Fighting for Her Dignity, and Her Children, at the Cost of Her Reputation
April 29, 2022
Credit...Hulton Archive/Getty Images
THE CASE OF THE MARRIED WOMAN: Caroline Norton and Her Fight for Women’s Justice, by Antonia Fraser
Many modern women may well remember a time when they could not open a bank account, or sign for a mortgage, without a countersignature from their husband or father. Antonia Fraser, in her 90th year, certainly will. What none of us, happily, can remember is the time when married women had no legal status at all. Once a woman married, her legal identity was subsumed into that of her husband. A married woman could not sign a contract, nor draw up 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. Born in 1808, 30 years before Queen Victoria came to the throne, she and her two equally beautiful sisters made a stir when they debuted in 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 married life was relatively smooth. The couple had three children even as their home became a political salon, with the lovely Mrs. Norton at its center. Indeed, as she shone and her husband increasingly took a back seat, he began to feel she was perhaps too much at the center. He may have been happy for his charming wife to use her influence with the prime minister, Lord Melbourne, to gain George a plum sinecure, but at home, he was less happy that she wielded such influence at all. Similarly, while George was delighted to spend the money Caroline earned as a writer of fashionable novels and verse, he resented that others were more interested in meeting the society author 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 earnings as a writer. All this was, at the time, his legal right.
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And so, driven by the loss of her children, Caroline did that most unladylike of things: She fought. She fought George in the court of public opinion, writing pamphlets and essays and articles. She fought him in the courts. And he fought back. He sued Lord Melbourne, his patron, for “criminal conversation” with his wife.
Crim. con., as it was known, was not quite the same thing as suing for adultery. It was, rather, a property suit: 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. George demanded 10,000 pounds from Melbourne, millions in today’s money.
While George did in fact want money, he wanted revenge much more, and by naming Melbourne he focused public attention squarely on his wife. In court, as in life, George Norton did not shine, and, unable to actually prove adultery, he lost the case. But the damage was done: Melbourne, tainted by the scandal, abandoned Caroline Norton, as did her friends.
However, she did not give up. Norton continued to campaign tirelessly for access to her children, and the publicity she brought to the legal situation forced politicians to confront the law. In 1839, the Custody of Infants Act was passed, allowing judges to give custody of children under 7 to the mother.
Norton influenced art, too: It is suggested, says Fraser, that both Disraeli and Trollope modeled fictional characters on her. She also suggests, interestingly, that the heroine of Anne Brontë’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” who flees a violent husband, might have been modeled on the notorious Mrs. Norton.
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The prolific Lady Antonia Fraser has long been drawn to formidable — and tragic — women, starting with her first biography, of Mary Stuart, more than half a century ago. In the last decade, she has focused on the social upheavals of the early 19th century, writing books on the Great Reform Act of 1832 and the fight for Catholic Emancipation in 1829. She thus perhaps sometimes assumes a little too much knowledge of a reader coming fresh to the period. But Fraser’s skill and passion override all, and in “The Case of the Married Woman,” she renders her subject a woman of dignity, depth and character. Here we meet a heroine, one who fought for herself, for her children, and for all women and children. As Caroline Norton herself put it, “I do not ask for my rights. I have no rights; I have only wrongs.”
Judith Flanders is a historian. Her most recent book is “A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order.”
THE CASE OF THE MARRIED WOMAN: Caroline Norton and Her Fight for Women’s Justice
By Antonia Fraser | 286 pp.| Pegasus | $28.95
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