Legal requirements

• 1754 Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act
• 1837 civil weddings
• ‘consensual unions’ still flourishing

 

Ending marriage

• Death
• Marital breakdown
• Divorce
• Legal separation
• 1839 Infants’ Custody Act
• 1857 Divorce Act
• legislation confirmed sexual double standard

 

Changing nature of marriage

Aristocracy, gentry – importance of endogamy

• Early 18c. dynastic marriages
• mid/late 18c. ‘companionate marriage’
• importance of the ‘season’

Middle classes – endogamy important

• Semi-private courtship
• Domestic ideology
• Sibling and cousin marriages

Working classes

• mid 19c ‘respectable’ working class
• rites of passage important
• ‘rough’ working class
• bridal pregnancy common
• consensual unions frequent

The Family

• Resilience of the family but structure changed
• Early modern family – ‘public’ institution
• mid 19c family - ‘private’ institution
• women’s input essential at all levels
• 19c – growing state intervention and regulation of family life

 

Domesticity and home-making - mid 19c

aristocracy, gentry

• sense of marital partnership
• ‘strong matriarchal undercurrents’ (Gleadle)
• sexual double standard

middle class

• ‘separate spheres’
• home = a haven in a hostile world

working class

• complex relationships of
• resource allocation
• power and authority

working-class women

• victims or matriarchs?

 

Motherhood

• ‘cult of motherhood’
• 19c taboos on discussion of reproduction

Marital fertility

• Early modern – pre-marital sex accepted
• 1750-1850 – soaring birth rate
• early 20c – birth rates slowing