Boston marriage
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Boston marriage as a term is said to have been in use in New England in the decades spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries to describe two women living together, independent of financial support from a man. There is no documentary proof that any particular Boston marriage included sexual relations.
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Origin of the term [edit]
The term Boston marriage was used by Henry James in The Bostonians (1886), a novel involving a long-term co-habiting relationship between two unmarried women, "New Women".[1] The use of the term is thought to have persisted in New England for several decades. The term was less well known before the debut in 2000 of the David Mamet play of the same name. Many cite in particular the Maine novelist Sarah Orne Jewett and her companion Annie Adams Fields, widow of the editor of The Atlantic Monthly.
Sociology [edit]
Some women did not marry because they felt they had a better connection to women than to men. Some of these lived together. Of necessity, such women were generally financially independent due to family inheritance or career earnings. Women who chose to have a career (doctor, scientist, professor) created a new class of women who were not dependent on men. Educated women with careers who wanted to live with other women were allowed a measure of social acceptance and freedom to arrange their own lives.[2] They were usually feminists with shared values, involved in social and cultural causes.[3] Often one of the pair perceived herself to be "a man trapped in a woman's body".[4] Such women were generally self-sufficient in their own lives, but gravitated to each other for support in an often disapproving and sometimes hostile society.[3]
Sexuality [edit]
In a 1929 study Katherine B. Davis reported that, of 1,200 female college graduates who talked about their sex lives, 50.4% responded that they had "experienced intense emotional relations with other women", and 234, or 19.5 percent, had "intense relationships accompanied by mutual masturbation, contact of genital organs, or other expressions recognized as sexual".[5] Such relationships would probably be known as lesbian relationships now,[3] though no such activity has been documented of any Boston marriage.
Romantic relationships were especially common among academic women of the 19th century. At many colleges female professors were not allowed to marry conventionally while employed by the faculty. Having invested so much of their lives in scholarship, such women could find needed respect for their work and lifestyle among other academic women.[3]
See also [edit]
References [edit]
Bibliography [edit]
- Davis, Katherine B. 1929. Factors in the sex life of twenty-two hundred women. New York: Harper Brothers.
- Faderman, Lillian. 1991. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers : A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America. Columbia University Press.
- Faderman, Lillian. 1981. Surpassing the Love of Men : Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: Morrow.
- Gardner, Carol Brooks. 2009. Boston marriages. In Jodi O'Brien, ed., Encyclopedia of gender and society, v. 2. SAGE Publications. pp. 87–88.
External links [edit]
- "So, Are You Two Together?"—Ms. Magazine article by Pagan Kennedy.
- "Boston Marriage"-list of relevant articles on About.com.
- "Boston Marriage or Bindel-Raymond-Stein Syndrome?" article discussing the differences.
