The End of the ‘Marriage Question’: Bad Romance in the Yellow Book Stories of Ella D’Arcy, Evelyn Sharp, and Ada Leverson

Abstract

By the end of the nineteenth century, a wave of legal reforms had passed into law in England, illustrating the way in which reality often failed to live up to the ideal of companionate marriage lauded in conduct books. The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 permitted a woman to sue for divorce on the grounds of adultery and desertion or brutality (a husband could sue for divorce based solely on adultery); it was amended in 1878 to permit a woman to seek a legal separation if her husband was convicted of assaulting her. The Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 allowed women to keep their earnings after marriage and inheritances or gifts up to £200, and the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 updated this to grant every married woman sole possession of all her earnings and inheritances. In 1886, the Maintenance in Case of Desertion Act expanded causes for separation to include desertion and neglect; in 1895 persistent cruelty was added to the list of causes for formal separation, and the law no longer required prior conviction and jailing of the husband.[i] All of these laws echoed broader cultural debates about the ways in which the realities of marriage often harboured violence, economic inequality, and a lack of mutual love, respect, and understanding, despite the pervasive idea – registered in popular fiction – that marriage was a route to happiness.

[i] For an overview of Victorian marriage, property, and child custody laws, see Jennifer Phegley, Courtship and Marriage in Victorian England (Praeger, 2012), p. xvii.