Source Database
Section 5: Marriage and Children
(5.1) In her book Women’s Suffrage published in 1911, Millicent Garrett Fawcett criticised the passing of the 1857 Divorce Act.
In 1857 the Divorce Act was passed, and, as is well known, set up by law a different moral standard for men and women. Under this Act, which is still in force, a man can obtain the dissolution of the marriage if he can prove one act of infidelity on the part of his wife; but a woman cannot get her marriage dissolved unless she can prove that her husband has been guilty both of infidelity and cruelty.
(5.2) Charlotte Despard wrote about her feelings as a young woman in the 1850s in a brief, unpublished memoir.
It was a strange time, unsatisfactory, full of ungratified aspirations. I longed ardently to be of some use in the world, but as we were girls with a little money and born into a particular social position, it was not thought necessary that we should do anything but amuse ourselves until the time and the opportunity of marriage came along. ‘Better any marriage at all than none’, a foolish old aunt used to say.
The woman of the well-to-do classes was made to understand early that the only door open to a life at once easy and respectable was that of marriage. Therefore she had to depend upon her good looks, according to the ideals of the men of her day, her charm, her little drawing-room arts.
(5.3) In October 1874, Elizabeth Wolstenholme, who was five months pregnant, married Ben Elmy at Kensington Register Office. Some members of the Married Women’s Property Committee believed that Wolstenholme should resign as they felt the "scandal was harming the women’s movement. Josephine Butler sent a letter to women leaders defending Elizabeth Wolstenholme and Ben Elmy.
They have sinned against no law of Purity. They went through a most solemn ceremony and vow before witnesses. I knew of this true marriage before God - early in 1874. It would have been a legal marriage in Scotland. They blundered; but their whole action was grave and pure. The English marriage laws are impure. English law… sins against the law of purity. It is a species of legal prostitution the woman being the man’s property.
(5.4) In 1867 Lydia Becker made a speech at a meeting of the Manchester Suffrage Society on the subject of marriage.
I think that the notion that the husband ought to have the headship or authority over his wife, is the root of all social evils… Husband and wife should be co-equal. In a happy marriage there is no question of ‘obedience’.
(5.5) In 1879 Emmeline Goulden married Dr. Richard Pankhurst in 1879.
I came to know Dr. Richard Pankhurst, a lawyer… who was a supporter of woman’s suffrage… Dr. Pankhurst acted as counsel for the Manchester women who tried in 1868 to be placed on the register as voters. He also drafted the bill giving married women absolute control over their property and earnings, a bill, which became law in 1882.
About a year after my marriage my daughter Christabel was born, and in another eighteen months my second daughter Sylvia came. Two other children followed and for some years I was rather deeply immersed in my domestic affairs. I was never so absorbed with home and children, however, that I lost interest in community affairs. Dr. Pankhurst did not desire that I should turn myself into a household machine.
(5.6) In 1887, after two years of marriage, George Parks, an unemployed actor, committed suicide. The evening before he killed himself, George Parks sent a letter to his wife, the successful actress, Elizabeth Robins.
I will not stand in your light any longer… Think the best you can of me. I die loving you if possible more than ever – I die to save you pain and sorrow in the future – may your lines be cast in pleasanter places than in the past four years. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Yours in death, George.
(5.7) Louisa Garrett Anderson, the daughter of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, wrote about attitudes towards marriage when her mother was a young woman in the 1860s.
To remain single was thought a disgrace and at thirty an unmarried woman was called an old maid. After their parents died, what could they do, where could they go? If they had a brother, as unwanted and permanent guests, they might live in his house. Some had to maintain themselves and then, indeed, difficulty arose. The only paid occupation open to them a gentlewoman was to become a governess under despised conditions and a miserable salary. None of the professions were open to women; there were no women in Government offices; no secretarial work was done by them. Even nursing was disorganised and disreputable until Florence Nightingale recreated it as a profession by founding the Nightingale School of Nursing in 1860.
(5.8) In 1883 Isabella Ford described her first visit to the Independent Labour Party in Colne Valley.
There was a tea party… The men poured out the tea, cut the bread and butter, and washed everything up, without any feminine help and without any accidents! A party, that included the education of men… as well as the education of women, that gave one such skill and dexterity, and the other wider and truer views of life, was the party for me I felt, so I joined.
(5.9) In 1890 Clementina Black wrote a pamphlet On Marriage where she explained why some women were unwilling to get married.
Marriage, like all other human institutions, is not permanent and alterable in form, but necessarily changes shape with the changes of social development. The forms of marriage are transitional, like the societies in which they exist. Each age keeps getting ahead of the law, yet there are always some laggards of whom the law for the time being is ahead. The main tendency of our own age is towards greater freedom and equality, and the law is slowly modifying to match…. At present the strict letter of the law denies to a married woman the freedom of action which more and more women are coming to regard not only as their just but also as their dearest treasure; and this naturally causes a certain unwillingness on the part of the thoughtful women to marry… That law and custom should alike enlarge so as to suit the growing ideal is evidently desirable… we can all of us influence custom a little, since custom, after all, is only made up of many individual examples… Easier divorce may be necessary, but the opportunity of making wiser and happier marriages is more necessary still.
(5.10) In December 1909, Elizabeth Robins wrote an article, Votes for Women, that criticised British marriage laws.
The children’s mother has no legal right to a voice in deciding how they shall be nursed; how or where educated; what trade or profession they shall adopt; in what form of religion they shall be instructed.
If a father wants his child vaccinated, or if he is merely indifferent, and so does not lay an objection before the magistrate, the mother cannot prevent the child being vaccinated. If the father wishes the child to be left unvaccinated, the mother cannot legally have it done.
The late Sir Horace Davy introduced a Bill, which proposed that father and mother should be acknowledged equal guardians of their children. This just and logical reform secured only nineteen votes in the House of Commons.
(5.11) On 21st May 1897 Selina Cooper gave birth to a baby son. Named John Ruskin after Selina’s favourite writer, the baby was sometimes taken out in his pram by his five-year-old cousin. Selina’s daughter, Mary later recalled what happened when John Ruskin was four-months old.
My cousin took him down Clitheroe Road, where the station is… there was a thunderstorm and the baby got soaked… My cousin was only little and he couldn’t pull the pram cover down. My mother was frantic… when the baby came home he was in a pool of water… John Ruskin caught severe bronchitis… he died from bronchitic convulsions… She never talked about her dead son… After she died I found an old book… It was full of pictures of babies she cut out of newspapers. Young babies… I never saw her cutting out these pictures… She must have been gradually cutting them out all the time. Oh, there must have been about twenty. And all babies, not young children.
(5.12) In 1891 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence began work as a social worker in a working-class area of London. She wrote about her experiences in her book My Part in a Changing World.
Drunkenness was extremely common… It seemed for many the only refuge from depression and misery. The effect of drunkenness upon the ordinary relationship of husband and wife, parents and children, was disastrous. There was a woman whose husband used to knock her about badly when in drink. But he went to the Mission Hall in the district, was converted and signed the pledge. All went well for some time until she again turned up with several bruises. "Oh, Mrs. Smith, has your husband taken to drink again?" She replied: "Oh, no, that was another lady what done that! Since my husband went to the Misson Hall, he ain’t like a husband at all – he is more like a friend!"
There was a particular point of view with regard to wife-beating. A friend of mine was once walking along the street and she passed a woman with a black eye. At the same time two other women passed, and one of them remarked: "Well, all I can say is, she is a lucky woman to have a husband to take that trouble with her." Another woman who had gone through a similar experience remarked: "Well, it ain’t pleasant to be knocked about, but the making-up is lovely."
(5.13) In a speech she made at the Wardorf Hotel on 4th May 1909, Elizabeth Robins argued that women’s equality would improve relationships between the sexes.
My own adhesion to the Suffrage Cause was given largely because I saw that only through political equality may we hope to see established a true understanding and a happier relationship between the sexes.
Changes in society… have long been tending towards increasing separation between men and women, in practically all the interests of life save one. In the world of industry, of business, of thought – even in what is called society, the growing tendency has been to divide the world into two separate camps. Men who are "doing things," or want to do things, have less and less time to give to an order of beings having no share and, as it came to seem, no stake in the varies aspects – save one – of the great game of life. The conditions of modern life are more and more separating the sexes. Instead of still further dividing us, Women’s Suffrage is in reality the bridge between the chasm.
(5.14) In February 1915, Marie Stopes sent a copy of her manuscript Married Love to the publishers, Blackie & Son. Walter Blackie wrote a letter of rejection to Marie Stopes on 13th July 1915.
Thank you for sending me your manuscript but the theme does not please me. I think there is far too much talking about writing about these things already… Pray excuse the suggestion, but don’t you think you should wait publication until after the war, at least? There will be few enough men for the girls to marry: and a book would frighten off the few.
(5.15) Marie Stopes book Married Love was published in March 1918. The book created a sensation and sold 2,000 copes within a fortnight. Many men objected to the feminist sentiments expressed in the book.
Far too often, marriage puts an end to woman’s intellectual life. Marriage can never reach its full stature until women possess as much intellectual freedom and freedom of opportunity within it as do their partners.
That at present the majority of women neither desire freedom for creative work, nor would know how to use it, is only a sign that we are still living in the shadow of the coercive and dwarfing influences of the past.
(5.16) In March 1911, Charles Buxton, the eldest son of Lord Buxton, a wealthy businessman and Postmaster General in Herbert Asquith’s Cabinet, asked Octavia Wilberforce to marry him. Although under extreme pressure from her parents, Octavia refused. She explained her thoughts on receiving Charles Buxton’s proposal, in a letter she wrote to her friend, Elizabeth Robins.
When I was eighteen I would have married anything that might have asked me if I thought it would have been advantageous and conducive to fun. Didn’t believe in any silly rot like love and I might have been the most amenable daughter alive.
When Charles Buxton’s letter came I was most awfully sorry and wished I had never seen the boy. I was perfectly miserable and from trying to imagine how he felt I almost felt I was a criminal. When he came and I walked along the lane with him I felt I was a beast and quite dreadfully sorry. But when he spoke of it… I suddenly felt so revolted at what it all meant from my point of view.
Some people are cut out for marriage; they are made for it and would be most happy in it. Perhaps people are made differently, but I am not cut out for it. Everybody I know would be shocked and horrified at that statement and at this: the very thought of it makes me shudder and it revolts me.
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