Journal #7
- Frances Power Cobbe “Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Children” → Excerpt from book ‘Criminals, Idiots, Women & Minors’: Victorian Writing by Victorian Women Edited by Susan Hamilton
Quote: “The proposal, then, to abolish this law [existing common law on marriage] seems to have in its favour Justice, Expediency, and even the Sentiment which has hitherto blindly supported the law. As the Parliamentary Committee report, they are strongly of opinion ‘that the Common Law of this country, which gives the wife’s property to her husband, should be repealed, and that the wife should have control over her property and earnings; and that her disability to contract and sue and be sued in respect of them should be removed.’That certain difficulties must arise in carrying out so extensive a change is obvious, yet they are probably less than might be supposed; and a brief trial of the working of a new law would enable the legislature to find out the weak point (if any) of their present work. As the Committee remark:
Questions of importance arise in settling details of such a matter. Whether, for instance, the poor law liability of the father for the maintenance of the children should be extended to the mother; whether the change should be confined to future marragues only, or should be applied to existing marriages where other property is acquired, etc.
One thing, however, was unanimously agreed upon, and it is an important point in question.
…A married woman living with her husband has an authority which, in spite of some fluctuation and uncertainty of judicial decisions, seems to be regulated by the general principle of the law of agency. Agency is a mixed question of law and fact, and the court will give due weight to such a fact as the possession of property by a married woman without any express statutable direction.
That such a change could not entail injurious consequences is guaranteed by two facts: first there follows no injurious consequences to the richer classes in England, by whom the law is practically set aside; the second, there have followed no injurious results, but very beneficial ones, to the lower classes in the American States, by whom the law has been repealed. We have already cited the testimony of distinguished American lawyers, Mr. Dudley Field, judge Welles, Governor Washbourne, and others, to this point. Justice, Expediency, a truly guided Sentiment, and such Experience as is yet attainable – all these then point unanimously to the repeal of the existing Common Law, as it touches the Property of Married Women.”(Cobbe 105).
Analysis: In thinking of Harris urges us to think of the ways our own sources counter texts and engage in persuasive moves they make within their own source material, I selected an excerpt from Cobbe’s essay titled “Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Children” where she addresses the movement around the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act. Throughout this piece there are numerous instances where Cobbe will quote directly from parliament or discussion from the American judicial system and debate their points, raise counter arguments, and extend those examples to the realities of women in England. In this particular example, she takes the discussions from the Parliamentary Committee where they air some of their concerns on the repeal of the common law surrounding married women’s property and even though Cobbe tells us they do agree, she makes a point to contend with each potential injury and prove why it wouldn’t be an issue. She takes their concerns seriously but rather than simply argue that the benefits outweigh any costs, she takes the time to move in a systematic fashion to take those credible sources from America or point to the evidence of the class system in England and how it wouldn’t face any consequences from this repeal. As Harris says, “…the aim of countering should not simply be to note the gaps or limits of another text but to use that critique to develop a position of your own…if you keep your focus as a writer less on the problems of a text than on the work you want to do with it, you still can’t counter without disagreeing”(Harris 67). Most of how Cobbe frames her whole piece is to do something with the sources around her and make them work for her in advancing her position that the society has shifted and the law must catch up.
- Harris’ “Skepticism and Civility”
In thinking about this section from Harris and identifying the limits of certain arguments and/or approaches within the sources I am working within for my project of extending a past essay I think that my attitude is not so much as to reverse or claim something different but more of a respectful admiration for the confines of sources I had available to use. In my extension, the effort isn’t to discredit or counter those earlier sources but assess some meaningful gaps in their interpretations that might be better bolstered by incorporating other types of sources such as primary materials from debates, works of political theory that contextualize the political moment that spurred Brontë’s novel or Bodichon’s activism. I also have to keep in mind that in keeping my extension right around this time period of mid-Victorian it can be powerful to examine why such an emphasis on progress surrounding marriage and property came out so strongly but also it will be important to acknowledge that this is a snapshot of a very progressive and prolific moment but there are other issues that might relate but this project and my sources just didn’t have the interest in giving as much attention to. I am also thinking about some of my past ideas with this source from ENG 216 and have a quote from my essay that says,
“That the legislative judgment of England should hold up before the world a perfect picture of what it understands that married life ought to be, is of much more consequence than that it should try to mend cases which must be bad at the best”
It might be helpful for me to really distinguish that as my focus in ENG 216’s short essay was directly related to how the Brontë’s novel responds to this idea of a legal ideal for marriage, I was limited in how many outside sources to incorporate and that in revisiting this, I can get much deeper into the politics of the reality of Victorian women and not just fictionalized accounts to perhaps better understand why literature was such an important factor for pushing progressive views in society but how the hard work in law and politics had to also be such a relentless driving push to actually implement these changes that their society has begun to think differently about.
