the resulting depth, Kuo has written a persuasive and thought-provoking history of the role of the law in women’s lives, and of the role of women and the law in the transformation of late Republican government and society. In the process she has also given us an exemplary model of how to answer the double question.
— Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review
Intolerable Cruelty is accessible, innovative, and relevant, not only to students studying Chinese history but also to students studying comparative women’s history, women’s and gender studies, legal history, and the rule of law.
— James Carter, Saint Joseph's University
Provides an important reconsideration of the social changes that took place as the Guomindang consolidated power in the Republican period and, moreover, exemplifies how historians might best use legal cases to write effective social history. In extensively mining the archives for vivid examples of how the law worked for the litigants involved, Margaret Kuo has provided an excellent model of how to construct empirically based and methodologically rigorous historical arguments.
— Helen Schneider, Virginia Tech; author of Keeping the Nation's House: Domestic Management and the Making of Modern China