FAMILY LIFE
WEIGH UP THE PROS AND CONS BEFORE TYING THE KNOT
Marriage was socially expected, but it certainly had its drawbacks
Marriage was “the great object of female hope”, according to one (male) writer of the Regency period. He mused that it was “the natural wish and expectation of every amiable girl, to settle happily in marriage”. Becoming a wife certainly did have advantages, offering the chance for a woman to break free from constant chaperonage and to become (respectably) a mother. There was a profound stigma associated with single life, too, with spinsters the subject of much derision.
Yet matrimony had definite downsides. A wife in the Regency period - the late Georgian era, commonly considered to stretch from around 1790 to 1830 - lost various legal rights and potentially some of her property the moment she said ‘I do’. Her husband could lawfully beat and imprison her, and prevent her seeing their children.
Love and companionship aside, marriage did not lookfamily, staying single usually a viable option. In fact, Emily Nugent, Marchioness of Westmeath, who found herself shackled to a serially unfaithful and abusive husband, became convinced that she would have been better off had she never married. She could have lived comfortably on the combined income of her £15,000 marriage portion and inheritance from an unmarried aunt, together giving her as much as £1,300 a year - more than triple what many clergymen earned. Emily could have joined those single ladies who made homes for themselves in Mayfair and continued to take part in the social round.
