Quote: “There! you’ll find nothing gone but your money, and the jewels – and a few little trifles I thought it advisable to take into my own possession, lest your mercantile spirit should be tempted to turn them into gold. I’ve left you a few sovereigns in your purse, which I expect to last you through the month – at all events, when you want more you will be so good as to give me an account of how that’s spent…” “And so, he said at length, “you thought to disgrace me, did you, by running away and turning artist, and supporting yourself by the labour of your hands, forsooth? And you thought to rob me of my son too, and bring him up to be a dirty Yankee tradesman, or a low, beggarly painter?” (311)
Comment: As I read this passage and the previous pages setting up this scene where he pokes into her writing and demands her keys to all that she possesses, it reminded me of how disjointed those laws surrounding women’s property are. During the whole of their marriage, he evidently regarded the items she has as her possessions or her property – a page before this excerpt mentioned he stated they were to have “a confiscation of property.” The law explicitly states, “What was her personal property before marriage, such as money in hand, money at the bank, jewels, household goods, clothes, etc., becomes absolutely her husband’s, and he may assign or dispose of them at his pleasure whether he and his wife live together or not”(Bodichon 4). In Bodichons remarks, she characterizes this as women being legally robbed of her property by her husband. Helen’s attitude toward this affair, so unfazed, showcases the familiarity she has with this situation – she has no agency to discourage it or any mode of justice.
Question: Later in the novel, when Huntington is dying, she makes him sign a document/written agreement with a witness before seeing Arthur. I wondered where this falls concerning standard practice – would a written agreement have any validity in the legal world? If so, was this an alternative women could look to if the existing laws did not fit in with their marital circumstances, but, as we have witnessed, it takes the acquiescence of their husband. As for child custody, it mentions in the Bodicon reading that “During the lifetime of a sane father, the mother has no rights over her children…”(Bodichon 5), but would alcoholism have been viewed as means to categorize someone unfit and give the mother more rights?
Leave a Reply