Marriage and family
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