Other Women by Fiona McDonald

Author:Fiona McDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752493893
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

Part 4

The Notion of Free Love

Because women, and married women in particular, had such a hard time of it in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – not being able to own property, being the property of their husbands, not having the right to custody of their children and so on – there were some men and women who felt this imbalance needed to be righted. Marriage was being seen by some women as a legal form of slavery – and the idea of any woman wanting to enslave herself in that way was preposterous. These were radical thinkers of the time – and most conventional, respectable people were horrified by some of their notions.

If marriage held so many negatives aspects for women, why should they bother marrying? Why not live with the man they love and keep their freedom as well? The people who put forward such ideas were not talking about mistresses or a substitute marriage but a companionship in which both partners were equal. It also meant that when affection left a relationship the couple would be free to break apart and set up with another lover.

Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of Mary Shelley, was one such thinker. As a wife one gave up all reason to exist at all, she claimed. She thought women needed to have more equality in their relationships and she tried to practise what she believed in. It was not as easy as it looked in theory. She found herself in one relationship in which she wanted stability and monogamy but the man did not. She had an illegitimate child with him. She later married the philosopher William Godwin who shared her views on marriage, yet they got married in order to legitimise the birth of their daughter Mary.

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