Final answer:
Historically, in the metaphor of a court, women in a bad marriage were expected to stay silent, due to the lack of legal rights and societal expectations that confined them to the private sphere.
Step-by-step explanation:
In the context of an extended metaphor of a court during historical periods, women in a bad marriage were generally expected to stay silent. Given the cultural and legal constraints of the time, women were often in a position where, even if their husbands provided the basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter, they had very limited legal rights to leave or even bring accusations against their husbands. For example, the Lex Julia declared that wives could not bring criminal accusations for adultery against their husbands. During the postwar years in the 1780s, the Church of England's diminishing control meant that divorce proceedings became slightly more attainable, but obtaining a divorce was by no means easy and was still complicated by coverture laws and social expectations that a woman's place was in the private sphere.