Do we need an "I do" for an HEA?
Do we really need a traditional marriage in historical romance?
I spend a significant amount of time in the nineteenth century—reading about it, writing about it, crafting stories about dynamic heroines set in those days of yore. But the more time I spend there, the more I come up against the fact that marriage laws were horrendously unfavorable to women, to put it mildly. It makes it a challenge to write historical HEAs that end in marriage.
For a historical romance novelist, this is something of a problem.
The facts are thus: in the 19th century in England and America, a married woman was a non-entity. The technical term is femme covert which means a woman is “covered” by her husband or, in the famous quote from an English judge “the husband and wife are one and that one is the husband.”
Some other facts:
She could not own property.
She couldn’t sign a contract.
Any wages she earned were the property of her husband.
A historical woman certainly couldn’t choose when she became a mother. And any children she had were not hers. In the rare event of divorce or the more likely event of her husband’s death, she was not even granted custody of her own children. There are stories of pregnant, widowed women forced to give up their child upon its birth to whoever her husband designated as guardian.
Marital rape wasn’t a legal thing until the 1990s (Not a typo.). Or, in Minnesota, just a few years ago.
In short, a woman did not have the right to her own body or the fruits of its labors, whether wages or children.
Her political status put her in the company of toddlers, teenage boys, and the insane.
In the 19th century and earlier, it was almost impossible for a woman not to marry. Most were not educated and most lucrative employments were not an option. She could take in sewing, but she couldn’t be a doctor. She could be a teacher, for a fraction of a male teacher’s wages, but she couldn’t go to college. Women were forced by circumstances into marriage for support (one reason Elizabeth Bennet’s refusal of Darcy is so radical).
Women at the time were most certainly not okay with these laws. A few radicals, like Lucy Stone, refused to say “obey” and kept her last name when she married in 1855 (causing logistical problems forever, but her point was made). In America, women fought for the vote so that they could change laws relating to custody of their own children, or equal pay, or the right to go to school or own their own wages or the right to simply be recognized as a fully autonomous human being.
Which brings us to romance novels, which are marvelous at recognizing women as full autonomous human beings who find love from men who also recognize them as fully human and treat them with a respect at reverence that the law and the world at large does not.
I know, I know—nothing bad ever happens after the HEA. The hero would never ever die, certainly not with children under age, whom the heroine would then lose, probably to some wretch and villainous distant cousin/heir with nefarious intentions. Fine, she would take it sewing and somehow make enough money from it (no one ever did), or would have some kindly rich relations (as one does, right?) who would take her in and she would find love again and he would get her children back never mind what the law says but…
Best not to think of it.
Historical romance writers have been crafting heroines who burst off the page with life, determination, and a sense of their own worth. They are heroines of their own story and they embrace it. No journey is too daunting, no scandal too shocking. Of course they will be pirates, spies, governesses who marry dukes and total anomalies for their times. They will be uncompromisingly and unapologetically themselves. But lately I’ve been thinking that these heroines would never agree to marriage with under these traditional terms. Pamela Regis writes about this in The Natural History of the Romance Novel. She says, paraphrasing critics of the genre, that “the romance novel straitjackets women by making marriage the barometer of her success” and “it’s ending destroys the independent, questing woman depicted in the rest of the story.” I know that’s not what we mean when we write a marriage HEA in a historical romance. I know that’s not what we feel when we read it. But sometimes I can’t help but think about the historical reality.
Historical romance is beginning to grapple with this tension between marriage as we imagine it and the laws actually governing it. A Rogue of One’s Own by Evie Dunmore handles this beautifully. Some delicately step around it, like Waiting for a Scot Like You Eva Leigh or The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham. I love these novels.
We know the romance novel isn’t about getting married. It’s about the yearning and pleasure of deeply connecting with another. It’s about risking emotional vulnerability for the reward of a deep, true and lasting connection with another person. It’s the comfort and escape the story provides. We know the romance novel works without a traditional marriage because of a million contemporary romances and Queer historical romances that end happily and satisfyingly without a Church sanctioned ceremony.
There is an obvious solution to all of this: let our hero and heroine live together, unwed, bound together only by their love. But some readers might gasp “but historical accuracy!” This, of course, was (mostly) Not Done in yore times. One might also fret: “but the children will be illegitimate and won’t be able to inherit or make good and marriages!” This point does give me pause. We know that social acceptances in a large component to the HEA. And social acceptance for for an unwed couple and their “illegitimate” children would be hard to come by. By going by comments on my posts about babies in HEAs and older heroines, maybe children aren’t required for an HEA either.
The reason these marriage laws changed is because women didn’t like them and we know that because they fought to change them. It meant they had to fight to get the right to vote and have a say in those laws. I will be writing more about that struggle and the real-life women who led that fight in future posts. But to get back to the romance… I love historical romance, happy ever afters and the way these stories continually evolve while continually delivering the sense of happiness and peace we read for.
I appreciate you writing about this! While I can turn off the part of my brain that balks at marriage when I read a historical romance, I find myself enjoying books way more when they engage with the fraught concept of historically-accurate marriage, like Evie Dunmore's as you mentioned. Weirdly I find contemporary romances that end with an engagement or a wedding a lot more difficult to swallow.