Wife selling

Selling a wife, image done 1812-14.

Wife selling is when a husband sells his wife to someone else. It has been done for different reasons throughout history:

• Many people could not afford a divorce, so wife-selling was used instead. Often, the wife was able to pick the husband she was sold to. This was especially the case, if she was young and pretty.
• In some societies, a wife could buy herself out of a marriage. that way. Her husband would no longer have to pay for her support.
• Sometimes taxes or debts were paid by selling a wife or children
• A free woman who was married to a serf could be sold into slavery, if her husband had been murdered. Enslaved families were often broken up and wives, husbands, and children sold to separate buyers. Masters often used the threat to sell a wife to keep an enslaved husband under a master's discipline.