Tea at Trianon: The Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, May 4, 2022

The Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act

From The Conversation:

It was once illegal in Britain for a woman to marry the husband of her dead sister. Legally, they were seen as brother and sister, making such marriages incestuous. While it might seem odd now, this was a hot issue for Victorians and many argued that it should be legal.

William Gladstone, prime minister and leader of the Liberal party, was among many Victorians who argued for the law’s repeal on the grounds that the ecclesiastical law it was based upon was open to interpretation. He argued that on this basis these marriages were already legal in the colonies and that the law which made the union illegal confirmed that in-law marriages made before 1835 were sanctioned, placing a disparity within the law. It also highlighted the way that the rich could circumvent the law by marrying on the continent, while the poor had no such recourse, making an intrinsic inequality within society.

Nevertheless, the law wasn’t finally repealed until 1907 – 72 years after the 1835 Marriage Act first brought it into effect. Part of the scandal inherent in this law was the suggestion that female desire could exist before marriage – that a woman could sexually desire her sister’s husband. This, combined with the implication of incest, meant that the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act became far more controversial and divisive than anybody anticipated when it was first passed.

Dinah Craik was one of many authors intrigued by this controversy and who wrote on the subject. Craik was a popular author of domestic fiction, which were books focused upon the home life of women, written by and for women. Craik had cultivated a reputation as a respectable, middle class and even matronly author. Although her writing was sometimes seen as old fashioned, this reputation allowed her to write about controversial issues without appearing to be too controversial herself. (Read more.)