Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vsgnj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T13:29:34.395Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“So Few Prizes and So Many Blanks”: Marriage and Feminism in Later Nineteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Philippa Levine
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Marriage, for the nineteenth-century woman, was perhaps the single most profound and far-reaching institution that would affect the course of her life. For the woman who did not marry, whether by choice or by chance, spinsterhood marked her as one of society's unfortunates, cast aside from the common lot of the sex. For the woman who did enter wedlock, marriage spelled, simultaneously, a loss of freedom in both political and financial matters, perhaps domestic drudgery and frequent pregnancy, but undoubtedly a clear elevation in social status. Class position aside, marriage had a far greater effect on the lives of women than of men, and the pressures for women to marry were correspondingly far greater than those brought to bear upon men.

The meaning and significance of marriage in Victorian England represented a central pressure point in the lives of all women. It was undoubtedly one of the major agencies of socialization to which women were exposed; the pressures it imposed were enormously persuasive and difficult to resist. Family expectation and even self-esteem competed with the public assessment of women on the basis of their marital status. For women, marriage and its effects permeated every aspect of their daily existence and shifted the focus of their emotional and social contacts—what Patricia Jalland has dubbed their “bedroom-bathroom intimacy”—from their own families to those of their husbands.

The growing demographic imbalance between the sexes during the course of the nineteenth century was viewed with alarm by contemporary commentators who feared that the changing ratio of men to women would increase the numbers of unmarried women.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , April 1989 , pp. 150 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Jalland, Patricia, Women, Marriage and Politics, 1860-1914 (Oxford, 1986), p. 35Google Scholar.

2 Lerner, Gerda, “Where Biographers Fear to Tread,” Women's Review of Books 4, no. 12 (September 1987): 11–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Stacy, Enid, “A Century of Women's Rights,” in Forecasts of the Coming Century by a decade of Writers, ed. Carpenter, Edward (Manchester, 1897), pp. 86–101, esp. p. 89–90Google Scholar.

4 M. A. [Atkinson, Mabel], The Economic Foundations of the Women's Movement (London, 1914), pp. 13–14Google Scholar.

5 Jeffreys, Sheila, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880–1930 (London, 1985), p. 86Google Scholar; Auchmuty, Rosemary, “Spinsters and Trade Unions in Victorian Britain,” in Women at Work, ed. Curthoys, Ann, Eade, Susan, and Spearritt, Peter (Canberra, 1975), pp. 109–22Google Scholar.

6 Walkowitz, Judith, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State (Cambridge, 1980), p. 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Freeman, Ruth and Klaus, Patricia, “Blessed or Not? The New Spinster in England and the United States in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of Family History 9, no. 3 (1984): 394–414, esp. 402CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Banks, Olive, Becoming a Feminist: The Social Origins of “First Wave” Feminism (Sussex, 1986), p. 90Google Scholar.

9 “Letter from ‘A Lancashire Witch,’” Punch 77 (February 7, 1880): 58Google Scholar.

10 The figures are derived from a computerized prosopographical database of 194 women identified as active feminists in this period. This data base was established as part of my forthcoming study (Basil Blackwell, 1989) on the social location of and networks among Victorian feminists.

11 Watkins, Susan Cotts, “Spinsters,” Journal of Family History 9, no. 4 (1984): 310-25, esp. 316CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Her argument is upheld by the work of Lee, R. D. and Schofield, R. S. in their article, “British Population in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol.1, 1700–1860, ed. Floud, Roderick and McCloskey, Donald (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 17–35Google Scholar. On the other hand, Patricia Jalland, in her Women, Marriage and Politics (Oxford, 1986), pp. 48–49Google Scholar, argues that by 1872 the mean age at marriage for women was 25.7 years and for men, 27.9 years. In either case, the point remains significant given the number of feminists marrying in their thirties and forties.

12 Jalland, Patricia, “Victorian Spinsters: Dutiful Daughters, Desperate Rebels and the Transition to the New Women,” in Exploring Women's Past, ed. Crawford, Patricia (Sydney, 1983), pp. 129–70Google Scholar.

13 Raymond, Janice, A Passion for Friends: Toward A Philosophy of Female Affection (London, 1986), p. 36Google Scholar.

14 Girton College, Cambridge University, Bessie Rayner Parkes Collection, BRP 1.4, MS diary for August to December 1849, 4/15. Barbara is, of course, Parkes's close companion and cofeminist, Barbara Leigh Smith.

15 Fawcett Library, London, Autograph Letter Collection I: Women's Suffrage, 1851–94, Millicent Garrett Fawcett to Edmund Garrett, February 21, 1885.

16 Some writers have mistakenly ascribed the pseudonym of Ellis Ethelmer to Elizabeth Wolstenholme. She generally wrote under the name Ignota.

17 Pankhurst, L. Sylvia, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons (London, 1931), pp. 31, 32Google Scholar.

18 The letter is dated December 25, 1870, and is quoted in Strachey, Ray, Millicent Garrett Fawcett (London, 1931), p. 57Google Scholar.

19 Marshall, Mary Paley, What I Remember (Cambridge, 1947), p. 23Google Scholar. Nonetheless, their marriage cannot be seen as an “ideal” feminist model in any sense.

20 Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith, An American Diary, 1857–8, edited from the manuscript by Reed, Joseph W. Jr. (London, 1972), p. 32Google Scholar.

21 British Library (BL), Additional (Add.) MS 43,946, Dilke Papers, vol. 73, Sir Charles Dilke's typescript memoir of Emilia, Lady Dilke, fol. 29.

22 Pankhurst, p. 97.

23 See Green, V. H. H., Love in a Cool Climate: The Letters of Mark Pattison and Meta Bradley, 1879–1884 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar.

24 BL, Add. MS 43, 946, fol. 29.

25 Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Pattison Collection, Letters of Mrs. Pattison, MS Pattison 140, fols. 37–38, n.d.

26 Diary entry dated June 1840, quoted in Clough, Blanche Athena, A Memoir of Anne Jemima Clough (London, 1897), p. 25Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 283. Letter dated 1890. The two Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 had gradually worked to secure for married women control and possession of their own property. Before 1870, any properties owned by a woman and not secured in an equity trust automatically became the rightful possessions of her husband on marriage.

28 Gordon, Alice M., “The After-Careers of University Educated Women,” Nineteenth Century 37 (1895): 955–60Google Scholar.

29 Harrison, Jane Ellen, Reminiscences of a Student Life (London, 1925), p. 88Google Scholar.

30 Bondfield, Margaret, A Life's Work (London, 1949), p. 36Google Scholar.

31 Vicinus, Martha, “‘One Life to Stand Beside Me’: Emotional Conflicts in First-Generation College Women in England,” Feminist Studies 8, no. 3 (1982): 603–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Cominos, Peter T., “Innocent Femina Sensualis in Unconscious Conflict,” in Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age, ed. Vicinus, Martha (London, 1972), pp. 155-72, esp. 163Google Scholar, and Jalland, , “Victorian Spinsters” (n. 12 above), pp. 133–34Google Scholar, both stress the religious alternatives to which many women turned. Vicinus's, Martha book Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920 (London, 1985)Google Scholar also devotes attention to this theme.

33 Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, “Why Women Require the Franchise,” in Essays and Lectures on Social and Political Subjects, by Fawcett, Henry and Fawcett, Millicent Garrett (London, 1872), pp. 262–91, p. 270Google Scholar.

34 Caine, Barbara, Destined to Be Wives: The Sisters of Beatrice Webb (Oxford, 1986), p. 161Google Scholar.

35 Fawcett Library, Autograph Letter Collection I: Women's Suffrage, 1851–94, Helen Taylor to Millicent Garrett Fawcett, October 31, 1868.

36 Fawcett Library, Autograph Letter Collection: Women's Movement, 1865–71, December 10, [1871?]. David Rubinstein has suggested, in a personal communication dated January 24, 1988, that this letter may well have been written in 1875 despite its inclusion in a collection devoted to an earlier period.

37 Indeed, women from wealthier backgrounds were generally the recipients on marriage of property settlements in trust and thus protected at least from dissolution by their husbands under the law of equity.

38 Cobbe, Frances Power, “Wife-Torture in England,” Contemporary Review 32 (1878): 55–87, esp. 62Google Scholar.

39 Grote, Harriet, “Lines Suggested By More than One Recent Domestic History,” Collected Papers (Original and Reprinted) in Prose and Verse, 1842–62 (London, 1862), p. 282Google Scholar.

40 Fawcett Library, Autograph Letter Collection: Letters of Lydia E. Becker, Lytton to Becker, [1873?].

41 Ibid., January 21, 1873.

42 For a full account of the Jackson case, see Rubinstein, David, Before the Suffragettes: Women's Emancipation in the 1890s (Brighton, 1986), pp. 54–58Google Scholar.

43 H. R., W. L., “Has Matrimony Advantages? (Dialogue Between Brother and Sister),” Gatherer (January 1883), p. 15Google Scholar.

44 Butler, Josephine E., Woman's Work and Woman's Culture: A Series of Essays (London, 1869), p. xxixGoogle Scholar.

45 Mrs.William, [Maria] Grey, Old Maids: A Lecture (London, 1875), pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

46 Ibid., p. 9.

47 Quoted in Todd, Margaret, The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake (London, 1918), p. 65Google Scholar.

48 Cobbe, Frances Power, “Celibacy vs. Marriage,” Essays on the Pursuits of Women (London, 1863), pp. 38–57, esp. 52Google Scholar.

49 Anderson, Michael, “The Social Position of Spinsters in Mid-Victorian Britain,” Journal of Family History 9, no. 4 (1984): 390–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Austen, Jane, Emma (1816; reprint, London, 1957), p. 65Google Scholar.

51 Smith, Mary, The Autobiography of Mary Smith, Schoolmistress and Non-Conformist: A Fragment of Life (London, 1892), p. 179Google Scholar.

52 Ibid., p. 196.

53 Quoted in Pratt, Edwin A., A Woman's Work for Women, being the aims, efforts and aspiration of “L.M.H.” (Miss Louisa M. Hubbard) (London, 1898), p. 3Google Scholar.

54 Gautry, Thomas, “Lux Mihi Laus”: School Board Memories (London, 1937), p. 73Google Scholar.

55 Cusack, M. F., Women's Work in Modern Society (London, 1874), p. 8Google Scholar.

56 Caird, Mona, “Marriage,” Westminster Review 130, no. 2 (August 1888): 186–201, esp. 193Google Scholar.

57 Chapman, Elizabeth Rachel, “Marriage Rejection and Marriage Reform,” Westminster Review 130, no. 3 (August 1888): 358–77, esp. 372Google Scholar.

58 Kent, Susan Kingsley, Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860–1914 (Princeton, N.J., 1987), p. 85Google Scholar.

59 Caine (n. 34 above), p. 97.

60 Kent, p. 81.

61 M. A. [Mabel Atkinson] (n. 4 above), p. 11.

62 Basch, Françoise, “Women's Rights and the Wrongs of Marriage in Mid-Nineteenth Century America,” History Workshop Journal 22 (1986): 18–40, esp. 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Kate Amberley to Henry Crompton, January 3, 1869, quoted in The Amberly Papers: The Letters and Diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley, 2 vols., ed. Russell, Bertrand and Russell, Patricia (London, 1937), 2:299Google Scholar.