Though both men and women were legally able to initiate divorceDivorce, the conditions under which women could do so were significantly restricted. Grounds such as polygamy, financial neglect, prolonged absence, incarceration, or abuse served not as avenues of liberation but as tightly drawn thresholds that women were required to cross before the law permitted their exit from marriageMarriage. As such, women found themselves navigating a legal and familial terrain where the formal availability of rights was continually tempered by the patriarchal architecture that governed both public and private life. That divorceDivorce might be wielded as a male prerogative remained a persistent assumption, but evidence from legal documents and personal narratives complicates this notion. The dissolution of marriageMarriage, whether through divorceDivorce or death, is revealed not only as a personal rupture but as a moment wherein gendered hierarchies are both enacted and resisted.