Sin, Sanctity and the Sister-in-Law by David G. Barrie

Author:David G. Barrie [Barrie, David G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Great Britain, Social History
ISBN: 9781351247832
Google: Nc1mDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-07-27T01:32:59+00:00

5 ‘The Man is Everything, and the Woman Nothing’

Protecting, purifying and conceptualising the family, c.1862–881

Introduction

Growing criticism of scripture had profound implications. It forced those who supported the existing prohibition on marriage to focus on the social impact of reform, as the so-called ‘Social Question’ rose to prominence. Perceptions and representations of women and the family continued to colour the ensuing discourse, but what constituted the family, and how it should be best protected, assumed greater significance.2 Those on both sides of the debate exploited the issue of gender, and its role within the domestic sphere, to strengthen their arguments. What, at face value, was a battle over marriage between in-laws was underpinned by a wider struggle over the guardianship of the family, through which ran a concern with church and patriarchal authority. Occurring at a time when Victorians were moving towards viewing marriage in more secular terms,3 MDWS brought to the fore issues of love, shame and scandal – and in doing so, exposed the gendered assumptions that underpinned male biases and desires. As the Reverend Gibson wrote in his tract on the Marriage Affinity Question (1854),

the whole argument proceeds on the assumption, that to accommodate a widower and his children, the interests of a sister are little to be regarded; that the man is everything, and the woman nothing but the instrument of his convenience and gratification.4

Attitudes continued to be shaped by prevailing middle-class notions of femininity and long-held suspicions of the unattached single woman. Clergymen, in particular, exploited notions of purity and pollution to validate their own position.5 The notion of the ‘pure’ and the ‘impure’ provided a powerful rhetorical device, invoking concerns that permeated not just family life but also perceptions of national and cultural identity. However, as the century progressed, less and less significance was attached to such arguments in light of biological discoveries and changing conceptions of the family, the unattached sister-in-law and male sexual desire. A changing focus on age/lifecycle in political discourse also helped to reduce concerns about the impact reform would have on society’s morality. Licentiousness was increasingly linked with poverty and squalid housing which would, ultimately, strengthen the resolve of social reformers to settle the ‘Social Question’ once and for all.

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