Living in Sin
Page 44
Russia with Fermin, but without Rudolf, in 1918, she refused. Rocker final y
got out in March 1918, and ended up in Amsterdam. He requested Millie’s
release, and she and Fermin joined him in the autumn of 1918. The Rockers
lived in Europe until 1933, when the Nazis ran them out of Germany, and,
for the second time, they emigrated to the United States. In order to get
into the country, they final y married – thirty-five years after refusing to
do so the first time.88
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Both before and after the legal ceremony, Witkop and Rocker were
a devoted pair, sharing a passion for anarchism and socialism. Their
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living in sin
happiness resulted in part from Rocker’s practice of equality. According
to William Fishman, ‘Rocker lived out his conviction that, in every sense,
relations between the sexes should be free, and without artifice.’ After
Millie’s death in 1955, Rocker wrote a touching tribute to her: ‘She opened
a door in my heart which had been unknown to me before … She was
a part, and surely the best part of my life.’ In this case, the ritual did not
seem to matter one way or the other. Thirty-five years of unmarried bliss
were followed by twenty-two years of the married variety, but the couple
considered themselves married whatever their status. They referred to each
other as husband and wife, and Mil y sometimes used Rudolf’s last name.
Aldred criticised them for this, but free choice surely means being able to
live in a union on one’s own terms.89
As the Rocker/Witkop union showed, Anarchists’ insistence on
freedom from state interference meant that they faced the dilemma of what
it meant squarely. If one should be free to do as one wished, did this preclude
legal marriage? And did sexual freedom mean promiscuity? Despite their
reputations, most anarchists replied to the latter question in the negative.
Rocker, for instance, wanted Tchishikoff removed from leadership due to
his behaviour. In addition, though the Anarchists were far more consistent
about women’s sexual freedom than most groups, they had their limits.
As Hermia Oliver put it, though Peter Kropotkin gave women leadership
positions in the movement, ‘Sophie [his wife] cooked the dinner.’ Indeed,
at Whiteway, the women did all the domestic labour, despite also doing
‘men’s’ work.90 And, as long as the state gave advantages to the legal y wed,
the choice not to do so entailed penalties; thus, there were times, as Godwin
had argued, that marriage was convenient or even necessary.
Conclusion
The story of marriage dissent had come full circle – from the anarchism of
Godwin to that of Aldred. Some interesting continuities emerge from this
chronological survey. First, the two main problems with legal marriage for
radicals from the 1790s to 1914 remained its legal bias towards women and
its indissolubility. Since these two disadvantages could be solved through
legislation, the choice for radicals was whether to take part in the institution
while working for reform or to take a stand and refuse to marry. Only a few
chose the second option. A second continuity was the insistence that the
problem with the institution was with its legal form, not with monogamy.
All but a handful of radicals argued that the natural tendency of men and
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
women was to have one partner. Indeed, when partners did practice sexual
freedom, their relationships rarely survived. Free unions, then, kept many
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Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
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radical couples, 1850–1914
of the emotional attachments and jealousies of marriage. Furthermore, the
emphasis on the relationship as key made it difficult to end the unions
easily. Relationships founded on ideals were rare, so every success or failure
was magnified exponential y. The ironic result was that these unions were
more binding, in some ways, than marriages. Women, especial y, often
found freedom il usory.
Gender and class concerns changed over the course of the century.
Though working-class couples were more likely to live in irregular unions,
few of them were ideological after the demise of Owenism. Indeed,
socialism reversed itself on the issue from the 1840s; most groups were,
at best, unenthusiastic about free unions. Only anarchism had a large
contingent of workers, and this was a small movement; furthermore,
most of its leaders were also monogamous. Gender concerns also had
continuities and discontinuities. Throughout the century, women in free
unions faced more discrimination than men, but some women embraced
sexual freedom by the end of the century. In addition, precisely because of
their difficulties, ‘women who did’ were heroines of their movements far
more than their male partners.
Final y, another change in the movement was the tendency of
radicals to define the ‘best’ type of free union, something that eventual y
became epidemic. Because so many radicals were already sectarians
on political and economic issues, they applied this same spirit to their
domestic affairs. Those radicals who were discreet, rather than open, about
their relationships could be criticised for betraying the principles of the
movement. In addition, those who could not marry legal y were somehow
less ‘pure’ than those who chose cohabitation freely. Though most groups
offered an alternative social support system, they could also be sites of
dissension.
Radicals critiqued the marriage laws, but the majority wanted
committed unions, so were similar to those who cohabited for non-
radical reasons. These couples considered themselves married, took each
other’s names, and called each other husband and wife. Most reformers
wanted to expand the definition of marriage rather than to dissolve it.
A major difference, though, with non-radical cohabitees was that family
and friends were more supportive of those who could not marry than
those who would not. Stil , some families reconciled with cohabitees. By
the end of the century, middle-class families, at least on a limited scale,
joined those working-class parents who refused to desert their children or
grandchildren entirely. This problem was solved more easily, of course, in
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
those families in which the parents and children shared radical beliefs, but
it was not unknown elsewhere. All in al , the freedom of free unio
ns was
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living in sin
contingent on a number of factors – class, gender, generation, and, most
importantly, the success of the relationship. This was also true of many
non-radical free unions, and shows the difficulty of generalising about the
‘best’ type of union, in the nineteenth or any other century.
Notes
1 Ashton, G. H. Lewes, pp. 5–56; 89–99; 120–32, quote from p. 5; D. Williams, Mr George
Eliot: A Biography of George Henry Lewes (New York: Franklin Watts, 1983), pp. 14–20;
28–32; 66–70; Hughes, George Eliot, pp. 131–44.
2 G. Haight, George Eliot and John Chapman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1940),
pp. 16–19, quote from p. 16.
3 Haight, George Eliot and John Chapman, pp. 80–1; Haight, George Eliot Letters, I, 277;
Ashton, G. H. Lewes, pp. 52–3; Hughes, George Eliot, pp. 144–50.
4 Ashton, G. H. Lewes, pp. 157–9; Hughes, George Eliot, pp. 60–1; 114; 126–7; 150–5; Haight,
George Eliot and John Chapman, pp. 88–9; Hirsch, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, p. 111.
5 R. Ledbetter, A History of the Malthusian League, 1877–1927 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State
University Press, 1976), pp. 16–19; A. Besant, 1875 to 1891: A Fragment of Autobiography
(London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1891), pp. 4–5; N. F. Anderson, ‘“Not a fit or
proper person”: Annie Besant’s struggle for child custody, 1878–79’, in Nelson and Holmes
(eds), Maternal Instincts, 13–36.
6 Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, pp. 81–2; J. M. Benn, Predicaments of Love
(London: Pluto Press, 1992), pp. 114–15.
7 Benn, Predicaments of Love, pp. 182–3; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, p. 60;
A. Vickery, ‘Is the wife still a chattel?’ Journal of the Divorce Law Reform Union 1 (1900),
8–9; and A Woman’s Malthusian League (London: G. Standring, [1927?]).
8 R. First and A. Scott, Olive Schreiner (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
1980), pp. 125–9; E. Ellis, James Hinton: A Sketch (London: Stanley Paul & Co., 1918), pp.
50–76; 92–104. For a positive assessment of Hinton, see S. Koven, Slumming: Sexual and
Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp.
14–18.
9 Ellis, James Hinton, pp. 121–84.
10 Ellis, James Hinton, pp. 153; 178; 232; 252; Schreiner’s letter quoted from P. Grosskurth,
Havelock El is: A Biography (New York: New York University Press, 1985), p. 98.
11 British Library, Havelock Ellis Papers (hereafter HEP) ADD 70528, fols. 38–40. Emma
Brooke to Havelock Ellis, 5 August 1885; fol. 41, Notes on Hinton, c. August 1885. See also
KPP 10/61/1, Emma Brooke to Karl Pearson, 4 December 1885; Grosskurth, Havelock El is,
pp. 51–4.
12 KPP 10/61/7, Ralph Thicknesse’s notes on Howard Hinton’s trial for bigamy, 27 October
1886; Grosskurth, Havelock El is, pp. 100–2. Trial in The Times, 15 October 1886, p. 3; 16
October 1886, p. 4.
13 Shanley, Feminism, Marriage and the Law, 22–48; Poovey, Uneven Developments, 51–88.
14 Herstein, A Mid-Victorian Feminist, pp. 72–5; 113; B. Caine, English Feminism, 1780–1980
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 98–101; P. Levine, ‘“So few prizes and so
many blanks”: Marriage and feminism in later nineteenth-century England’, Journal of
British Studies 28 (1989), 150–74; Feminist Lives in Victorian England: Private Roles and
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radical couples, 1850–1914
Public Commitment (Oxford: Basil Blackwel , 1990), pp. 42–4, 69–71.
15 Caine, English Feminism, p. 97; Herstein, A Mid-Victorian Feminist, p. 85.
16 P. Rose, Paral el Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), pp.
99–119.
17 Ibid. , pp. 119–26.
18 H. Burton, Barbara Bodichon, 1827–1891 (London: Murray, 1949), p. 188; Haight, George
Eliot and John Chapman, pp. 88–92; Herstein, A Mid-Victorian Feminist, pp. 106–10;
Hirsch, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, pp. 105–17.
19 S. S. Holton, ‘Free love and Victorian feminism: The divers matrimonials of Elizabeth
Wolstenholme and Ben Elmy’, Victorian Studies 37 (1993–94), 199–222, quote from 203;
Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement (London: Routledge, 1996),
pp. 36–47.
20 Caine, English Feminism, pp. 131–72; D. Rubenstein, Before the Suffragettes: Women’s
Emancipation in the 1890s (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1986); L. Bland, Banishing the
Beast: Sexuality and the Early Feminists (New York: The Free Press, 1995), pp. 124–85,
quote from p. 133; M. Jackson, The Real Facts of Life: Feminism and the Politics of Sexuality,
c. 1850–1940 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1994), pp. 1–33; Levine, Feminist Lives, pp. 79–102;
C. Dyhouse, Feminism and the Family in England, 1880–1939 (Oxford: Basil Blackwel ,
1989), pp. 145–84.
21 ‘The new morality – III’, Freewoman 1 (1912), 122 (first quote); ‘The editor’s reply’,
Freewoman 1 (1911), 93 (second quote); ‘The immorality of the marriage contract’,
Freewoman 2 (1912), 81–3; A. B., ‘The failure of marriage’, Freewoman 2 (1912), 386–7;
E. S. P. H., ‘The sanctions of modern monogamy’, Freewoman 1 (1911), 74; W. Foss, ‘The
problem of illegitimacy’, Freewoman 1 (1912), 485–6.
22 M. Randolph and S. Randolph, ‘Free unions’, Freewoman 2 (1912), 79 (for first quote); B.
L., ‘Free unions’, Freewoman 2 (1912), 99; M. Randolph and S. Randolph, ‘Interpretations
of sex’, Freewoman 2 (1912), 118; B. L., ‘Free unions’, Freewoman 2 (1912), 138–9, second
quote from 138.
23 T. Thompson (ed.), Dear Girl: The Diaries and Letters of Two Working Women, 1897–1917
(London: The Woman’s Press, 1987), pp. 151; 181; 219; 308–9, quotes from 181 and 308.
24 F. Delisle, Françoise: In Love with Love (London: Delisle, 1962), pp. 210–17, quotes from
210 and 217.
25 Ibid. , pp. 218–35.
26 ‘The discussion circle’, New Freewoman I (1913), 166; Delisle, Françoise, pp. 222–30; 236;
Thompson, Dear Girl, pp. 178; 186.
27 F. Delisle, Friendship’s Odyssey: In Love with Life (London: Delisle, 1964), pp. 4–9; 36–50;
The Pacifist Pilgrimage of Françoise and Havelock (London: The Mitre Press, 1974), pp.
80–3; 121–7.
28 Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches, pp. 197–232, quote from p. 221; J. Gillis, For Better, For
Worse, pp. 231–59.
29 E. Frow and R. Frow, The New Moral World: Robert Owen & Owenism in Manchester and
Salford (Preston: Lancashire Community Press, 1986), p. 21 (for quote); Marcus, Engels,
Manchester, and the Working Class, pp. 88–116; K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist
Manifesto (London: Penguin, 1967), pp. 100–1; J. D. Hunley, The Life and Thought of
Friedrich Engels (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 71–3.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
30 Carver, Friedrich Engels, pp. 145–61.
31 Ibid. , pp. 145–8.
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living in sin
32 Gillis, For Better, For Worse, p. 229.
33 F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (New York: International
Publishers, 1973); K. Hunt, Equivocal Feminists: The Social Democratic Federation and the
Woman Question, 1884–1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 23–36.
34 Engels, Origin of the Family, pp. 96–145.
35 Ibid. , pp. 143–5, quote from p. 145; Hunley, Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels, pp. 71–2.
36 Engels, Origin of the Family, pp. 135; 145; Hunt, Equivocal Feminists, pp. 24–9.
37 Y. Kapp, Eleanor Marx 2 vols (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972, 1976), I, 253–72; II, 15–
18; R. Brandon, The New Women and the Old Men: Love, Sex and the Woman Question
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1990), pp. 14–22.
38 E. Aveling and E. Marx Aveling, The Woman Question (London: Swan Sonnenschein, Le
Bas, & Lowery, 1886), pp. 9–10; 15–16, first quote from 10, second from 15.
39 HEP, Diary, ADD 70525, fol. 161; Kapp, Eleanor Marx, II, 27–8.
40 Kapp, Eleanor Marx, II, 16–18, 677–80.
41 Brandon, The New Women and the Old Men, pp. 139–53, quote from p. 140.
42 Hunt, Equivocal Feminists, pp. 93–4.
43 Ibid. , pp. 93–117.
44 Ibid. , p. 115.
45 Tsuzuki, Tom Mann, pp. 102–8; 124; 140; J. White, Tom Mann (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1991), pp. 11; 105–10.
46 Tsuzuki, Tom Mann, pp. 212–13; 266; White, Tom Mann, p. 142.
47 D. Montefiore, From a Victorian to a Modern (London: E. Archer, 1927), pp. 30–58; 154–6;
206; C. Collette, ‘Socialism and scandal: The sexual politics of the early labour movement’,