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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: A Research Q
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
I have a question about how/when marriages were conducted in Britain in the 1890s. Is this the pace to post it?
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Hi Brenda, I suspect the answer may be "no", because the thread title suggests the information might be required for a specific purpose, e.g. it might go into academic research or a novel you might be writing; and we discourage requests from people for others to do their research for them ("homework" threads). Would you like to expand a little on your question?
Meanwhile, I'd like to welcome you aboard. Do take a moment to read the board guidelines at the top of each board, as the different sections of this site all have a different flavour. I see you've found the Welcome thread in All Saints already - hope you enjoy looking around the boards!
Cheers
Ariel
Heaven Host
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
Alas, I hit 'send' just a bit too fast. In fact it is for a novel. I need to know about getting married with a special license in Britain in 1890.
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Net Spinster
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# 16058
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Alas, I hit 'send' just a bit too fast. In fact it is for a novel. I need to know about getting married with a special license in Britain in 1890.
Wikipedia might be more helpful but note you'll have to be more specific than 'Britain' as the laws differed (and still differ) in different parts. In particular England/Wales and Scotland have very different laws.
Also welcome aboard.
[ 23. March 2014, 02:22: Message edited by: Net Spinster ]
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spinner of webs
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
And, just as laws, loopholes, and exploitable uncertainties differed from place to place, custom held some places as especially apt for marriages—there's a reason why Las Vegas and Elkton, MD are known as "Gretna Greens." Even the law has trouble dealing with the force of custom or "but nobody said we couldn't" sometimes.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
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Net Spinster
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# 16058
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariston:
And, just as laws, loopholes, and exploitable uncertainties differed from place to place, custom held some places as especially apt for marriages—there's a reason why Las Vegas and Elkton, MD are known as "Gretna Greens." Even the law has trouble dealing with the force of custom or "but nobody said we couldn't" sometimes.
Well Gretna Green was the first town over the border on one of the main road from England to Scotland so the first place where an eloping couple could take advantage of Scotland's laxer laws in regards to age, consent, or waiting period. Admittedly I think by the 1890s the laws had been tightened enough that you could no longer by accident get married in Scotland (an unmarried couple who could get married representing themselves as married before witnesses or in writing, became married [one of Wilkie Collins's lesser novels, Man and Wife, dealt with that situation]). BTW one might want to look at Mrs. Beetons Book of Household Management which frequently contains legal details; make sure you have an edition for the time period in question.
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
Well, I didn't want to get into the grotty details until I was sure I was in the right place. But if you are game, here is the query. My novel takes place in 1890, and concludes with a marriage. I am trying to figure out how to orchestrate it, and found this:
From Cassells Household Guide, 1880?s New and Revised Edition. The section is Society, part 3, Weddings, part 2, found on page 136.
“MARRIAGES if performed by licence, must be solemnised in either parish wherein one of the persons has been for the preceding fortnight resident. The church where the marriage ceremony is to take place must be named in the licence. The parties themselves are not obliged to take out the licence personally, provided that whoever undertakes the office takes oath that both the bride and bridegroom elect are of full age, and, if minors, have the consent of their parents and guardians. Marriage licences may be taken out at the proper office at Doctors’ Commons. The cost is £2 2s. 6d (159 pounds today). Special licences differ from the ordinary licence in permitting the parties to be married at any place not named, and at an hour different from that which is otherwise compulsory. Marriages, without a special licence, can only be solemnised between the hours of eight o’clock and twelve in the forenoon of the day.
Well and good, my characters need a license. But now, if you go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_Commons
You can see that Doctors Commons quit operating in the 1860s. So, where would one gallop off to to get that license in 1890? Some other entity was clearly doing the work that the old legal body was no longer doing, but who?
Brenda
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
Brenda,
The General Register Office is the government department that holds an archive of births, marriages and deaths back to 1837. You never know, they may also be able to quote chapter and verse for you about the whys and wherefores.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
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L'organist
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# 17338
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Posted
There were two types of licence:
1. A common licence which could be issued by a bishop or surrogate (some senior clergy were so nominated) and this Surrogate's Licence stipulated where you could be married - it had to be a named church.
2. An Archbishop's Licence meant you could be married anywhere - this is the sort of licence you needed if you were proposing to marry someone on their deathbed.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
I am trying to reconcile this with the practice of getting married at your estate, or in the garden, or whatever. If the license says you have to be married in a church, how do you wind up having the ceremony at your manor?
The other thing is, once the Doctors Commons is closed (which happened in 1865), where do you go to get the ordinary license? I am thinking of just fudging this. The hero can gallop off and come back some time later with the license, no details necessary.
But -- will they have to tie the knot in a church? Or can they do it in the garden?
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
If the license says you have to be married in a church, how do you wind up having the ceremony at your manor?
Private chapel. If the house is grand enough, it may well have one.
And yes, you did have to be married in a place of worship (or a registry office). They only relaxed the rules on that recently as far as I understand it.
[ 24. March 2014, 14:39: Message edited by: Ariel ]
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
From sometime just after 1750 to the 1990s (IIRC) it was illegal to hold weddings in England other than in certain kinds of place. At first it was just parish churches. In the late 18th and early 19th century (as far as I remember, might have got it wrong) Quaker meeting houses, Jewish synagogues, Catholic churches, and registry offices were added. (Possibly in that order)
But no, you couldn't get wed in your garden.
(Apart from weird archbishops licences which were for special circumstances, because you really needed to get the actual archbishop to agree to it)
It was never possible to get legally married "by accident" and certainly not by letter. Until the 1750s the traditional English laws were in force and it was possible to marry anywhere, and neither church nor government need be involved. The couple just had to make appropriate vows before witnesses. Which is how come there could be those clandestine marriages so popular with novelists. But you could never be married by accident. The numerous legal cases were mostly from the other side - someone thought they were married and someone else (usually her father) tried to prove they weren't by picking on supposed deficiencies in the exact wording of the vows.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
Oh good. You understand the basic principle: that things should be as difficult as possible for the characters, because it is good for them. My hero is now forced to go find a license, and then meet up with his (heavily pregnant) bride at a church, instead of at her home.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
If you want to do some background reading about marriage proactices you could do worse than read the works of Lawrence Stone. Especially The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800, and An Open Elite? England 1540-1880, and Road to Divorce: England, 1530-1987. I think he probably gets some things wrong, but he's always fascinating.
I know someone who sometimes studies for a Masters degree in the period or topic before she writes a novel - she doesn't write many novels but they are all good ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
Alas, the number of books I have to read for this novel is already very great. It is a nice balance, how much research to do.
Once when I was in Athens I met a man who was writing a novel about the Trojan War, and was in town to do research. I was impressed, until I learned that he had spent the last 8 summers in Athens doing research, and proposed some year to actually go to Turkey to see the site. He had yet to begin the actual novel. That was twenty years ago, and I haven't seen it yet.
In other words, sometimes you just have to write the thing.
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
There were two types of licence:
1. A common licence which could be issued by a bishop or surrogate (some senior clergy were so nominated) and this Surrogate's Licence stipulated where you could be married - it had to be a named church.
2. An Archbishop's Licence meant you could be married anywhere - this is the sort of licence you needed if you were proposing to marry someone on their deathbed.
I think that's still basically the law now. Common Licences are quite frequent these days as you've more or less got to have one if either bride or groom is not a UK resident.
Since Lord Hardwicke's Act in 1753, it has never been possible in England and Wales to get married out of doors. I don't think it's possible even now under the more relaxed regime that now applies to civil weddings. I'm fairly sure that wedding venues that aren't either churches or registry offices still have to have a prescribed and licensed room where weddings take place, and it must not be the same room as the one the reception is held in.
In theory, I suppose an Archbishop's licence might be able to authorise a wedding in a specified garden, but I don't think there's ever been a time when any archbishop would have issued one. It would be a hospital bedside, or some religious building like a college chapel that isn't normally used for weddings, and that's about it.
It's just possible that if you were very, very upper class and could pull the right strings that with a fair wind and the right archbishop, that you might persuade him to issue a licence for a private chapel inside your country house. In the mid C19, big social weddings were regarded as slightly lower class. But most country houses have a parish church nearby - to which you would probably have the right of presentation, and that's where a wedding would normally take place.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
It's just possible that if you were very, very upper class and could pull the right strings that with a fair wind and the right archbishop, that you might persuade him to issue a licence for a private chapel inside your country house.
Some private chapels were licenced for worship as "chapels of ease", part of the local parish, but perhaps served by a minister paid by the owner of the chapel, if they were rich enough to afford it. Marriages might be celebrated there I think. Would have to look it up.
Of coruse that sort of thing often brought on suspeicians of secret Catholicism, which could be dangerous at times. After Catholic Emancipation I think some private chapels became Roman Catholic parish churches.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
This might be useful
1899, but AFAIK there had been few major changes in the law since the time you are thinking about.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Thinking about this a bit further, Brenda, something else has occurred to me.
I don't know how much of a surprise this will be to someone from abroad, but even now, couples getting married can't write their own vows. They can, possibly, persuade the vicar to let them add extra kutchy-koo stuff about 'you are the wind in my sails' etc, though the vicar is quite likely to say no. These days there are a few options on which pattern of vows they choose, but they must use one of them. There are also alternative versions of the preface though they all say much the same thing. In the 1890s, there was no flexibility at all. However squeamish the bride might be, she had to 'obey' and was stuck with 'carnal lusts' and the 'avoiding of fornication'.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
This might be useful
1899, but AFAIK there had been few major changes in the law since the time you are thinking about.
I just read it and I think it does answer every single question raised here and a lot more!
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
As a slight tangent, a friend of mine versed in such things found the marriages portrayed in TV adaptions of Austen and Bronte (can't remember the specific one, but once I started noticing, it seemed common) to be happening in churches with far more furnishing of the altar and so on than would have been around at the time. Candles and such like. Very plain, things would have been. You'd need to know the dates of the Oxford Movement and the leanings of the rector/vicar of your venue, or simply avoid descriptions.
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Thinking about this a bit further, Brenda, something else has occurred to me.
I don't know how much of a surprise this will be to someone from abroad, but even now, couples getting married can't write their own vows. They can, possibly, persuade the vicar to let them add extra kutchy-koo stuff about 'you are the wind in my sails' etc, though the vicar is quite likely to say no. These days there are a few options on which pattern of vows they choose, but they must use one of them. There are also alternative versions of the preface though they all say much the same thing. In the 1890s, there was no flexibility at all. However squeamish the bride might be, she had to 'obey' and was stuck with 'carnal lusts' and the 'avoiding of fornication'.
The quaker set up is slightly different, but obviously is very specific set-up.
Don't suppose you fancy a quaker sub-theme ?
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
The 1899 marriage law link is most useful, and I am passing it on to writer friends. Thank you so much!
I had not known of the six month waiting period to finalize a divorce. I will use this, oh yes I will. Misery and angst will increase among the characters!
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
The 1899 marriage law link is most useful, and I am passing it on to writer friends. Thank you so much!
I had not known of the six month waiting period to finalize a divorce. I will use this, oh yes I will. Misery and angst will increase among the characters!
Over time, it has been reduced to six weeks.
You hadn't mentioned that your story included a divorce. Historically, English divorce law has been consistently very peculiar but in different ways at different times. It still is, even now.
Until the 1850s it was virtually impossible to get one at all. It required a private Act of Parliament. The sale of wives as in The Mayor of Casterbridge did happen as an irregular way round this.
One of its 'engaging' quirks from the 1850s until the 1960s was that if one person committed adultery, they could be divorced, but if both of them did, they couldn't. The idea behind this was that if divorce was to be allowed at all, it must be a reward for the innocent.
This extended into the period between decree nisi and decree absolute. The Queen's Proctor would intervene to stop decrees being made absolute.
Although they are both describing divorce practice between the wars, which is much later, if you can get access to them, you might enjoy A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh and Holy Deadlock by A P Herbert.
Although divorce existed by the 1890s, for verisimilitude in a novel, you need to take into account that it was regarded as very scandalous. Asking how a church marriage took place, you need also to take into account that a divorced person would probably not have been able to find a clergyman who would marry them. They would probably have to make do with a civil wedding, which at that time was regarded as rather hole in the corner.
I think one can say with confidence that a divorced person would not in the 1890s have been able to get an Archbishop's Licence to be married somewhere peculiar. It would not even have been worth asking.
[ 25. March 2014, 08:41: Message edited by: Enoch ]
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I know that when I was growing up in Congregationalism, I was told that people not in membership would seek to marry in those churches as the CofE would not carry it out if one was divorced. I don't know how far back that would extend in time, or if other chapels would have done it. It would, I suppose, be the equivalent of a civil marriage in which bishops and archbishops would not be involved. And would Quakers have approved of such a thing?
It doesn't appear to have been an option entertained by Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre.
[ 25. March 2014, 10:08: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
Brenda: if you want something weird to do with divorce, try this:
A man could cite refusal to / absence of sex as a reason for divorce. But a woman couldn't - I think she was meant to be grateful!
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
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Net Spinster
Shipmate
# 16058
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Posted
I don't think a marriage in a church would be possible if one of the parties was divorced. My aunt had to be registry office in the 1970s when she had her second marriage though she got a blessing after in a church (but not her parish church). Note also that divorces were very public and expensive and one party had to be found guilty. Newspapers frequently published the trial proceedings (at least by the 1910s); one set of my great grandparents were divorced in 1919 amidst a fair bit of press and public denunciation from at least one pulpit. BTW I think Scottish law on divorce was also different but one had to establish residency.
Jews were probably the only group at that time fine with a divorced person remarrying in a religious ceremony but they would have be divorced both civilly and in the eyes of Jewish law and both parties would have to be Jewish. For Quakers I don't know, at a minimum it would depend on the meeting and the individuals and they certainly would not have agreed to a quick marriage and both parties would have to be Quaker.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
You are all wicked, wicked people. Come and sit right here by me!
If you want to hear the plot, it goes like this. It is a Victorian melodrama set in 1889-90. The (middle-upper class) heroine meets a (middle-class) man, a widower with 2 kids, and marries him. (To relieve authorial feelings, he is a publisher. Of religious literature.)
His wife had eloped with Another to the continent and there died. However, surprise! She is not dead, and she is back, and now he's a bigamist. He is charged with this felony, but gets off after much drama because he had genuinely believed she was dead and can prove it.
He now proposes to divorce adulterous wife #1 and then wed #2. Wife #2 is pregnant, but it is clear that he cannot possibly shove all this through and have the child born in wedlock, there just isn't time. Much angst. (This is why he's a publisher of religious lit, to maximize angst.)
But then, Wife #1 dies. Accident? Burglars? Or could it be murder? Both he and wife#2 have a powerful motivation to get rid of her...
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Brenda, not only are you writing about 1889-90, but that's the sort of plot a novelist of the time might have concocted.
I'm not sure that under the law of the time, he could have got a divorce, ever. I think, on discovering his original wife was still alive, he'd have had to have immediately stopped sleeping with wife No 2, but then she wouldn't have been able to become pregnant.
After the First World War, it is just possible they could have squirmed through the law with what was called a 'discretion statement', but I don't know whether they existed in the 1890s.
Wife No 1 could divorce him, but would she want to? She could make more trouble by not doing.
As a plot for it's time, that is so thumping good, it's surprising it hasn't been written before. It almost could have been, but by some best seller writer of the period we've all forgotten, Stanley Weyman perhaps.
L'Organist, there's an even greater oddity. It probably wouldn't have arisen in the 1890s as I'm not sure undefended divorces were allowed then. It can though still arise even now.
Wife, Wilma, brings divorce proceedings against husband Harry, alleging adultery with co-respondent, Carol. Harry wants out. So he admits adultery. Carol though is concerned for her reputation and does not admit anything. She also doesn't want to be at risk of having an award of costs made against her. She cannot have a finding of adultery made against her unless it is proved, which it never will be because it doesn't need to be. Harry has admitted enough to be divorced. So divorce goes through on the basis that Harry has committed adultery with Carol, but Carol hasn't committed adultery with Harry.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Well, I did say it was a Victorian melodrama I was writing. And all of the above is but the first half of the book! The hero being held pending his murder trial, it is wife #2 who has to track down the real perps and get him out in time to make an honest woman of her before the birth. And I am indeed going to use the reluctance of clergymen to get involved with the nuptuals of such dubious couples. She's going to have to get tough with him, and if I time it right she will be 9 months pregnant at that moment.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Indeed. Shades of Mesdames Braddon and Wood.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Interestingly, I came across a melodrama - a good deal earlier than the 'sensation' novels - in the British Library (while looking for something else, as you do). It had a remarkably feisty heroine for the period.
The plot involved hero going off to sea at the beginning - at the same time as another character disappears. He returns 7 years later, looking worried. A skeleton turns up in a mound which is being dug up for some reason, and hero is arrested on suspicion of murder. Whereupon the heroine, who in Act1 has just been this wet girlfriend, turns into an investigative powerhouse, collecting forensic evidence and browbeating the real villain into confessing. All this in about the 1840s.
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
I must admit I have not figured out how my heroine is going to prove her guy is not guilty, but I do like the idea of browbeating the real perps into confession. I sort of have it set up with anarchists, who have killed wife #1 because she is writing a tell-all book of her adventures with them. And, you know how it's dangerous to wear long skirts and petticoats and trailing lace on your sleeves, in an era where all heating and light is with open flame?
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
Quakers at the time would have almost certainly refused to remarry a divorcee, and almost certainly refused to marry a non-quaker couple.
However, Quakers have no creed, and conceivably if the couple's circumstances were hard enough, and there was some kind of personal connection, they *might* have done it as an act of charity.
Plotwise, presumably you have the legally declared dead thing sorted for wife 1 ?
Technically, would the child not be legit with the first marriage even if he didn't know it at the time ?
For added melodrama, she could miscarry the child at the last minute, possibly after being beaten up by perps in heroic attempt to clear sortahubby.
[ 25. March 2014, 18:47: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
You mean the bigamy thing? Yes, even if he is acquitted of the actual crime of bigamy (because he reasonably thought wife 1 was dead) he is still married to her, and wife 2 has the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Wife 2 became pregnant just before the return of wife 1, so that now she can have all the stress of not only being a Ruined Woman but being an Unwed Mother as well. However she really does love the hero, and will save him yet. And (somebody correct me if I am wrong) if they can just contrive to tie the knot before the actual birth, then the baby will be born in wedlock and not be illegitimate.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I think so. E Nesbitt was fairly far gone with her first when she wed Hubert Bland (who had one or two other pregnant girlfriends on the go at the same time). But I gather your characters are not going in for free love and socialism.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Whereupon the heroine, who in Act1 has just been this wet girlfriend, turns into an investigative powerhouse, collecting forensic evidence and browbeating the real villain into confessing. All this in about the 1840s.
There were lots of strong women in 1840s & 50s novels! One of the most striking examples, which almosty seems anachronistic, is either in Villete or perhaps more likely The Professor (I always get them confused) where the woman protagonist will not marry any man who objects to her working for money - and her boyfriend is a man who wants to marry a working woman because he objects to the idea that women are helpless dependents on their husbands.
Of course the strongest woman in all Victorian fiction is at the other end of the century (and the other end of genre), Mina Harker, perhaps the first and finest geek heroine in all fiction. She's the one who really hunts down Dracula, all the men do is try to stick pointy things in him when she finds him. Every time they leave her out of their plans they fail.
And how does she do it? Data processing! Card indexes. Sound recordings of interviews. Collections of newspaper clippings. Telepathy (that helps a lot). And memorising the railway timetables of Bulgaria. Because that's what she does when she visits a new place. She memorises the railway timetables.
quote:
"When does the next train start for Galatz?" said Van Helsing to us generally.
"At 6:30 tomorrow morning!" We all started, for the answer came from Mrs. Harker.
"How on earth do you know?" said Art.
"You forget, or perhaps you do not know, though Jonathan does and so does Dr. Van Helsing, that I am the train fiend."
The train fiend... Mina Harker is a Geek.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
You know what you need to read? THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, a series of graphic novels by Alan Moore. At least read the first volume or two. In which Mina Harker really comes into her own!
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
And, a related question. The hero married the heroine once, but it was bigamous -- wife #1 was still alive. Then she dies, and he wants to marry wife #2 again. Perfectly reasonable, making an honest woman of her and so forth. But would the Church of England play ball? Or would the reverend deem the whole business too unrespectable to be tolerated, forcing them to slink off to the registry office? Oh and yes, wife 2 is pregnant at this moment so the ceremony would legitimize the otherwise illegitimate offspring.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
And, a related question. The hero married the heroine once, but it was bigamous -- wife #1 was still alive. Then she dies, and he wants to marry wife #2 again. Perfectly reasonable, making an honest woman of her and so forth. But would the Church of England play ball? Or would the reverend deem the whole business too unrespectable to be tolerated, forcing them to slink off to the registry office? Oh and yes, wife 2 is pregnant at this moment so the ceremony would legitimize the otherwise illegitimate offspring.
If wife No 1 is dead, that makes husband a widower. If wife No 2 or husband meet the residence requirements, it's my impression that both then and now, they would be entitled to be married in church. Provided the baby is born after the wedding, he or she is legitimate. The fact that part of the time when he or she was in utero, the parents were not married is irrelevant.
Under modern law, except for the purpose of inheriting titles, if a child is born out of wedlock, but the parents later marry, that makes the child legitimate. I'm fairly sure that this change is since the 1890s. I think it was sometime in the 1920s. So in the 1890s, if a child was born illegitimate, that status was immutably fixed for life.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
Yes indeed. Which gives all the characters powerful motivation. And a deadline! Nothing better for plot tension.
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Net Spinster
Shipmate
# 16058
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Posted
I think bigamy showed up fairly often in Victorian novels but usually the woman was the one with two husbands and thought the first was dead before marrying the second. In one convoluted plot (early Trollope novel, Castle Richmond) a landowning family with entailed property discovers that the wife's (A) first husband, a villain, is still alive and so her children by the second are illegitimate; before the father can make some arrangements to take care of the children, he dies and all the property goes to a cousin. Eventually it turns out that the first husband at the time he married A still had another wife living and so wasn't legally married to A so her 'second' marriage was legal and her children legitimate.
Note there were a couple of oddities in who you could marry. A man could not marry his dead wife's sister or his dead brother's widow in England at that time (there are pages of Parliament debate over changing those little laws).
As for strong women, Madame Max Goesler in Phineas Redux comes to mind. Convinced that the man she loves is innocent even though many/most of his other friends think he is guilty, she travels across Europe to hunt down the evidence that will free him. Wilkie Collins also had a few such as Marian Halcombe. And that is just the male authors.
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spinner of webs
Posts: 1093 | From: San Francisco Bay area | Registered: Dec 2010
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
You know what you need to read? THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, a series of graphic novels by Alan Moore. At least read the first volume or two. In which Mina Harker really comes into her own!
I have read it! Been reading Alan Moore since he called himself Curt Vile. I used to buy Warrior comic as it came out...
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
You know what you need to read? THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, a series of graphic novels by Alan Moore. At least read the first volume or two. In which Mina Harker really comes into her own!
Good graphic novel. Although I feel that Bram Stoker probably had a better idea of how the Jonathan Harker - Mina affair would have played out than Alan Moore does.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
The graphic novels were certainly better than the film, though, which seemed to miss the whole point of Mina's character (as imagined by Alan Moore). She dominates the Extraordinary Gentlemen by sheer force of personality. Giving her superpowers of her own diminishes her, IMO.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
The graphic novels were certainly better than the film, though, which seemed to miss the whole point of Mina's character (as imagined by Alan Moore). She dominates the Extraordinary Gentlemen by sheer force of personality. Giving her superpowers of her own diminishes her, IMO.
Agreed. I hated what they did to her in the movie.
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
No, the movie was a travesty and should be avoided at all costs. The graphic novels are a delight. For mature readers only, of course. And perhaps you are familiar with Jess Nevins's glosses upon the GNs? He explains =all= the background references and jokes.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
And perhaps you are familiar with Jess Nevins's glosses upon the GNs? He explains =all= the background references and jokes.
More fun, surely, to spot them for yourself?
The great thing is, it avoids that feature of the direr historical novels where, in order to establish this is the Real Past, some famous figure is wheeled on. You can't have a 'teccie story set in 19th C Edinburgh but Robert Louis Stevenson is coughing his way through the haar, or Conan Doyle having a quiet pint in the corner.
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
There are so many references that it is not possible to spot them all (especially for those of us not British). And it is crowd-sourced, so if you spot one yourself, and it is not in Nevins's lists, you can let him know and get it in.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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