In the Shadow of the Law: Divorce in Canada 1900-1939

Cynthia R. Comacchio is an assistant professor of History at Wilfrid
Laurier University in Waterloo.

Despite the intimations of its title, this book has a scope and range
far surpassing that of a history of the legal process of marriage
dissolution. Snell painstakingly details the legislative, judicial, and
state contexts of, and contributions to, changing divorce law in early
twentieth-century Canada, making the study an important addition to a
legal historiography still in its infancy in this country. What takes
the book out of the specialized realm of legal history, and broadens its
relevance and appeal to all others interested in social/cultural
history, is the author’s sensitive understanding and analysis of
gender, class, and family as relational concepts that form the necessary
basis of a modern Canadian “public culture,” a culture informed and
upheld by the power of the law. As Snell argues, it must be recognized
that the law is instrumental not only in the defence and maintenance of
those practices and behaviors deemed acceptable and appropriate, but
also in their construction. The law is not an “impartial process”
situated somewhere outside and above the social: it is both an “arena
for struggle” and an “actor in the context, a vital conservative
force that shapes the ideas of the contestants and helps to maintain the
existing social structure by inhibiting one’s ability to conceive of
alternatives.”

The study is divided into two parts. The first, “The Divorce
Environment,” describes the “conjugal family” as the period’s
ideal. This section also details the difficulties of effecting reform in
divorce legislation due to widespread popular ascription to that ideal
and judicial and state reluctance to disrupt it. Part 2, “Divorce
Behavior,” discusses marriage/divorce trends, the role of gender, the
divorce process and alternative forms of marriage dissolution. The study
is carefully researched from provincial legal reports and contemporary
church, social reform, and popular journals. It fleshes out the legal
story with references to individual cases that remind readers of the
human tragedy behind the legal statistics. The book also enhances our
understanding of the myriad aspects of individual and collective
behavior that exemplify resistance and accommodation to intensive
socioeconomic change.