The Case of the Married Woman: Caroline Norton and Her Fight for Women's Justice

by Antonia Fraser

Overview

Award-winning historian Antonia Fraser brilliantly portrays a courageous and compassionate woman who refused to be curbed by the personal and political constraints of her time.

Caroline Norton dazzled nineteenth-century society with her vivacity, her intelligence, her poetry, and in her role as an artist's muse. After her marriage in 1828 to the MP George Norton, she continued to attract friends and admirers to her salon in Westminster, which included the young Disraeli. Most prominent among her admirers was the widowed Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.

Racked with jealousy, George Norton took the Prime Minister to court, suing him for damages on account of his 'Criminal Conversation' (adultery) with Caroline. A dramatic trial followed. Despite the unexpected and sensational result—acquittal—Norton was still able to legally deny Caroline access to her three children, all under seven. He also claimed her income as an author for himself, since the copyrights of a married woman belonged to her husband.

Yet Caroline refused to despair. Beset by the personal cruelties perpetrated by her husband and a society whose rules were set against her, she chose to fight, not surrender. She channeled her energies in an area of much-needed reform: the rights of a married woman and specifically those of a mother. Over the next few years she campaigned tirelessly, achieving her first landmark victory with the Infant Custody Act of 1839. Provisions which are now taken for granted, such as the right of a mother to have access to her own children, owe much to Caroline, who was determined to secure justice for women at all levels of society from the privileged to the dispossessed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639361571
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	682,508
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Antonia Fraser is the author of many widely acclaimed historical works which have been international bestsellers. She was awarded the Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2000 and was made a DBE in 2011 for services to literature. Her previous books include Mary Queen of Scots; King Charles II; The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England, which won the Wolfson History Prize; Marie Antoinette: The Journey; Perilous Question; The King and the Catholics; and The Wives of Henry VIII. Must You Go?, a memoir of her life with Harold Pinter, was published in 2010, and My History: A Memoir of Growing Up in 2015. Fraser's The Case of the Married Woman is available from Pegasus Books. She lives in London.

Table of Contents

Note on names ix

Family trees of Sheridans and Nortons x

Note on money xii

Author's note xiii

Prologue: She Does Not Exist xv

Part 1 Starry Night

Chapter 1 Child in a Dark Wood 3

Chapter 2 'Here She Comes!' 19

Chapter 3 Melbourne's Hat 35

Chapter 4 What Mr Norton Liked 49

Part 2 Summer's Gone

Chapter 5 Helpless 65

Chapter 6 Extraordinary Trial 79

Chapter 7 Given against Whom? 92

Chapter 8 Hungry for the Children 108

Chapter 9 Woman's Tears and the Law 124

Part 3 Half in Shade, Half in Sun

Chapter 10 Heavenly Norton 141

Chapter 11 Lost Companions 154

Chapter 12 The Name of Writer 169

Chapter 13 Let Him Claim the Copyright 181

Part 4 The Winds of Change

Chapter 14 Reaping in Joy? 199

Chapter 15 Nonna Wants the Pen 213

Chapter 16 Floated Away from Shore 227

Epilogue: One of the Little Hinges 241

References 247

Sources 255

Acknowledgements 266

List of Illustrations 269

Index 271

Editorial Reviews

03/21/2022

Historian and novelist Fraser (The King and the Catholics) delivers an informative biography of author and women’s rights activist Caroline Norton (née Sheridan; 1808–1877). Married to Tory MP George Norton at age 19, Caroline’s sardonic wit and exotic beauty made her one of London’s most popular salon hosts. Though George relied on Caroline’s social connections to help advance his political career, he grew jealous of her many male admirers, including prime minister Lord Melbourne, and physically assaulted her. When the marriage fell apart in 1836, George sued Lord Melbourne for damages due to “criminal conversation,” or adultery. Though he lost that case, English law entitled Norton to full custody of the couple’s three children and the proceeds from Caroline’s writing. In response, Caroline launched a vociferous campaign on behalf of the rights of married women, helping to win passage of the 1839 Infant Custody Act and the 1857 Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Bill, which shifted divorce rulings from ecclesiastical to secular courts and allowed separated women to “hold property in their own names and sign contracts.” Fraser’s vivid character sketches and incisive analysis of legal, political, and rhetorical matters result in a winning study of an indefatigable crusader who turned a personal tragedy into a public triumph. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"A historical delight, The Case of the Married Woman is the biography of a tenacious woman who refused to accept injustice, indifference, and anonymity."

Foreword (starred)

"Fraser's is a spirited book, particularly moving on Norton's old age. It is impressive to see one of our most important intellectual figures turning her mind to this remarkable woman from an earlier, different and not so different era.

The Guardian

"Esteemed historian Fraser, who has written biographies of prominent women, such as Mary, Queen of Scots, and Marie Antoinette, turns her eye to the lesser-known yet impactful Caroline Norton, whose very public divorce turned her into a crusader for women's rights in nineteenth-century England. Enlightening and inspiring."

starred review Booklist

Caroline Norton’s life and writings are vividly realized in Fraser's new analysis of the woman and her words. The woman who leaps from the page is vastly complex. Fraser's illuminating book shows how the story of Caroline Norton still has so much to say about the rights women lack and the abuses they suffer, even today.

BBC History Magazine

Antonia Fraser's tale of double standards is a delight. Combining high society campery and historical scholarship in ways rivalling Nancy Mitford, Antonia Fraser is a great chronicler. The major theme of Fraser's book is rage—hers and Caroline’s—that women in those days had no rights over their children. This is a rousing book. Classic Antonia Fraser.

The Sunday Telegraph

"A clear-eyed telling."

The Wall Street Journal

A fascinating story, and Fraser's account is compulsively readable. A fitting tribute to a captivating, campaigning heroine.

The Evening Standard

"The prolific Lady Antonia Fraser has long been drawn to formidable — and tragic — women, starting with her first biography, of Mary Stuart, more than half a century ago.Fraser’s skill and passion override all, and in The Case of the Married Woman, she renders her subject a woman of dignity, depth and character. Here we meet a heroine, one who fought for herself, for her children, and for all women and children. As Caroline Norton herself put it, 'I do not ask for my rights. I have no rights; I have only wrongs.'"

The New York Times Book Review

Fraser’s book is the first to emphasize what a modern figure Norton is, portraying her not as a hapless victim but as a working mother and bestselling writer who refused to submit to what can only be called the patriarchy. Fraser is surely right to call her a nineteenth-century heroine.

The Sunday Times

2022-02-02
An eminent British historical biographer tells the story of how a mistreated wife and writer helped bring about reform to laws governing married women’s personal and economic rights.

In 19th-century Britain, when women like famed writer Caroline Norton (1808-1877) married, they automatically lost the rights to all their assets—including those they earned—as well as the legal rights to future children. Men owned everything and everyone, both literally and figuratively. Norton came to know these hardships intimately over her long, colorful life. The granddaughter of celebrated playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Caroline quickly earned a reputation for both her beauty and her wit. At 19, still in mourning over the death of her first love, she married George Norton, who became her lifelong nemesis. His cruelty manifested early on in the marriage, and he “took to kicking his wife, pushing and shoving her, when she displeased him in some way. These attacks would be accompanied by an admonishment generally referring to her lack of respect for her husband.” Rather than let herself become a victim, Caroline flourished in her other pursuits as the hostess of a salon that included such luminaries as Lord Melbourne, the young Queen Victoria’s political mentor. When Caroline finally left her husband in 1836, he charged her with adultery and took their children with him. Though she was in a precarious financial position, Caroline used her political connections, influence, and pen to champion the Infant Custody Act of 1839, which granted women custody of their children up to age 7. Over the next two decades, Caroline continued the fight for legal rights for women, engaging in battles for the right to divorce and laying the groundwork for legislation to protect women’s property rights. This engagingly written, rigorously researched book will appeal to both feminist historians and readers who enjoy well-crafted portraits of historical figures who deserve more attention.

An intelligently illuminating biography and cultural history.

Kirkus Reviews