Maria is a very soft spoken girl and she hardly hurts anybody. She does not raise her voice when she speaks and is very careful about the way she speaks and the words she chooses. She gets married and finds that her husband is highly abusive. However she controls her anger for a considerable amount of time without retaliating. One fine day, she loses patience and abuses her husband and slaps him in public. What Maria exhibited conforms to the ethical theory of:

Maria exhibited moral relativism.

Explanation:

Moral relativism stands for an idea that there's no such a thing as an absolute set of morals. It's a version of morality that says "to each her own," and those who follow it say, "Who am I to judge?"

Moral relativism can be understood in a few ways. For example, there is cultural relativism. It says that moral standards are culturally defined. There is also some common values that seem nearly universal, such as honesty and respect, but many differences appear across cultures when people evaluate moral standards around the world.

Societies make their moral choices based on their own customs and beliefs. People tend to believe that the "right" moral values are the values that exist in their own culture.

Normative moral relativism has the idea that all societies should accept each other's differences in moral values, because there are no such things as universal moral principles. Philosophers don't agree. Let's say forbidding a woman to have a job is okay in some cultures, that doesn't necessarily mean that other cultures cannot rightfully condemn it.