Stories of Independent Women from 17th–20th Century: Genteel Women Who Did Not Marry

By Charlotte Furness

Explore the lives of four elite women from British history who cast off society’s expectations to live life on their own terms.

As the fight for women’s rights continues, and whilst men and women alike push for gender equality around the globe, this book aims to introduce readers to four women who, in their own way, challenged and defied the societal expectations of the time in which they lived.

Some chose to be writers, some were successful businesswomen, some chose to nurture and protect, some traveled the globe, some were philanthropists. Each one made the conscious decision not to marry a man.

Elizabeth Isham of Lamport Hall, Anne Robinson of Saltram, Anne Lister of Shibden Hall and Rosalie Chichester of Arlington Court. These are elite women, all connected to country houses or from noble families throughout the UK, and this book explores to what extent privilege gave them the opportunity to choose the life they wanted, thus guiding the reader to challenge their own beliefs about elite women throughout history.

This book is unique in that it brings the stories of real historical women to light—some of which have never been written about before, whilst also offering an introduction to the history of marriage and societal expectations of women.

Starting in 1609 and traveling chronologically up to 1949, with a chapter for each woman, this book tells their remarkable stories, revealing how strong, resilient and powerful women have always been.

Praise for Stories of Independent Women from seventeenth–twentieth Century

“Charlotte presents the personal histories of four women from the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries in some detail and in the context of examining their effects on the matter of gender equality. Fascinating.” —Books Monthly (UK)

“Very informative, clear and quite enlightening. . . . Well done to the author Charlotte Furness.” —UK Historian

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526704405

Charlotte Furness

Charlotte Furness was born and raised in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. After completing a Bachelor Degree in English, and a Master’s Degree in Country House Studies at the University of Leicester, she started a career in heritage, working for English Heritage and the trust-managed Lamport Hall. She has also worked at Harewood House, Temple Newsam House and Renishaw Hall. Whilst working in this field, she has come across many stories which, unless told, would have been lost in the annals of time. She now works as a full-time writer and sees it as her mission to bring these forgotten stories to the attention of as many readers as possible, to preserve them so that they can be enjoyed in their full glory. She also writes a blog, The Country House Hag, which shares snippets of her experience of working in heritage and her knowledge surrounding heritage and history.

Book preview

Introduction

It is important to note that the women in this study had differing levels of anonymity in terms of existing research.

Elizabeth Isham has had a significant amount of academic research done into her life, and particularly into her autobiography of 1638, but her story has not been published in a popular fiction or non-fiction text to this point. Academic studies, by their very in-depth nature, tend to only focus on a shorter period of time; for example, looking at the dates around her courtship of John Dryden which lasted only a year. There are few studies which look holistically at the entirety of her life. Isham’s chief historian, Isaac Stephens, has written a number of papers which do give an overview of Isham’s life when all are read together, and these papers are a great source for wider understanding of the religious and social life of the layperson in the seventeenth century, however in my opinion they lose some of the personality which Isham’s writing so clearly displays. Other historians of Elizabeth Isham include Anne Cotterill, Tom Cogswell (who initially discovered the Isham biography in the archives at Princeton University), Elizabeth Clarke and a number of PhD students. For this reason, Elizabeth Isham is considered one of the more known figures in this study.

Next we meet Anne Robinson, born into a wealthy and influential Yorkshire family, but who gave up any thoughts of marriage upon the death of her sister when she took up the role of surrogate mother to her niece and nephew, helping her deeply bereaved brother-in-law to manage his estate at Saltram in Plymouth. Anne Robinson’s letters run to thousands of pages in total and together with letters from her brothers and sisters-in-law, paint a vivid portrait of gentry life in the long eighteenth century. The letters, which are currently held at the Plymouth and West Devon Record office have only been looked at periodically, and certainly have not been edited, studied, or published into a comprehensive story. This book will pick out key letters between Anne and her relatives and friends which tell us the story of her life, but more research and work should be done on this remarkable cache of letters.

When this book was in its very early stages of research, Anne Lister was still a lesser known character, known mostly to northern historians and the LGBTQ+ community. However, since the time of writing, the Sally Wainwright ITV drama Gentleman Jack has been released and so by the time of publication, Anne will have become a much more familiar name to readers than was initially envisaged. Nevertheless, where television dramas and early translations of Anne’s diaries focus on the romantic aspect of Anne’s life, this study seeks to give a biographical view of her life from birth to death and, as is the aim of this book, to explore how she lived her single life at Shibden Hall and how she successfully managed the estate. While Anne Lister did not marry a man, she considered herself married to Ann Walker, even if the law did not formally recognise it.

The final woman in this study is Rosalie Chichester who lived in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, making her the most modern of the four women studied. She was born, raised, lived and died at Arlington Court in Devon, an only child and heiress. Why she never married is somewhat of a mystery as any diaries Rosalie wrote about her personal life have not survived. What has survived is hundreds of short stories, novellas and Dickensian style newspapers recording her day-to-day activities, as well as travel journals which document her passion for worldwide exploration. She was also a prolific collector, creating a museum in the dining room of her large country house, which she regularly opened to the local community. She taught botany and other natural subjects to girls from the local village and was a philanthropist for a number of causes. She was heiress to her father’s estate and fortune, so she simply had no need to marry. This study forms one of only three which have been conducted on the life of Rosalie Chichester, and as such she is the least known character in this book.

These four women are just a sample of a relatively unexplored group of women – those who chose to lead a single life in the elite world of the English country house. More work should certainly be carried out to uncover more stories from similar women in an attempt to redefine and correct the long-held perception that women throughout history were only wives and mothers.

Marriage in the Seventeenth Century

Elizabeth Isham is perhaps the most unusual character in this study. Born during a time when female expectations were firmly grounded at hearth and home, her story of independence is one which is very rare. She was enabled to make such a decision through the financial freedom she enjoyed by being born into a noble family. This gave her a home which had space for her to live in as an adult, poorer homes being only big enough really for one set of adults; and it also gave her support financially, an estate of the size of Lamport could easily support, feed, clothe and pay for one more person. Elizabeth also lived during the English Civil War and as such her brother, Justinian Isham, was away from home for a number of years. This meant it was also useful to have Elizabeth at Lamport to manage the house and estate amid troubling times.

For women born into the lower classes, independence was a much rarer option. An unmarried woman in the seventeenth century was vulnerable financially and morally, and it was seen as a mark of great shame for a woman not to have married young, and certainly not to marry at all. Taylor Berzins states that women at this time were ‘legally bound as the property of men’,¹ to the extent that sexual assault and rape were termed a ‘property crime’ against either the father or the husband of the woman in question. The injured woman was merely spoiled goods and if an unmarried woman was raped, she was unlikely to be able to marry afterwards.

Marriage, therefore, whether desired or not was seen as a secure place where a woman could be ‘protected’ by the male in the household. At this time, women would sometimes contribute to the family income through businesses which could be run at home such as laundry, garment making and mending, weaving, and more, all under the careful watch of their husband and master. Alice Brabcová also states that ‘a family centrered around a married couple represented the basic social, economic and political unit’,² therefore, to choose not to marry was seen as breaking that basic social need. Women were viewed as vital to the continuation of the economic stability of the country and to choose to live a single life was to endanger that continuation. Singlehood should be shunned at all costs.

By choosing to remain single and devote her life to religion and God, Elizabeth Isham was seen as going against the grain of expectation. We see this repeatedly throughout her writings where she battles not only her own consciousness over whether to marry or not, but also through the opinions and persuasions of her acquaintances, who try to urge, cajole and even frighten her into marriage.

Marriage in the Eighteenth Century

By the eighteenth century, we enter the Georgian period; one which heralded a new understanding of marriage. This period is often thought of as being freer for women than both earlier and later periods, albeit only for elite women and only to a certain degree. For poor women, the expectations were still relatively the same; security came from making a good marriage to a man who could provide home and earnings from a good job. This period saw the beginning of the industrial revolution, and so working-class women began to leave the confines of the house to work in factories and mills, earning as much money as their husbands and therefore able to contribute to the family finances – although they were not considered equal.

For the upper classes, the eighteenth century marked a period of changing attitudes towards the lives of elite women. The ‘Bon Ton’ women (those at the very pinnacle of noble society) were able to canvass politically, for example the Duchess of Devonshire famously canvassed for the Whig government in the late eighteenth century.

Arranged marriages were still conducted, especially within the upper echelons of society where property and fortune were exchanged, but Ronald Fletcher notes that ‘some things were being done about the nature and condition of marriage generally, and the new ‘public marriages’ were much talked about. Since Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753, it was required that all marriages should be ‘public’; that they should take place in a parish church after the banns had been published on three consecutive Sundays.’³ This was presumably part of the act to try and prevent weddings from being forced swiftly and illegally.

Elite matches were increasingly focused on pairings which were compatible for both the prospective husband and wife; families had realised that loving (or at least companionable) marriages were likely to produce less trouble and more children, and so were favoured over the traditional arranged marriages. Matches were still cultivated by parents, who wanted to give their children options, while also protecting the dynastic future of the family. An eligible young woman would meet a number of young men, all of whom were deemed suitable by her parents, but the ultimate choice of which young man from this cultivated pool she wanted as a husband was hers.

Marriages also happened later than in previous centuries, with most women marrying between the ages of 17 and 21. Most elite marriages were only considered after a young woman had been presented at court at a ‘coming out’ ceremony, usually undertaken in her eighteenth year. At this age it was judged that a young woman was suitably prepared in terms of her education and skills to become a wife and mother, but she was still young enough to produce a number of children for the marriage.

In this way, marriage was still very much a business, with women used still as a commodity to a certain extent, but the choice and opinion of women was beginning to be considered, even if only slightly.

Anne Robinson, born in 1742 in Vienna, was an eligible young woman who had all the prospects to make a successful and advantageous marriage. Whether she had her sights set on marriage at all is unknown, however the untimely death of her sister and the grief of her brother-in-law forced her hand and she gave up any idea of establishing a family of her own and instead took on the roles of a nanny, mother, housekeeper and more for her brother-in-law, niece and nephew. There seems to have been no scandal arising from Anne living under the same roof as her sister’s husband, and indeed, it was accepted by many, with the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire staying with them in Plymouth as well as the king and queen on their summer progress. While Anne worried throughout her life about the sustainability of her position and what future she would have once her niece and nephew were married and away from their home, she lived a comfortable and happy life in her single-womanhood.

Marriage in the Nineteenth Century

The mid-nineteenth century marked the accession of a young female to the throne of England; but rather than the Victorian era under the reign of Queen Victoria heralding a more lenient time for women in England, the freedoms of women at the time actually became stricter. Kathryn Hughes says that ‘during the Victorian period men and women’s roles became more sharply defined than at any other time in history’.⁴ The concept of ‘separate spheres’ is posited by many historians in relation to this period, as men and women began to separate in their roles within the household and in relation to work.

Where in previous centuries men and women would work alongside each other in the house, there began a move away from the home as a place of work and the office became a masculine domain, not suitable for female intervention. This was certainly the case for noble women and the wives of the gentry, who began to see their sphere of influence limited to the country houses that they managed while their husbands were absent. They were still working, but their role and the scope of that work had been redefined. This period also saw a change with domestic architecture in the relationship between the gentry and their household staff, with architecture emerging which separated the two households and made servants more invisible.

For poorer women, the opposite was true; many women from working-class families were finding increasing avenues for work. Not only were factories and mills a place to get work, those who wanted a better wage and a better situation went to work in the retail business, working in shops and the new department stores which opened at the end of the century. They also worked in service. Domestic work was one of the most popular occupations that a young woman from a working-class family could do as the industrial revolution increased the number of wealthy families across the country, so the need for domestic servants increased. It was also seen as respectable work – female and male domestic servants were separated and overseen by a strict housekeeper and butler respectively, so a woman’s modesty was more likely to be preserved – at least as long as the young gentlemen of the family could be trusted not to take advantage.

Childbirth outside of wedlock was still considered taboo, and interestingly during this period, the existence of illegitimate children became less acceptable, compared to the century beforehand. The opening of orphanages, workhouses and sanitoriums paid for by wealthy patrons gave rise to a more disposable and hidden nature within all areas of society. Those who did not fit the mould of what society expected, could now be hidden away behind the walls of an orphanage or an asylum, or forgotten about in a workhouse.

However, this century does host the birth of the suffrage movement, when women began to demand more rights and freedoms as well as the right to vote. The vote was not to come within the nineteenth century, but without the gradual rise of the cause in the late 1800s, the movement would not have had the success it did in the twentieth century. While the suffrage movement was not so much concerned with the rights of women within marriage, the fact that the movement existed to change any aspect of a woman’s existence marks a pivotal turning point in women’s history, an irrevocable change towards gender equality.

It is remarkable that in this time, when so much was changing and yet so much remained the same, that a woman, in many ways ahead of her time, should live a successful and fulfilling life with another woman; a relationship which they both considered a marriage. Anne Lister is unique in this study as it is a study of unmarried women, and yet Anne did consider herself married. She is included in this study because society and the law at the time did not recognise their union, and so she was considered a ‘spinster’ when in actual fact, she was anything but. She was also an astute businesswoman, unafraid of the male-dominated world of coalmining and business, she learned what she needed to and fought fiercely for her place among her contemporaries.

Marriage in the Twentieth Century

It is difficult to talk briefly about marriage in the twentieth century because that hundred-year period saw more extreme changes in absolutely every aspect of society, that it would – and has – taken hundreds of books and studies to do the subject justice. However, as our final lady in this study, Rosalie Chichester, lived up to the year 1949, it is perhaps important that we discuss the social life of women and the marital expectations up to this point in the century. Although even cutting the century in half in this manner does not make it much easier to discuss, it will attempt to give some context to Rosalie’s life.

The first half of the twentieth century saw the death of a queen and the ushering in of a new king and thus the Edwardian period, thereby triggering change. The First World War changed the face of Britain irrevocably; men went abroad to fight and die, and women picked up the work that their male counterparts had left. This marked a significant change in the gender balance of the country as women were forced to, and successfully managed to, keep control of matters in the absence of their husbands and fathers. By the end of the First World War, approximately 700,000 British men had been killed, and those who did return were severely wounded, both mentally and physically. Their wives, sisters and daughters had shouldered the responsibility for ensuring the emotional and financial stability of the family as well as other aspects in their absence. Not only did they enjoy the independence and the feeling of having contributed to the war effort in what ways they could, they did not want to go back to the domestic, silenced roles of the pre-war period.

Add to this the final throes of women’s suffrage, with votes for women finally seeing some success via two laws in 1918 and 1928, and we see that this period of history was arguably the most crucial one for women and women’s rights when compared to the other periods in this book. It is small wonder, then, that many women did not marry at all, choosing instead a career and opportunities to travel which had not previously been available to them. During the war young women had banded together, working in munitions factories or training as nurses as soon as they turned 16, living together away from home, socialising in groups and living a freer life than before the outbreak of war. Therefore when the war ended they were in their mid-twenties, responsible, educated and with a profession. They wanted a marriage where they were considered the equal of their husband, if indeed they married at all.

While Rosalie Chichester had already established her freedom by the outbreak of the First World War, her life was certainly lived in the way she wanted it. An only child, she was introduced to travel at a young age aboard her father’s ship, and her passion for exploration, travel and collecting mementoes would stay with her for a lifetime. As a wealthy heiress, she was not in need of a husband, and instead lived a life according to her own pleasures and interests. This was not purely down to financial freedom; in previous centuries, she may have been pressured into marriage by her parents, or her finances managed by a male relative after the death of her parents. Her freedom of choice comes as a result of both the change in societal expectations as well as the circumstances of her inheritance and family.

Elizabeth Isham of Lamport Hall 1608–1654

‘I suppose that I might have had the mind to marry, but I thought my mind should not be a slave to my body’¹

Elizabeth Isham was born in 1608 to parents John Isham, 1st Baronet and Lady Judith Isham. She was a fiercely religious woman who documented her life in an autobiography which she wrote as a confessional text addressed to God. She never married, despite coming very close in 1630, and she lived at Lamport Hall all her life until her death in 1654. Her autobiography is a fantastic resource for learning about the religious private life of a woman in the early to mid-seventeenth century, as well as the reasons behind her decision to remain unmarried.

For those particularly interested in the religious nature of the autobiography, Isaac Stephens and other historians have written a number of pieces about the importance of her autobiography called her Booke of Remembrance in terms of it allowing us to see the private religious practices of a family in the seventeenth century, the way puritanism and other branches of the church of England faith coexisted together without mutual exclusivity, and they also talk about the rarity of it being a female-written autobiographical piece. For the purposes of this study, we will certainly look at the religious nature of Elizabeth’s writings, but it will form only part of the discussion as we look closer at the story of her life.

Family Background

The Isham