] Yes, indeed but your comment made me think of her sons from her happy first marriage: The eldest must have been around seventeen when the troubles started and over twenty when the marriage really got dangerously abusive. Why did they not protect her from such malice? They were three men against one! The authoress stressed the importance of family bonds but when not even sons cared for the safety of their mother there was not much reliance in family bonds anyway.

I think the apparent lack of involvement from Elizabeth Shackleton's sons speaks to Vickery's point about the strength of patriarchy. In her later example of Ellen Weeton, she discusses how Ellen's brother was reluctant to step in and help his sister. Didn't she say this was because, although husbands were supposed to treat their wives well in general, it was really their perogative to treat them however they liked, and not for others to interfere? The husband was in charge, and it was not in a brother or son's place to challenge his authority when it came to how he wanted to treat his wife.