Family feud

“ A daughter-in-law will drown or hang herself to get free from, and also to avenge, the tyranny or cruelty of her husband's mother. These acts lead at once to family feuds, which sometimes end in bloodshed; more often in money compensation; and the known risk of such contingencies operates as a wholesome check upon aggressive treatment of the weak by the strong. ”

“ Men have to respect women in these mountains; they’re killed if they don’t, and not only they, but their families. A blood feud is no joke.
“However, I did hear of its happening once. The man’s family had to send word to the family of the girl to whom he was betrothed, to say that he could not marry her because he was going to have a child by another woman. The three tribes met in council and prevented a blood feud, but the man’s family had to pay his fiancée’s tribe ten thousand kronen, and ten thousand kronen to the family of the man that the other girl was engaged to. ”

“ The son of my mother’s brother? We never knew him. There was a family feud.”
“But you will remember to have heard that his father made great wealth in the Abruzzi through copper mines, was nationalised, and was ennobled by Victor Emmanuel. The family feud was chiefly on account of his connection with commerce and his change of country.”
“Precisely.”
“I regret to inform you that [75] your cousin is dead, at thirty-three years of age, killed by a wild boar when hunting in the Pontine marshes; he has left you, Mr. ”

“ A bloody feud, most likely, exists between one family and some other family, which was commenced hundreds of years ago by their ancestors. Some person was killed, and one of that person's family killed another in return ”

“ IN this world there are no quarrels I so bitter as the quarrels between brothers, no feuds so uncompromising as family feuds. Kinsfolk are proverbiably the worst neighbors, and it is often said that particular individuals are too much alike to agree. ”

“ Our ruin, utter as it now is, would have been complete ten years sooner, and we should have shown the world the spectacle of a husband and wife living quite apart—a scandal of the most horrible, heart-breaking kind, for it is the destruction of the family. ”

“ After all, who is to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There is but One who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He wreak His vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time children as His instruments against their mothers, and fathers against their sons, raising up peoples against kings, and princes against peoples, sowing strife and division everywhere? ”

“ I can’t find out what the feud was all about, and probably the present families don’t know, so stupid are such things. It is much like those you hear about in the Kentucky mountains, where families kill each other off for generations over causes that never touched them personally. ”

“ They will beg of their sisters, and mothers, and wives, and children, and of any one else who is enough ashamed of being of the same blood with them to pay to keep them out of sight. Every one of those blackguards is the bane of a family. ”

“ If a man chooses to turn against his own wife, the mother of his children; abuse, neglect her, and take instead, a bad, intriguing woman, as confidant and companion, what can the world say or do? nothing, it is their own affair: every one says, let them settle it between them: the public have nothing to do with family quarrels. ”

“ After so happy a beginning, he falls into a torrent of violent abuse on a whole family, founded on no reason in the world, but because that family is distinguished by the just rewards of their services to their king and country; and, in the heat of his resentment, he throws out things that are as unpardonably seditious as they are palpably absurd. ”

“ As a rule they begin with a taking of life that is not justified in the eyes of the kin of him whose life was taken. They may begin from a retaliation for a kidnapping or even from an accidental killing. Feuds exist between neighboring districts, or districts not far distant between which to a certain extent ties of blood and marriage exist. It is exceedingly rare—if it ever occurs—that entire villages or districts are involved. The feud is an affair between families only. ”

“ If he suffers a repulse from your wife, or attempts in vain to debauch your sister, or your daughter, or your niece, he will, rather than not play the traitor with his gallantry, make his addresses to your grandmother; and ten to one, but in one shape or another, he will find means to ruin the peace of a family, in which he has been so kindly entertained. ”

“ Tell the worthy old lady from me, that if I am unjustly charged with having caused a young couple to quarrel, with upsetting the unity of a family, and annexing both the father and the son-in-law, I will deserve my reputation by annoying them in my own way! ”

“ Many a happy household has been turned into grief through their demoralizing influence; mothers, wives, and daughters have often, in the lonely hours of midnight, sat up with a scanty light and a dying fire awaiting the late return of a son, a husband, or a brother; with many a sigh they would trace the ruin of their domestic felicity and the wreck of their family to some lodge of the secret societies. ”

“ As far as possible the family regulates its affairs within itself without appealing to the community and thus subjecting itself to gossip. Situations arising within the family where members are not in agreement, where a conflict of wishes is involved, are defined through argument, ordering and forbidding, remonstrance, reproof, entreaty, sulking, tears, and beatings. But as a last resort a member of a family may provoke gossip, appeal to the community. In case No. 32 the woman defines the situation to her deserting husband publicly. ”

“ Cases of rebellion or where human relationships are violated; a wife killing a husband, son killing a father, etc., are seldom dealt with in an open, regular way; they are settled in private, the criminal being done to death by the family clan. ”

“ And these conflicting passions arise where one has a right to expect peace and goodwill. The author introduces us to a divided family, and we see the husband rise against his wife, the son against his father, and the brother against the sister. ”

“ The wife or husband, whose affections are estranged, neglect their house, avoid it, and deprive it, as much as they can, of its revenues or income, to expend them with the object of their affections; hence arise quarrels, scandal, lawsuits, the neglect of their children and servants, and at last the plundering and ruin of the whole family; without reckoning that the adulterous woman commits a most grievous theft, in giving to her husband heirs of foreign blood, who deprive his real children of their legitimate portion. ”

“ I hope you do not think your daughter's late excursion with me had anything criminal in it."
"Go," cried I, "thou art a wretch, a poor pitiful wretch, and every way a liar; but your meanness secures you from my anger. Yet, sir, I am descended from a family that would not have borne this! And so, thou vile thing! to gratify a momentary passion thou hast made one poor creature wretched for life, and polluted a family that had nothing but honour for their portion." ”

“ To illustrate by a figure once before used in this volume—that of a divorce suit between man and wife—it is easy enough to see how the children, taking the side of the father, might charge those who took the side of the mother with disloyalty to the family, and how those taking the side of the mother might retort by saying that else, the mother was quite as much a part of the family as the father, and that those who opposed her were more disloyal to the family than themselves. ”

“ But shall we wonder that kings and princes meet with so little controul in their passions, be they every so violent, when, in a private family, an aunt, nay, even a mother in that family, shall choose to give up a once-favoured child against their own inclinations, rather than oppose an aspiring young man, who had armed himself with the authority of a father, who, when once determined, never would be expostulated with? ”

“ Above all, remember your unfortunate sisters; they, the most womanly of all, who have been ruined by their own kindliness and trust and loving weakness. It is that family selfishness which turns every house in the land into a fort to be held against these poor wanderers. They make them evil, and then they revile the very evil which they have made. ”

“ Nickleby stamp, your brother a dissipated wretch, and your sister a professional shop-lifter, while your husband combines the worst characteristics of the entire family—but as long as you pretend to be on speaking terms with them, stand up for them against all the rest of the world ”

“ Is it not, in fact, scandalmongering which sows almost all discord and disunity, which breaks up friendships and hinders enemies from reconciling their quarrels, which disturbs the peace of homes, which turns brother against brother, husband against wife, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law and son-in-law against father-in-law? How many united households have been turned upside down by one evil tongue, so that their members could not bear to see or to speak to one another? And one malicious tongue, belonging to a neighbour, man or woman, can be the cause of all this misery.... ”

“ When he goes out the children speak above a whisper, and the women of the family breathe and express an opinion among themselves, an act of audacity which they would never think of indulging in in his presence; and life goes merrily until someone, with a face a yard long, rushes in and announces 'Father is coming!' The domestic tyrant is invariably called 'Father' by the wife as well as by the children, and the word is spelt with a capital 'F,' and the 'a' is sounded as if there were a dozen French circumflex accents on the top of it. ”

“ For example: how often do we see whole families entirely ruined by the improper conduct of a husband or father, who, through giving way to some predominant vice, at once overwhelms the whole of his family in ruin and distress, or, at least, the female part of it, who, not being able to defend themselves, or seek redress, are liable to every misfortune. ”

“ Is the man who allows his relatives constantly to interfere with and slander his wife, who never write him letters without containing sly insinuations, intended—howsoever they may fail—to disturb conjugal and family harmony; who institute [Pg 92] a court of inquiry into family expenses, probable journeys, &c., location of residence, and insist upon all these things being settled according to their means and standard, is this husband never to be told that such interference is insufferable, "because he will be angry"? ”

“ There is, however, a good deal of spurious family affection. There is the clannishness that will make a dozen brothers and sisters who quarrel furiously among themselves close up their ranks and make common cause against a brother-in-law or a sister-in-law. ”

“ Many suspected Union men shielded themselves by denouncing others, giving information of the property of others, and being forward in insulting and quartering lawless soldiers upon defenceless families. So that, Dr. R. states, there are created between neighbors, all through that section, feuds which will never cease to exist. Many a man has suffered family wrongs from his neighbor which he thirsts to go back to revenge, which he swears yet to revenge, and which he feels nothing but the blood of the offender can revenge! ”

“ Family violence when tempers flared and the beatings to which children were subjected, both at home and in school would, today, make criminals of past adults intent on ensuring that their charges learned the hard way what was acceptable behaviour and what wasn’t. The good name of a family was important and the concept of shame caused extreme discomfort. ”

“ Yet, alas! what satisfaction can I make to the afflicted family of my master and mistress, whom without any provocation I so barbarously murdered? I can make none beyond the declaration of my guilt and horror of soul that I could perpetrate deeds so shocking to human nature, and so agonising to the feelings of that worthy family. ”

“ If, by adultery, the wife wounds the heart of an honorable man, introduces false heirs into the family, she at least can abstract nothing from the common fortune; while the husband, in the same case, can ruin the family, while increasing the number of natural children and provoking his wife to wrong by his neglect and brutality. ”

“ And you see in a family—who has not seen it?—an amount of restless, anxious, watching, to try and prevent the ill-temper creeping over this one whose temper is of such importance to the whole family circle. And do we not constantly see that most unjust tyranny which the ill-tempered or ill-controlled member of the family has over the rest? ”

“ From this source there frequently arise feelings of violent jealousy between brothers and sisters, and the attitude of hostility thus evoked may be increased, or at any rate prevented from disappearing, by the fact that children of the same family have to share not only the affection of their parents but, to some extent at least, their material possessions and enjoyments also. ”

“ Another cognate cause of crimes of violence was the family tyranny, which was the subject of so many novels and stories of the past, and which once more was the result of private property. Of course that is all ended, since families are held together by no bond of coercion, legal or social, but by mutual liking and affection, and everybody is free to come or go as he or she pleases. Furthermore, our standards of honour and public estimation are very different from the old ones; success in besting our neighbours is a road to renown now closed, let us hope for ever. ”