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A review by bookslovejenna
The Case of the Married Woman: Caroline Norton: A 19th Century Heroine Who Wanted Justice for Women by Antonia Fraser
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Five things about The Case of the Married Woman by Antonia Fraser 📚📚📚📚📚
1. “From time immemorial, changes in the laws of nations have been brought about by individual examples of oppression. Such examples cannot be an important, for they are, and ever will be, the little hinges on which the great doors of justice are made to turn.” Caroline Norton writing to Queen Victoria, 1855.
2. A young woman, having lost her true love, is pushed into marriage with a physically and emotionally abusive man who now owns her and everything she has or ever will have including the proceeds of her writing career and her children. After years of abuse she tries to leave him and he accuses her of adultery with Lord Melbourne.
3. Though the trial clears their names, she cannot divorce her husband and he removes her children from her. The youngest dies. By law, she has no recourse within her marriage. Thus she brings her fight into the public eye.
4. Using her connections in politics and the literary world (Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Dickens…who she spent many a Christmas with!…Thackeray…) she makes a real real contribution to two causes that subsequent generations have come to take for granted: infant custody rights for the mother and property rights for married women.
5. Mary Shelley faced her own custody battle over her son Percy after the death of his father Percy Bysshe, Shelley. Sheley’s father tried to use the law to take her son away from her. In Mary Shelley‘s own words: “There seems to be something incomprehensible in a state of society that should admit to the propriety, or rather, enforce the necessity of a boy of nine being separated from all maternal care.”
1. “From time immemorial, changes in the laws of nations have been brought about by individual examples of oppression. Such examples cannot be an important, for they are, and ever will be, the little hinges on which the great doors of justice are made to turn.” Caroline Norton writing to Queen Victoria, 1855.
2. A young woman, having lost her true love, is pushed into marriage with a physically and emotionally abusive man who now owns her and everything she has or ever will have including the proceeds of her writing career and her children. After years of abuse she tries to leave him and he accuses her of adultery with Lord Melbourne.
3. Though the trial clears their names, she cannot divorce her husband and he removes her children from her. The youngest dies. By law, she has no recourse within her marriage. Thus she brings her fight into the public eye.
4. Using her connections in politics and the literary world (Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Dickens…who she spent many a Christmas with!…Thackeray…) she makes a real real contribution to two causes that subsequent generations have come to take for granted: infant custody rights for the mother and property rights for married women.
5. Mary Shelley faced her own custody battle over her son Percy after the death of his father Percy Bysshe, Shelley. Sheley’s father tried to use the law to take her son away from her. In Mary Shelley‘s own words: “There seems to be something incomprehensible in a state of society that should admit to the propriety, or rather, enforce the necessity of a boy of nine being separated from all maternal care.”