Acrimony and estrangement: A comparative study of rural and urban divorce in Minnesota, 1900-1910

This dissertation examines divorce and how it varied between urban and rural areas in the early 1900s. At a time when many people were moving to towns and away from farms, what made some spouses end their marriages? How did issues compare for urban and rural divorcing spouses?;Geographers have seldom considered people's interpersonal feelings, relationships, and problems, but these issues have spatial components. An urban-rural comparison is one way to examine divorce spatially. The topic of divorce itself raises issues of interest to many geographers and other social scientists. Divorce cases often address how spouses confronted inequitable power, oppressive partners, and social stigmatization.;The study examined 800 divorce cases in Minnesota. The state had relatively liberal divorce laws, with eight legal grounds. Minnesota rates were slightly below the national average, but varied widely around the state. Information was examined in categories of public life, home, occupation, mobility, and family, from case documents and other data sources.;In this study as elsewhere, wives initiated two to three times as many cases as husbands in most locations. Legal language was also similar between urban and rural areas. But there were also differences, with urban divorce rates much higher than those in rural areas. Urban spouses in the cases were more likely to focus outwardly toward the community in their complaints, while rural spouses were more inwardly oriented toward the home. Within urban areas, there was a wide range of divorce rates by occupation. Urban cases were more likely than rural ones to involve desertion complaints. For highly mobile spouses, and those who could not be located, desertion complaints were even more common.;Legal similarities in the cases imply some commonality between city and country. But higher urban divorce rates, and outward emphasis in urban cases, support the notion that urbanization drove changes in many lives, sometimes increasing difficulty in maintaining long-term marital commitments.