Frances Wright, Abolitionist and Reformer

Frances Wright, Social Reformer, Writer, and Lecturer (born 6 September 1795)

Frances Wright was born in Dundee, Scotland, the daughter of Camilla Campbell and James Wright, a "free-thinking radical and revolutionary." Whatever direct influence her father may have had on her thinking is limited, however--by the time that she was three years old, both of her parents had died.

An 1824 portrait of a young Frances Wright,
painted by George Inman

But, in addition to his radical political views, James Wright was also a wealthy manufacturer, so his children were not left as impoverished orphans after the loss of their parents.

With a significant inheritance, James Wright's two daughters were taken to England by their maternal aunt, who was their guardian. Since she herself was young, the girls lived with their aunt in their maternal grandfather's home.

Fanny Wright returned to Scotland when she was sixteen and was educated there by her great-uncle, James Milne, a moral philosopher. Milne was educated at the University of St. Andrews and was teaching at the University of Glasgow.

In Scotland, Fanny Wright spent her winters studying and writing, her summers in the Scottish highlands. She read widely, having access to the library of the university--she was particularly interested in reading about America and the American Revolution.

She also began to write, beginning with what is described as "youthful romantic verse." But in August 1818, when she was twenty-three years old, Fanny Wright sailed for America with her sister, Camilla, for a two-year tour of the United States. In New York, she produced her play Altorf: A Tragedy, dramatizing the struggle for Swiss independence. (The play was published the following year in Philadelphia.) 

Once she returned to Scotland, she published an account of her trip, Views of Society and Manners in America (1821) and A Few Days in Athens (1822), which has been described as "a novelistic sketch of a disciple of Epicurus that outlined the materialistic philosophy to which she adhered throughout her life." 

Her account of her American trip earned her praise and attention--in particular that of the Marquis de Lafayette, whom she met in France in 1821. She accompanied the Revolutionary War hero when he returned to America in 1824, and she traveled with him when he was entertained by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Wright had been shocked to witness the brutality of slavery on her first visit to the United States. When she returned, it was with the purpose of purchasing, educating, and emancipating slaves, establishing them in a community outside of the United States. As she remarked while traveling in Mississippi in 1825, “The sight of slavery is revolting everywhere. But to inhale the impure breath of its pestilence in the free winds of America is odious beyond all that imagination can conceive.”

The image of Frances Wright that appears in
Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al.,
A History of Woman Suffrage

While planning the community for freed slaves, Wright had visited Robert Owen's utopian community of New Harmony, in Indiana.

She was impressed by Owen's ideas about cooperative labor and universal education--these notions formed the basis of the community she established, the Nashoba Commune, just outside Memphis, Tennessee.

She also published a tract outlining her proposal for ending slavery: A Plan for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in the United States Without Danger of Loss to the Citizens of the South.

Nashoba was founded in 1826, but the initial optimism underlying its foundation was lost after Wright herself left, suffering from bouts of fever and still campaigning for support.

The trustees in whose hands she had placed the organizing and running of the community seem to have failed her--there were reports of floggings, sexual misconduct, and unhappiness of parents who lost control of their children. The community had collapsed by 1829, and Wright escorted the remaining emancipated slaves to Haiti, settling them there with promises for their freedom and independence.

(As an interesting note: in order to recover her health, Frances Wright had gone back to England--there she met Frances Trollope, about whom I have posted [click here]. Trollope returned with Wright to Nashoba, but she was shocked by conditions, disillusioned with the project, and soon left.)

Returning to the United States, Wright rejoined Owen and, with him, began publishing the Free Enquirer, a newspaper advocating equal rights for women, women's suffrage, education for women, birth control, and liberalized divorce laws. She also condemned capital punishment and worked toward educational reform--with Owen, she argued for the establishment of a system of free state boarding schools offering a religion-free curriculum and industrial skills in addition to traditional subjects. 

Also with Owen, she founded the Working Men's Party, supporting small farmers, artisans, and workers in early factories in New York. Those opposing this progressive party gave it the most insulting name they could devise: the Fanny Wright Party.

In 1831, her sister Camilla's health failing, Frances Wright returned to France. There she married a French physician, Guillaume D'Arusmont, whom she had met when they were at New Harmony. The couple had a child, Frances Sylva, born in 1832. The family returned to the United States in 1835 and took up residence in Cincinnati. But by then the marriage failed, and Wright began the long process of divorce.

In the mean time, after her return to the United States, Frances Wright delivered public lectures opposing slavery. In 1836 and 1838 she campaigned actively for the Democratic Party, She also became involved in the Popular Health Movement, in particular arguing for the inclusion of women in health and medicine. 

In 1836 she published her last book, Course of Popular Lectures, again arguing strongly for the rights of women: 

However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike, assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly. It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential. If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance. Let women stand where they may in the scale of improvement, their position decides that of the race. 

Wright's health failed again after her efforts in the 1838 elections, and she withdrew from her active life. 

In 1850 she was finally divorced from her husband, but it came at a particularly high cost. Given divorce laws, which Wright had fought to reform, her earnings from her lectures and royalties belonged to her husband. 

She died just two years later, on 13 December 1852, after a fall on the ice. She was fifty-seven years old.

Wright was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery,
Cincinnati, Ohio

In addition to the entry on Wright in the Tennessee Encyclopedia, to which I've linked above, you might also be interested in the biographical note on Wright in the Encyclopedia Britannica (click here).

Celia Morris Eckhardt's 1984 biography, Fanny Wright: Rebel in America, is out of print, but used copies are readily available.

Wright's own work is also easy to find. There are a number of print-on-demand editions available (through Amazon, for instance), but her work work is available the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg.

Sojourner Truth: "I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right"

Isabella Baumfree, who named herself Sojourner Truth (died 26 November 1883)

One of the most admired figures in nineteenth-century American history, Isabella Baumfree claimed her freedom when she escaped from slavery in 1826 and forged her identity by naming herself Sojourner Truth in 1843.

One of Truth's visiting cards

Born and enslaved in the north--New York--and not the south, as most people might assume, Truth is perhaps best known for the speech she delivered at the Women's Convention (Akron, Ohio) on 29 May 1851, now commonly titled "Ain't I a Woman?"

The first accounts of the speech were brief, printed within days of its delivery first by the the New York Tribune (6 June) and then by the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator.

Truth collaborated with abolitionist Marius R. Robinson to publish a full (recreated) text of the speech in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, the weekly publication of the Ohio American Anti-Slavery Society. That version includes this line: "I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?"

In none of these accounts is the familiar question "ain't I a woman?" mentioned. In fact, the repeated question did not appear at all until 1863, when Frances Dana Gage, who had chaired the 1851 convention, published her version of the speech in the National Slavery Standard. In addition to adding in the refrain, Gage also ventriloquized Truth's voice using the dialect of a Southern slave--Truth herself was born in New York, her first language was low Dutch, and she never lived in the south. (The dialect of the Truth speech became even more pronounced in Gage's republished versions of 1875, 1881, and 1889.) Gage's text was the version included in Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage's History of Woman Suffrage.

For better or worse, this is the version we seem to be stuck with. But Sojourner Truth's life is so much more than that one speech. After she escaped to freedom with her daughter in 1826, she sought to recover her son who had been sold by his New York owner to a slaveholder in Alabama--she won her court case.

The New York Tribune account of
Truth's 1851 speech

She became a Methodist minister, preached against slavery, became a supporter of women's rights, religious tolerance, and pacifism.

In addition to her speech at the Ohio convention, she published her memoirs, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, she bought a home, delivered many other notable speeches, and, after the Civil War, worked to provide land grants for former enslaved people. She also attempted to vote in the 1872 presidential election.

For a good overview of the issues involved in the Gage version of the "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, I recommend Kay Siebler's "Far from the Truth: Teaching the Politics of Sojourner Truth's 'Ain't I a Woman?'" (Pedagogy 10, no. 3 [2010]: 511-33)--if you have academic access, you can download a .pdf of this essay by clicking here. Otherwise, inter-library loan?

Lucretia Mott, American Activist

Lucretia Coffin Mott (died 11 November 1880)

I have mentioned Lucretia Mott's name in this blog more times than any other--you can click on the label "Lucretia Mott," below, to see where and when her name has come up in the last eleven months.  

Born on Nantucket Island in 1793, Lucretia Coffin Mott would play an integral part in key social movements for more than fifty years. 

In 1804, Lucretia Coffin entered a Quaker boarding school in New York, where she became a follower of Elias Hicks, an abolitionist. She would eventually become a teacher at the school, where she learned that women were paid less than men. And while at the Nine Partners school she met and married a fellow teacher, James Mott, in 1811.

By 1821, she had become a Quaker minister, speaking out on behalf of reform within the Society of Friends. She also became increasingly public in her opposition to slavery. But however close she became to abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, she had to face the reality that women were formally excluded from abolitionists groups. So, in 1833, she became one of the founders of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.

In 1837, as we have seen, she helped to organize the First Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women--along with women like Angelina and Sarah Grimké, she addressed audiences of men and women, and for all these women, speaking "promiscuously" caused a great deal of public opposition. Two further conventions followed, one in 1838 and another in 1839. There was so much opposition--not only were women organizing and speaking, but the convention was integrated, including black and white women and men--that a mob rioted and destroyed Pennsylvania Hall during the 1838 convention.

In 1840, Mott attended the international World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, one of six female delegates--the male delegates, however, opposed opening up their convention to women and voted to exclude their participation, so Mott was recognized only as a visitor, not a delegate. While there, Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another unseated woman delegate, decided that, on their return to the United States, they would organize a convention for women's rights. Their decision culminated, eight years later, in the Seneca Falls Convention. 

Mott spent the rest of her life advocating for the social causes she believed in. A committed pacifist, she opposed war with Mexico and the Civil War, attended meetings of the New England Non-Resistance Society, and was vice president of the Universal Peace Union, founded in 1866. In 1870, she was elected president of the Philadelphia Peace Society.

She attempted to heal the breach between suffragists after the Civil War, when the question of whether black men should gain the vote before women did, fractured the movement. 

She was elected the first president of the American Equal Rights Association, advocating for universal suffrage. Along with Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, she helped to create the National Women Suffrage Association. 

In 1876, at the time of the American Centennial, she presided at the National Women Association meeting in Philadelphia; two years later, she was at the thirtieth-anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention.

In assessing the totality of Lucretia Mott's life and work, Nancy Unger writes, "Lucretia Mott spoke frequently on the underlying unity of the various reforms she advocated": 

Mott refused to claim the moral superiority of women but was instead dedicated to achieving equality for all of America's disadvantaged and disenfranchised, including Indians, women, slaves, and free blacks. Increasingly libertarian in her religious interpretations, Mott grew to believe that a new spirit was at work in the world that demanded active involvement in reform. An enormously inspirational speaker and a tireless organizer, Lucretia Mott was one of her country's earliest, and most radical, feminists and reformers.

For Unger's essay, for American National Biography Online, click here (unfortunately, subscription is needed for access). For Mott's biography at the National Women's Hall of Fame, click here, and for the entry on Mott at the National Women's History Museum, click here.

There are several full-length biographies, but I like Carol Faulkner's biography of this "radical egalitarian": Lucretia Mott's Heresy: Abolition and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America.

Women Get the Vote!

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (certified 26 August 1920)

Those darn women! Always wanting things. Like the right to vote. Here's the text of the amendment that finally extended the franchise to women:*

1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
2. Congress shall have power to enforce this Article by appropriate legislation.

Passed by the House of Representatives on 21 May 1919 and by the Senate on 4 June 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified on 18 August 1920, when Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to approve it. 

Alice Paul, 1920,
raising a glass (of juice) in victory

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified on 26 August 1920.

Just over two months later, on 8 November 1920, some eight million American women voted in the first national elections for which they were eligible to vote. 

(It took more than sixty years for the rest of the states to pass the Nineteenth Amendment--Mississippi didn't get around to ratifying that pesky amendment until 22 March 1984. Go, Mississippi!)

Of course extending the franchise to women by amending the constitution did not go unchallenged--for the Supreme Court case Leser v. Garnett (1922), unanimously upholding the constitutionality of the Nineteenth Amendment, click here.

And here's a bonus note for the day: on the fiftieth anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, on 26 August 1970, women across America conducted a Women's Strike for Equality. Here are a few images from the march in New York City, headed by Betty Friedan:

Betty Friedan at the march

I hope somebody's planning a kick-ass celebration for 26 August 2020!!

*If you consider the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 as the start of the women's suffrage movement, it took more than seventy years for women to achieve this goal. If you missed them, here are posts for the first and second days of the Convention. And if you ever wondered what happened to the Equal Rights Amendment, click here.

Update, August 2019: And the centennial begins! Check out Jennifer Schluesser's "The Complex History of the Women's Suffrage Movement." The New York Times piece notes three exhibitions on the subject of women's suffrage that complicate and expand the discussion of the movement. Schluesser's piece contains links to exhibitions opening at the National Portrait Gallery, the Library of Congress and the National Archives (all in Washington, D.C.).

Update, 26 August 2020: Well, because of the pandemic there were no kick-ass celebrations. At least there was a PBS documentary.  And a postage stamp. For more, click here.

Seneca Falls Convention: Day Two

Seneca Falls Convention (second day, 20 July 1848)

The second day of the Seneca Falls convention saw the unanimous approval of the Declaration of Sentiments, introduced to the convention the day before, on the first day of the proceedings. Before the vote, the abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke, as did other men, particularly to the question of women's property rights.

One of the interesting questions raised was whether men's signatures should be included--ultimately it was decided that their names should be included, but that there would be two sections, with women's signatures listed first.

The resolutions were again read and discussed, with the ninth--the one about women's voting rights--being regarded by some as the most problematic. Douglass argued that he, as a black man, would not accept the vote if women could not vote. 

For the rest of today's post, I'll include the text of the resolutions (I've set in boldface the controversial resolution on women's suffrage: 

WHEREAS, The great precept of nature is conceded to be, that "man shall pursue his own true and substantial happiness." [Sir William] Blackstone in his Commentaries [on the Laws of England] remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid, derive all their force, and all their validity, and all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original; therefore,

Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of Nature and of no validity, for this is "superior in obligation to any other."

Resolved, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of Nature, and therefore of no force or authority.

Resolved, That woman is man's equal—was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all the rights they want.

Resolved, That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority, does accord to woman moral superiority, it is pre-eminently his duty to encourage her to speak and teach as she has opportunity, in all religious assemblies.

Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.

Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill-grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in feats of the circus.

Resolved, That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

Resolved, That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.

Resolved, therefore, That, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities, and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self-evident truth growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as a self-evident falsehood, and at war with mankind.

As Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper would write in their four-volume History of Woman Suffrage, published in 1881:

The only resolution that was not unanimously adopted was the ninth, urging the women of the country to secure to themselves the elective franchise. Those who took part in the debate feared a demand for the right to vote would defeat others they deemed more rational, and make the whole movement ridiculous.

But Mrs. Stanton and Frederick Douglass seeing that the power to choose rulers and make laws, was the right by which all others could be secured, persistently advocated the resolution, and at last carried it by a small majority.

  

If you're looking for an overview on the Seneca Falls Convention, I recommend the excellent entry in West's Encyclopedia of American Law, available by clicking here.

Seneca Falls Convention: Day One

Seneca Falls Convention (first day, 19 July 1848)

Women's efforts to secure equality--in education, in the arts, as writers, under the law--were a centuries' long process. But we still identify the mid-nineteenth century movements in the U.S. and Great Britain as the so called first wave of feminism.

Lucretia Mott, 1841

In the United States, there is no more important event for first-wave feminism than the Seneca Falls Convention (held in Seneca Falls, New York).

There were certainly important events leading up to this momentous occasion--women's active participation in the abolitionist movement, for example, led to their taking more prominent roles in social reform, including speaking in public meetings and publishing. (We've already noted the work of Angelina and Sarah Grimké.)

Many of these women drew a parallel between  the status of enslaved people and women--a comparison that was not new, but that had been made in previous centuries by women like Mary Astell, Olympe de Gouges, and Mary Wollstonecraft, about whom I write in this blog.

In 1845 in the United States, Margaret Fuller published The Great Lawsuit, expanded as Woman in the Nineteenth Century. And we've also noted the work by Caroline Norton on behalf of women in Britain; her political activity began in the late 1830s.

But the idea of a women's rights conventions seems to have grown out of a trip by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott to London in 1840, where they attended a meeting of the World Anti-Slavery Society--where they were refused a seat as delegates in the hall and denied the opportunity to speak. The organizing and planning that followed resulted in the two-day Seneca Falls Convention.

On the first day of the meeting, in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Stanton spoke first, followed by Mott; Stanton then began the process of reading the "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions." The day was filled with discussion, alterations, and revisions.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
1848

For the rest of today's post, I'll include the complete text of the "Declaration of Sentiments":

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides. 

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and National legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions embracing every part of the country.

The announcement of the Seneca Falls Convention,
Seneca County Courier

If you're looking for an overview on the Seneca Falls Convention, I recommend the excellent entry in West's Encyclopedia of American Law, available by clicking here.

Update, 9 February 2019: For an interesting essay on the search for the original copy of the "Declaration of Sentiments," you may want to check out the New York Times piece by Liz Robbins and Sam Roberts, "Early Feminists Issued a Declaration of Independence. Where Is It Now?" You can access it by clicking here.

Lady Caroline Norton and the Hard Truths of "Traditional Marriage"

Caroline Sheridan Norton (died 15 June 1877)

Caroline Norton, 1832,
portrait by George Hayter

Born in 1808, Caroline Sheridan was the granddaughter of the famed English playwright and notable politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Elizabeth Linley Sheridan, a musician and performer (though after their marriage, Sheridan would not allow his wife to continue performing in public).

Caroline Sheridan's father, Thomas Sheridan, was a noted actor and playwright, but notably an unsuccessful politician, while her mother, Caroline Henrietta Calender Sheridan, was a writer who published three novels: Carwell, Or Crime and Sorrow (1830), Aims and Ends (1833), and Oonagh Lynch, (1833).

For Caroline Sheridan, then, political activism and artistic achievement were a family affair. Like her parents and grandfather, she wrote--novels, plays, and poetry.

Less happily, Caroline Sheridan's marriage to George Norton was a family tragedy. Rather than include biographical information here, I've linked to an essay about Caroline Sheridan Norton's life at The Victorian Web. 

Instead of focusing on the particular circumstances of her disastrous marriage, I'd like to focus on what she made of that disaster: her efforts to improve the status of women and children under British law. Out of the experiences of her own life, Norton campaigned to achieve three landmark pieces of legislation in Britain: the Custody of Infants Act 1839, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, and the Married Women's Property Act 1870.

I had a long career teaching women's history and women's literature, and the status of the lives of women in the medieval and early-modern periods is very difficult for students to comprehend. But why didn't she just leave, I've heard students frequently ask--whether we are talking about historical figures, like Margery Kempe or Juana of Castile, or literary characters, like Shakespeare's Katharina or Desdemona. This is still a question we hear asked about women today, in the twenty-first century, suffering in abusive or exploitative domestic circumstances. 

Because it's often so hard for us to assess the status of women in the past--even as late as the mid-nineteenth century--I thought I'd post here from Norton's 1855 pamphlet, A Letter to the Queen On Lord Cranworth's Marriage and Divorce Bill. It is as succinct a statement of the realities of "traditional" marriage for women as I know.* 

Norton opens by addressing herself directly Queen Victoria. "Madam," she writes, "I will not do Your Majesty the injustice of supposing that the very different aspect the law wears in England for the female sovereign and the female subject must render you indifferent to what those subjects may suffer. . . . I therefore submit a brief and familiar exposition of the laws relating to women"--laws relating to women who are not the queen, that is.

These are the laws that affect the women in Victoria's kingdom--a kingdom where a woman rules as queen, and where a woman is also "head of the Church, head of the law, ruler of millions of men." 

But for all other women, women who are not Queen Victoria, Norton compiles a devastating list:

A married woman in England has no legal existence: her being is absorbed in that of her husband. Years of separation or desertion cannot alter this position. Unless divorced by special enactment in the House of Lords, the legal fiction holds her to be "one" with her husband, even though she may never see or hear of him.

She has no possessions, unless by special settlement; her property is his property. . . . It is now provided that a will shall be revoked by marriage, but the claim of the husband to all that is his wife's exists in full force. An English wife has no legal right even to her clothes or ornaments; her husband may take them and sell them if he pleases, even though they be the gifts of relatives or friends, or bought before marriage.

An English wife cannot make a will. She may have children or kindred whom she may earnestly desire to benefit. She may be separated from her husband, who may be living with a mistress. No matter: the law gives what she has to him, and no will she could make would be valid.

An English wife cannot legally claim her own earnings. Whether wages for manual labor or payment for intellectual exertion, whether she weed potatoes or keep a school, her salary is the husband's, and he could compel a second payment and treat the first as void if paid to the wife without his sanction.

An English wife may not leave her husband's house. Not only can he sue her for "restitution of conjugal rights," but he has a right to enter the house of any friend or relation with whom she may take refuge and who may "harbour her"--as it is termed--and carry her away by force, with or without the aid of the police.

If the wife sue for separation for cruelty, it must be "cruelty that endangers life or limb," and if she has once forgiven, or, in legal phrase, "condoned" his offences, she cannot plead them, though her past forgiveness only proves that she endured as long as endurance was possible.

If her husband take proceedings for a divorce, she is not, in the first instance, allowed to defend herself. She has no means of proving the falsehood of his allegations. She is not represented by attorney nor permitted to be considered a party to the suit between him and her supposed lover for "damages." . . .  

If an English wife be guilty of infidelity, her husband can divorce her so as to marry again; but she cannot divorce the husband a vinculo [from the bonds of matrimony] however profligate he may be. No law court can divorce in England. A special act of Parliament annulling the marriage is passed for each case. The House of Lords grants this almost as a matter of course to the husband, but not to the wife. In only four instances (two of which were cases of incest) has the wife obtained a divorce to marry again.

She cannot prosecute for a libel. Her husband must prosecute and in cases of enmity and separation, of course she is without a remedy.

She cannot sign a lease or transact responsible business.

She cannot claim support, as a matter of personal right, from her husband. The general belief and nominal rule is, that her husband is "bound to maintain her." That is not the law. He is not bound to her. He is bound to his country; bound to see that she does not cumber the parish in which she resides. If it be proved that means sufficient are at her disposal, from relatives or friends, her husband is quit of his obligation and need not contribute a farthing, even if he have deserted her or be in receipt of money which is hers by inheritance.

She cannot bind her husband by any agreement, except through a third party. A contract formally drawn out by a lawyer--witnessed and signed by her husband--is void in law, and he can evade payment of an income so assured by the legal quibble that "a man cannot contract with his own wife."

Separation from her husband by consent, or for his ill usage, does not alter their mutual relation. He retains the right to divorce her after separation--as before--though he himself be unfaithful.

Her being, on the other hand, of spotless character and without reproach gives her no advantage in law. She may have withdrawn from his roof knowing that he lives with "his faithful housekeeper," having suffered personal violence at his hands, having "condoned" much, and being able to prove it by unimpeachable testimony, or he may have shut the doors of her house against her--all this is quite immaterial. The law takes no cognizance of which is to blame. As her husband, he has a right to all that is hers; as his wife, she has no right to anything that is his. As her husband, he may divorce her (if truth or false swearing can do it) as his wife. The utmost "divorce" she could obtain is permission to reside alone, married to his name. The marriage ceremony is a civil bond for him and an indissoluble sacrament for her, and the rights of mutual property which that ceremony is ignorantly supposed to confer are made absolute for him and null for her.

Of course an opposite picture may be drawn. There are bad, wanton, irreclaimable women, as there are vicious, profligate, tyrannical men, but the difference is this: that to punish and restrain bad wives, there are laws, and very severe laws (to say nothing of social condemnation), while to punish or restrain bad husbands, there is, in England, no adequate law whatever. Indeed, the English law holds out a sort of premium on infidelity, for there is no doubt that the woman who is divorced for a lover and marries him suffers less (except in conscience) than the woman who does not deserve to suffer at all--the wife of a bad husband, who can inflict what he pleases, whether she remain in her home or attempt to leave it.

"Such, however, is 'the law,'" Norton sums up, as she draws her list to a close--demonstrating "the ridicule, confusion, and injustice of its provisions" for women.

American readers may recognize the names of some of the women in the United States who played a crucial role in what has become known as the "first-wave" feminist movement: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Lucretia Mott, for example. 

Lady Caroline Norton is a contemporary of those American women, a founding mother we should all remember. 

*In the passage from Letter to the Queen, I've edited lightly, normalizing capitalization, spelling, and punctuation. I've retained the outraged italics from the 1855 publication!

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson: A Medical Pioneer

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (born 9 June 1836)

Born in London and unsatisfactorily educated (at least in her opinion--she was later to complain she had no opportunity to learn science or mathematics), Elizabeth Garrett was expected to do what women of her social class usually did: marry and become mothers.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson,
c. 1889

Instead, inspired by two women we have met before, the American doctor Elizabeth Blackwell and the English feminist Emily Davies, Elizabeth Garrett became a medical pioneer and political activist. 

After having been turned down by all the medical schools to which she applied (she was a woman), Elizabeth Garret devised a way to fulfill her goal of becoming a doctor. She trained as a nurse, studied with tutors, found a way into lectures and dissection rooms with male students, and, finally, arranged for private study through the Society of Apothecaries.

In 1865, via a loophole, she completed her medical exams, becoming the first English woman to earn a medical degree. (The Society of Apothecaries did not specifically forbid women from taking their exams and qualifying as doctors--but after Garrett qualified in this way, the loophole was closed.) Later in her career, in 1870, Garrett would complete a medical degree through the University of Paris, which was open to women students.

Meanwhile, unable to find a position after finishing her British training, in 1865 Garrett decided to set up her own practice. Within a year, she had opened a dispensary serving women and children--in 1866 alone, she treated 3,000 patients. There followed a series of firsts: Garrett became the first woman elected to the London School Board, the first woman appointed to a post a medical post in Britain (she was appointed to the East London Hospital for Children), co-founder of the first medical school for women (the London School of Medicine for Women), the first female member of the British Medical Association, and the first woman elected as mayor of a city in England (Aldeburh).

And she also became active in the women's suffrage movement. With Davies, in 1866, she presented a petition to Parliament asking for the vote for women and joined the British Women's Suffrage Committee. (We will meet up with Elizabeth Garrett's sister, Millicent Garrett Fawcett later this week.)

Oh! And she did manage to do those things "expected" of a woman--she married (James Anderson, in 1871) and had three children. Elizabeth Garrett's daughter, Louisa Garrett Anderson, followed her mother into a medical career and was also active in the suffrage movement--she was arrested in 1912 and briefly imprisoned in Holloway Prison. 

There is a great biographical essay by Jacqueline Banerjee about Elizabeth Garrett Anderson at The Victorian Web; you can access it by clicking here. Jo Manton's biography, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, is out of print but used copies are available. Jenifer Glyn's biography of the Garrett sisters, The Pioneering Garretts: Breaking the Barriers for Women, gives you a great look at the entire family (this book is also out of print, but used copies are available).

Margaret Fuller: American Journalist, Transcendentalist, Feminist

Sarah Margaret Fuller (born 23 May 1810)

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Margaret Fuller was given a rigorous education by her father, a politician and lawyer. Unlike many men of his time, Timothy Fuller trained his daughter as he would a son--though Fuller would later blame her father's demands and expectations for her "nervous affections," the nightmares, sleepwalking, migraines, and depression that plagued her throughout her life.

An 1846 daguerrotype of
Margaret Fuller

After her father was elected to the U.S. Congress, Fuller attended a series of schools to continue her education, including the Port School in Cambridgeport (1819), the Boston Lyceum for Young Ladies (1821-22), and the School for Young Ladies in Groton (1824-26), but at the age of sixteen she returned home to continue her education on her own in a course of study she outlined for herself--she read widely, focused on teaching herself modern languages, and continued the study of the classics her father had begun.

Two crucial events occurred in 1835: Fuller's father died, and she made the acquaintance of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The family's dire financial circumstances after Timothy Fuller's death led to Margaret Fuller's first career, as a teacher. She took up a position at Bronson Alcott's Temple School, Boston (1836-37), then at the Green Street School, in Providence, Rhode Island (1837-39). 

Back in Boston, Fuller then launched a series of "conversations" for women at the noted educator Elizabeth Peabody's West Street bookshop. These conversations were by subscription--the first of them was held on 6 November 1839, the last in 1844. These were a series of discussions, organized and conducted by Fuller, on literature, education, religion, and art, all of which aimed at improving women's lives and allowing them a greater participation in the exchange of ideas, opinions, and views. They also raised the "great questions" facing women: What are we born to do? What are we capable of doing? In Boston she joined the Transcendentalist movement, which included among its notable members Elizabeth Peabody and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Fuller also began her career in journalism, editing the Transcendentalist literary and philosophical journal, The Dial, from 1840 to 1842. In 1843, The Dial published her essay "The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men, Woman versus Women," one of the first great feminist texts by an American writer.

In 1844, she moved to New York to write for Horace Greeley's New-York Daily Tribune. She also produced a travel diary, Summer on the Lake, recording her travels in the Great Lakes and Wisconsin territories.

Expanding on "The Great Lawsuit," she published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, now her most well known work, in 1845. In this extraordinary extended essay, Fuller urges women to educate themselves in order to gain a measure of independence outside the domestic sphere. She also argues for women's equality, analyzes the institution of marriage, and advocates for a reform of property laws.

In 1846, Fuller left the United States for Europe, traveling as a foreign correspondent for Greeley. While in Europe and writing for the Tribune, she met Thomas Carlyle, William Wordsworth, and George Sand.

In Italy, Fuller reported on the revolution, met and married Angelo d'Ossoli, and had a child. She died in a shipwreck on returning to the U.S., just off the coast of Fire Island, New York.  

For Judith Thurman's New Yorker essay on Fuller, which includes a heartbreaking account of Fuller's death at sea, click here. The occasion of Thurman's essay is the publication of two biographies of Fuller, John Matteson's The Lives of Margaret Fuller: A Biography, and Megan Marshall's Margaret Fuller: An American Life.

There are many printed editions of Fuller's work available, but I've linked here to online editions available via the American Transcendentalism website.

(If you're interested, there is a wonderful biography, also by Megan Marshall, of Elizabeth Peabody and her sisters: The Peabody Sisters: The Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism.)

Update, 20 May 2020: The American Transcendentalism website is now archived--I've updated the links here so that they are still working, but if you should have a problem, that's why.