Marriage in matriarchy: matrimony in women's utopian fiction 1888-1909

In the last decade or so of the nineteenth century, marriage came under substantial attack as an institution that, without radical reform, would keep women in a state of virtual slavery to men. Yet many voices claimed that marriage could be reborn as a fulfilling and non-oppressive partnership if its terms were thoroughly rewritten, with women’s interests at heart. A number of feminist utopia texts published in this era demonstrate the protests and aspirations of some women regarding matrimony, by presenting alternative worlds in which marriage suits the emancipated female. The focus is on Jane Hume Clapperton’s Margaret Dunmore: or, A Socialist Home (1888), Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett’s New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future (1889), Amelia Mears’ Mercia, The Astronomer Royal: A Romance (1895), Florence Ethel Mills Young’s The War of the Sexes (1905) and Irene Clyde’s Beatrice the Sixteenth (1909). While political equality is taken as a given, these texts also address economic independence, divorce, the apportioning of housework, motherhood, and the place marriage has in women’s lives comparable to and independent vocation, other friendships, and engagement in community. Marriage is shown as redeemable only if women are granted equality in the economic, legal, cultural as well as political spheres.