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Vanishingly few cultures genuinely held that husbands had unlimited physical dominion over their spouse, with no concept of consent possible. Some saw no place for the law in such a situation, but most (hedging here: for which we have sufficient written evidence to have some idea what people thought about that kind of thing) still recognized some social opprobrium against wife beaters. If it's wrong to beat your wife too violently, then it follows that there is at least a concept of it being wrong to rapeit is wrong to rape your wife, as the path from "no" to "rape" runs through "physical violence."
Most places at most times have figured that a man's wife owed him sex. Fewer would have considered it acceptable for him to beat the shit out of her until she agreed.
Of course, the level of agency expected of women at the time was far higher than modern standards. Women were expected to actually experience violence, not merely the threat of it, before rape could be charged.
Yes--of course. There are many different legal traditions that parse things out differently. A common Western one is that because husband and wife are "one flesh," and one cannot commit an offense against oneself, many interpersonal crimes are impossible between man and wife. However, one could still do morally atrocious things which were against the law--so for example, adultery was illegal, even though under the doctrine of coverture adultery was not strictly an offense against one's spouse. Rather, it was an offense against God and the State (which approved the marriage).
Sure, and we also have a long tradition in Western culture of mocking and denigrating wife beaters. Even where it was not legally prosecuted, it was understood as a bad thing to do (too much of).
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