THE CASE OF THE MARRIED WOMAN: Caroline Norton and Her Fight for Women’s Justice, by Antonia Fraser
Many modern women might recall a time in their lives when they could not open a bank or get a mortgage without the signature of their husbands or fathers. Antonia Fraser, now in her 90th birthday, will. Happily, we can all forget the time when married women didn’t have any legal status. After a woman marries, her legal identity is subsumed in that of her husband. A married woman cannot sign a contract or make a will. She had no debts — which sounds great, until you realize that she could not owe money, because all her money, even that she earned herself, belonged to her husband, as did all her possessions. As did her children.
That this changed was in part due to the heroic campaigning, and the tragic story, of Caroline Norton, as conveyed in Fraser’s new book. She was the granddaughter of the playwright and politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan, author of “The School for Scandal,” a title that would come to seem all too apt. She was born in 1808, 30 year before Queen Victoria took the throne. Her two beautiful sisters caused quite a stir when she and her husband entered society. Her sisters married titled men, while Caroline married George Norton, who, while a younger son, had hopes of a title of his own — but would also turn out to be jealous, violent, petty and unremittingly vicious.
Their early marriage was relatively easy. Even though the couple had three children, their home quickly became a political salon. Mrs. Norton was at its center. He began to feel that she was too much in the center of the family, even as she shined and her husband became less prominent. Although he was happy for his charming spouse to use her influence with Lord Melbourne, the prime minister of Australia, to win George a lucrative sinecure at home, he was less pleased that she could wield such influence at all. George was pleased to spend the money Caroline had earned as a writer and poet, but he was annoyed that others were more interested meeting the society author rather than the surly, laconic magistrate.
Since a wife was the legal property of her husband, and adultery reduced the value of that property, the wife’s lover could be sued for financial compensation.
In 1836, after yet another episode of her husband’s violence, Caroline went to stay with her parents. George moved their children (the youngest not yet 3) to his sister’s house, where he forcibly detained them, refusing Caroline access. He also claimed her writing earnings. All of this was his legal right at that time.
Source: NY Times
