Jenni Murray on Woman Sour rewrites the Mayor of Casterbridge :
“The Mayor of Casterbridge, written in 1886, opens in the market square in the town of Dorchester, where a drunk Michael Henchard is offering his wife for sale”
OK, who’s ignorant – Jenni, the scriptwriter, or the researcher? As any Hardy reader kno, Henchard sold his wife at Weydon-Priors fair, miles from Dorchester – and the book opens with the Henchards trudging towards that village. The news of Henchard’s wife-selling could hardly have come as a revelation to the citizens had he done the deed in the market-place.
The rewriting of history continues when presenter Fiona Clampin gets chatting to Sue Clarke and feminist English lecturer Dr Jane Thomas from the University of Hull.
“It’s worth remembering that labouring people in rural districts didn’t necessarily marry – they would ratify their engagement by having intercourse, and if the woman got pregnant than they would marry, and if she didn’t get pregnant then if they didn’t want to they wouldn’t marry … so I think that wife-selling was an early form of divorce in those days”
“Yes, I’ve heard that”
Three points here
a) labouring people DID marry, even in the distorted picture we’re given here. The authors of “An Economic History of Bastardy in England and Wales” give a figure of 6% for illegitimate births at the start of the 19th century (as compared to over 40% now). In fact pregnancy generally led to marriage – and the birth of an illegitimate child was usually followed by marriage unless the man defected. As the ne’er-do-well father in Hardy’s ‘A Tragedy of Two Ambitions’ describes it :
“She was my wife as lawful as the Constitution – a sight more lawful than your mother was until some time after you were born !”
b) AFAIK, the ‘proving’ of a relationship by pre-marital intercourse, with marriage the result of pregnancy, was ONLY a custom of the Isle of Portland, and notable because it was such an exception. In Hardy’s ‘The Well-Beloved’, Avice Caro’s “modern feelings” are quite against the tradition, which she feels Pierston’s father may insist on.
“If the woman does not prove with child, after a competent time of courtship, they conclude they are not destined by Providence for each other ; they therefore separate ; and as it is an established maxim, which the Portland women observe with great strictness, never to admit a plurality of lovers at one time, their honour is in no way tarnished. She just as soon gets another suitor (after the affair is declared to be broken off) as if she had been left a widow, or that nothing had ever happened, but that she had remained an immaculate virgin”
Hutchins, “History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset,” vol. ii., p. 820, 1868, quoted in Bloch.
“So faithfully was this “island custom” observed that, on the one hand, during a long period no single bastard was born on the “island,” and, on the other, every marriage was fertile. But when, for the further development of the Portland stone trade, workmen from London, with the habits of the large town, came to reside in Portland, these men took advantage of the “island custom” and then refused to marry the girls with whom they had cohabited. Thus, in consequence of freer intercourse with the “civilized” world, the “Portland custom” has gradually fallen into desuetude.” – (The sexual life of our time in its relations to modern civilization, Iwan Bloch, pub F.J. Rebman, London 1909)
c) the remark “so I think that wife-selling was an early form of divorce in those days” doesn’t follow from what goes before – and in any event, it was never considered as anything but a disgraceful proceeding.
Laban, You’re completely disregarding the impact of pooblic boodget coots on Weydon-Priors at the time
Next week on Woman Sour we look at the theme of feminism in Hardy’s best known novel, Pride and Prejudice, and ask whether Jude the Obscure was a closet gay.
Interesting stuff, Laban. Good dissection of the BBC’s bias even when trying to “interpret” literature for the public.
Ah yes, poor Miss Havisham in her wedding finery, victim of patriarchal oppression in George Eliot’s great work, Barchester Towers.
Seriously, Laban, I don’t think the Beeboids are all that keen on reading books by authors who actually know about a given subject. Much simpler just to hand a feminist a megaphone.
I blame Thatcher.
thanks Laban
Your knowledge is obviously greater than the BBC in spite of theirs being funded by several billions.
It could just perhaps be lazy research – but BBC preconceived ideas always come from the Left
‘Woman Sour’??? No, no, no! It’s ‘Wimmin Sour’!!
Well spotted, Laban.
The stability of the monogamous bond and its almost universal observance is a striking feature of English life in the meticulosly kept Parish Records from the 15th/16th Century inwards.
Marriage was a sacrament both before and after the Reformation. Burial records also attest to the stability of marriage in terms of years. Till death do us etc.
The consevation of property and the respect for contracts made England a jumping off point for the European adventure.
To go to literature. Shakespeare. Winter’s Tale
‘A name as base as a flax wench who puts to before her wedding troth.’
I will say it. England was a deeply Christian society.
Of course, there were those who fell foul of convention. Always will be.But the social ostracism and disgrace meant that pregnant country girls would be sent even to the Virginia colonies as indentured servants on occasion.
Tarts were called ‘ditch drabs’
Hardly complimentary.
It only went to court because of a dispute but that shows the strong hold of contract and marriage. My word is my bond in late 15th Century England.
Foucault, darling of the left (and gay) sees this as repression.
I see this as a society with a sense of honour and law.
The marxisr deconstructionists see the ‘Victorian’ as an aberation to ‘normalise’ the modern I see the modern as the aberation.
Enjoy.
In March 1475 a young Londoner named William Rote appeared in the Consistory court of the diocese of London to be examined by an ecclesiastical judge. His appearance was prompted by a lawsuit that had been launched against him by Agnes Wellys, who alleged that he had refused to honour the marriage vows they had made together. In answer to Agnes’s charges, William told a story, which the court’s registrar translated into Latin and recorded in a deposition (or testimony) book. This is how the story goes. One afternoon the previous summer, on the day before the feast of the Assumption, William had gone for a social visit to the house of his older friend, John Wellys, bringing a jug of wine that William thought they would drink together. Instead of the friendly reception he had expected, William found John Wellys very angry. Wellys accused Rote of having “violated” Wellys’s daughter Agnes—whether he meant that William had raped or seduced her is not clear. Before a number of other people present at the time, including Agnes, Wellys threatened Rote: “You will marry her, even if I have to force you.” William responded to Wellys’s accusation by saying that he certainly had never had sexual relations with Agnes and that he had no wish to marry her. John Wellys became even angrier and pulled out a knife. He would have stabbed William, as William testified, had not another man stepped between them and held Wellys’s arm back. In the ensuing scuffle William escaped from the house, running out into the street. Agnes and her mother gave chase, shouting after him, “Hold the thief!” They caught William and brought him back to the house, where John Wellys was waiting, still very angry. After that more threats followed, as William’s testimony detailed:
Wellys said to him that unless this witness [William Rote] would contract marriage with his daughter Agnes, he or someone else in his name would give this witness a sign that he would take with him to his grave. Wellys also said that he would bring this witness before the mayor and alderman where he would be confounded by such embarrassment that the shame would compell him to contract marriage with Agnes. So, as much from fear of his body as from shame at appearing before the mayor and aldermen, this witness contracted marriage there with Agnes.
By late medieval church law, a contract of marriage was the speaking, by the prospective husband and wife, of the words of consent to the union (“I William take you Agnes as my wife”; “I Agnes take you William as my husband”), words that in themselves made the sacrament of marriage, regardless of where they were spoken or whether or not a priest was present. William’s contract was not a promise or a betrothal, but a binding, indissoluble union—or at least, it would have been, had William spoken the words freely and without coercion. In order to make certain that William could not repudiate the vows he had made, John Wellys ensured that they were spoken in the presence of a number of important men whom he had summoned expressly for that purpose.
To be fair to Ms Thomas, she was only giving the client (Woman Sour) what they wanted – i.e. to give a view of the Victorian age through the distorting prism of modern prejudices. But the only labouring people in Victorian England who didn’t marry were either celibate, unfortunate, or the very lowest underclass/declassed type.
Not that people didn’t have sex then – anyone who’s done their family tree will find a few births before the marriages. And, as single mother Caroline Aspent put it in another Hardy story “I never had a young man before! And I was so onlucky to be catched the first time, though some of the girls down there go on like anything!”
On that last point of premarital sex, Jude Fawley – in accordance with the social convention of the day – marries Arabella, after she falls “pregnant”. The moral code compelled him to do the honourable thing.
test post
God help us if the thickos at the BBC discover the history of Scots Law on this subject. A “bidey-in” was treated as married by “habit and repute”, even if not legally married, and had the same legal rights as a wife.
How do jokers like this get air time?
One side of my family comes from Dorset, a lot of them from the area around the Isle of Portland.
I have done lots of research in the family history.
No noticeably higher rates of illigitimacy, marriage was the norm, to suggest otherwise is evidenceless nosense that shames the BBC.
My surprise is that they couldn’t somehow get some tolerant muslims leading the movement for sex before marriage relationships in the 18th and 19th century and how the evil american jews sought to stop them.