This book tells the story of how ordinary Peruvian men and women experienced their lives, and especially their marriages, in a patriarchal society and how, through the struggles involved in divorce, women tried to defend their rights and in the process helped bring about change in society more broadly.

Careful examination of more than one thousand cases of conjugal suits filed in Lima's archbishopric, as well as wills in notarial records, allowed the author to trace over time quarreling spouses' relationships, attitudes, and perceptions of gender, life cycle, race, and class and to...