Love before the courtroom: The expression of feelings in three marriage lawsuits in Guadalajara in the late eighteenth century

Abstract

Love has always been a source of various social conflicts and family disagreements; situation that caused numerous couples to be subjected to questioning their love for considering it prohibited or illegal. For this reason, on several occasions love had to step on the courts, where it was tried to defend or punish this feeling. The aim of this research is the study of expressions of love of couples through the review of three marriage lawsuits that occurred in the city of Guadalajara in the late eighteenth century. All of them have in common the element of prohibition, or contravention of the social norms established in the Hispanic world. In this way, we will analyze the discourse that these people used to express their feelings and defend their love, but we will also decipher the recourses that other individuals used to try to dissolve the union of these couples.