Traditional Marriage: The Real Story

Unknown couple in a tintype - from the 1850's, I'd guess by their costumes.

Documenting the American South is a splendid online collection of original texts and images about the the South from colonial times to the twentieth century.  Historical-minded folks like your Head Trucker can easily spend hours or days just browsing through the many and varied sources that, unlike Hollywood, give a true picture of my beautiful, tragic native land.

Yet the picture is not always a pretty one.  Here is an excerpt from a speech given by the learned - and often wry and witty - Walter McKenzie Clark, a Confederate veteran and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, to the Federation of Women's Clubs in New Bern, 1913.  In light of the then-raging controversy over giving women the right to vote, the Chief Justice surveys the history of laws subjugating women to men over the course of the centuries from the ancient Hebrews down to his own time, showing that marriage was always a changing, evolving institution - sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Along the way he has much to say about the conditions of marriage in his own state - all of which gives the lie to the idea that rightwing ranters are so fond of repeating, that "marriage has always and everywhere been the same." 

Naturally, the anti-equality voices in his day prophesied the ruin of the nation and the destruction of the family if women were allowed to vote - just as they had previously cried when women were given property rights, and before that when women were given access to higher education.  You see, fellas?  It's always the same old shit:  the world will come to a screeching halt, utterly collapse, if anybody is allowed to do anything even a hair different from the way Grandpa did it. Because what Grandpa did was the Will of God! Q. E. D.

Here's a relevant excerpt, but go read the whole speech if you have the time - it's a kicker.

The legal status of women under the common law may be briefly stated. It was simply that of a slave. A married woman under the common law owned no property, except after the death of her husband. She could make no contracts, not even for necessaries and not even with the consent of her husband. She could not will or devise her property. Upon her marriage the husband and the wife became one--and that one was the husband. He was master, the wife was a nonentity. The moment she married, he became entitled to all her personal property. He was entitled to the rents and profits of her real estate, which he could sell for his lifetime, or it could be sold for his debts. If she died, the husband still possessed the right to the rents and profits of all her realty for the rest of his life, while at his death she received only a child's part of his personalty and a life right, called a dower, in only one-third of his realty, and for a long time under North Carolina law she could be deprived of even this, for, if he chose, he could sell his realty without her consent and deprive her of dower. She could not appoint a guardian for her children even when she outlived her husband.

As to her personal rights, the married woman came under the absolute control of her husband, who could chastise her if he saw fit, provided the chastisement inflicted no permanent injury. The reason given for this by Judge Pearson as late as 1868 was that it was the husband's duty to "make the wife behave herself," and if he beat her without good cause it was held that the courts would not punish him, because it was too small a matter to take notice of, unless she was permanently injured. The reason seems to be worse than the decision. The husband had the right to imprison his wife, and if in her terror she was driven to take his life, she was guilty of petty treason, as was a slave who took the life of his master, and the penalty as to both was to be burned alive at the stake. This last law was not repealed in North Carolina till 1793, and even after the Revolution, in Iredell County [1787] a widow was thus "drawn and burned at the stake" for the murder of her husband. There were doubtless other cases if the records have not been destroyed by the lapse of time. This was the law in England for many centuries. . . .

If, conditions becoming intolerable, a wife left her husband, at common law he had the unquestioned right to bring her back by force, like any other runaway slave. About twenty years ago, in the famous "Clitheroe case," this was done, but the highest court in England, without any change by statute, reformed the common law and set the woman free. Old-fashioned lawyers were shocked, and asserted that this was the end of marriage; but the prophesied evil has not materialized. . . .

In this State, down to 1899, in at least two sections of our Code "married women, infants, idiots, lunatics, and convicts" were placed in the same category. Practically they have been more or less deemed in that category, in all respects, by decisions of the courts til these have been overruled by the Constitution or by legislative enactment.

A single woman was held fully capable of contracting and controlling her property. On marriage she instantly lost that capacity. The fact of marriage proved her in the eye of the law fit to be classed with idiots and lunatics. In view of the legal status of married women at that time, it may be that there was some force in the idea. . . .

N. B. - Using the very same metaphor, both Queen Victoria and Virginia Woolf - and two more dissimilar personalities can hardly be imagined - testify in their writings to the truth of what the learned jurist says - namely, that "women are but slaves to men."

Now you young'uns must not take that metaphor as a literal description in black and white:  the laws were what they were, but nevertheless, your great-great grandparents and those who came before them danced, flirted, courted, fell in love, married, made babies, and lived happily together most of the time.  Women were not beaten all day, every day, no more than slaves were; in fact most women were never beaten, women being regarded as the "weaker sex," and placed on a pedestal of respect - the "angel in the house," as the saying was. Decent people would have severely frowned on wifebeating as an unmanly act. Most of the time, people just got on with living and made the best of things, as we do today, even while hoping for more freedom and equality.

Then as now, it was just as true in most homes: "If mama's not happy, nobody's happy," as Chief Justice Clark humorously shows in his anecdotes about Lord Coke and his lady.

The horror, however, was not that these terrible things happened all the time to everybody, 24/7 - but that they could happen at any time to a wife, or a slave, depending on the whim of their husbands or masters, or on circumstances that caused a change in their condition.  Likewise, most gay people today have never been the victims of a gay-bashing; though of course we are all aware that it could happen, anywhere, anytime. And the history books record many instances in which injustices or terrible things did happen; so the need for change was not imaginary, as Chief Justice Clark so eloquently shows.

Your Head Trucker believes it's important to have a clear, realistic view of how life was really lived - neither too rosy nor too grim - if we want to truly understand the past, and thereby, understand our own time.

Oh, and about Victoria and Virginia - despite what they wrote, they both had happy marriages with devoted, loving husbands who supported their work.  But still, they felt the chafing inequality of the social system in which they lived.

Unknown male couple in a daguerrotype from the 1850's.