Women's Rights-imagine being legally nonexistent; no rights to your children, money, or physical person. Legal precedent before 1839

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For some perspective on women’s rights in the U.S., which were derived from English law–changed in Britain in 1839. Black men in the U.S. had the right to vote in 1870. White women in 1920 and black women not until the voting right act of 1965. Women’s rights had little precedent in English law until Caroline Norton set a new precedent in 1839 (during Victoria’s reign) with a mother’s legal right to have access to her children. Before that time, Caroline, like all women, was a legal nonentity. Husbands and fathers represented them. (Spinsters, who could inherit if no male relatives, had more status then married women)

Nonentity means no legal precedent existed for women’s rights in England. If a man beat his wife or broke her arm (like Caroline’s husband), the matter was not considered a crime. Unless a woman was killed, domestic violence was private. Some men thought it helped woman’s behavior to be “knocked around.” Wages or inherited money-property were paid to a woman’s male guardian. Whether a woman earned money with her pen, like Caroline, or worked in a factory or ran a shop, she was not entitled to receive her funds. Men, as masters of women, were expected to pay their bills, though if they were impecunious, the debtors could sue.  

To change the law (after her husband’s perfidy) Caroline campaigned with her writing, publishing against injustice. Grandaughter to the famous playwright, Sheridan, her family was rich in literary tradition, not money. She liked making a living with her pen, marrying a man supposedly in line to inherit but without money.  One of three sisters considered “beauties,” Caroline was renowned for her outrageous wit and sense of fun. When her husband asked her to use her contacts to get him a job, she became a celebrity for her salons. Powerful men were regulars and her writing was in huge demand; poetry, novels and articles for women’s magazines (some illustrated by Turner). The Prime Minister, among others, enjoyed her company and, like other men, considered her an intellectual equal. Being a sophisticated flirt was not illegal and good for business. 

After she lost this high position, due to her husband, she was supposed to publicly disappear. She could not even write under her own name. As the situation continued, deprived of her living and her children, Caroline refused to fade away and fought the rules of her society. She suffered its censure and Justice, not just for herself, became a priority. She wrote for the voiceless, the plight of  working children in factories and mines, deprived of education, breaks from work, and often limbs. With a sympathetic lawyer, she pressed for changes in existing laws and set precedents  that came to be reflected in the colonies. Women in the colonies received money for work and received inheritance. When Martha Washington married George, she brought plantation land and hundreds of slaves. (Why Washington could not free them until after her death, is another story.)

Below is the publisher’s summary of this book. Though not “new,” it seems timely. Precedents for women’s rights, the right to decide to bear a child or not is among the oldest, was just dismissed by the Supreme Court.  At issue is the control of women’s lives. (Even in Jefferson’s writings, he knew his wife’s frequent pregnancies took a toil on her health, and regretted it, when she sickened and died at 33.) Caroline asked in a time when men’s and women’s “spheres” were considered separate but different, why injustice when both are equal? What do men and society have to fear? 

S.W.

Summary

Award-winning historian Antonia Fraser brilliantly portrays a courageous and compassionate woman who refused to be curbed by the personal and political constraints of her time.

Caroline Norton dazzled nineteenth-century society with her vivacity, her intelligence, her poetry, and in her role as an artist’s muse. After her marriage in 1828 to the MP George Norton, she continued to attract friends and admirers to her salon in Westminster, which included the young Disraeli. Most prominent among her admirers was the widowed Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.

Racked with jealousy, George Norton took the Prime Minister to court, suing him for damages on account of his ‘Criminal Conversation’ (adultery) with Caroline. A dramatic trial followed. Despite the unexpected and sensational result—acquittal—Norton was still able to legally deny Caroline access to her three children, all under seven. He also claimed her income as an author for himself, since the copyrights of a married woman belonged to her husband.

Yet Caroline refused to despair. Beset by the personal cruelties perpetrated by her husband and a society whose rules were set against her, she chose to fight, not surrender. She channeled her energies in an area of much-needed reform: the rights of a married woman and specifically those of a mother. Over the next few years she campaigned tirelessly, achieving her first landmark victory with the Infant Custody Act of 1839. Provisions which are now taken for granted, such as the right of a mother to have access to her own children, owe much to Caroline, who was determined to secure justice for women at all levels of society from the privileged to the working poor and destitute.