Abstract: Abstract This book describes and studies the prominence of honor in Golden Age culture. The plots and themes based around honor may have varied, but they shared three fundamental features. First, the honor of men was dependent on the behavior of the women in their lives. Second, the honor of women, and therefore men, depended entirely on sexual behavior. Third, the only appropriate response to dishonorable behavior was violence. The first two features are related to sexuality and how men had to control it in their wives and women kin to preserve their own male honor. Adultery was considered the most serious threat to both male and female honor, and the only way to protect or restore honor was through murderous revenge. The wife-murder plays took this logic to its appalling conclusion, with the husbands deciding to kill not only the men who stole their wives' honor but their own wives as well.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-11-11
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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