The Criminal Conversation of Mrs. Norton Victorian England's "Scandal of the Century" and the Fallen Socialite Who Changed Women's Lives Forever
The Criminal Conversation of Mrs. Norton Victorian England's "Scandal of the Century" and the Fallen Socialite Who Changed Women's Lives Forever
- ISBN 13:
9781613736685
- ISBN 10:
1613736681
- Edition: Reprint
- Format: Paperback
- Copyright: 09/01/2016
- Publisher: Chicago Review Press
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Summary
In Westminster Hall that day is a young Charles Dickens, who would, just a few months later, fictionalize events as Bardell v. Pickwick in The Pickwick Papers. After a trial lasting twelve hours, the jury’s not guilty verdict is immediate, unanimous, and sensational. George is a laughingstock. Angry and humiliated he cuts Caroline off, as was his right under the law, refuses to let her see their three sons, seizes her manuscripts and letters, her clothes and jewels, and leaves her destitute. Knowing she can not change her brutish husband’s mind, Caroline resolves to change the law.
Steeped in archival research that draws on more than 1,500 of Caroline’s personal letters, The Criminal Conversation of Mrs. Norton is the extraordinary story of one woman’s fight for the rights of women everywhere. For the next thirty years Caroline campaigned for women and battled male-dominated Victorian society, helping to write the Infant Custody Act (1839), and influenced the Matrimonial Causes (Divorce) Act (1857) and the Married Women’s Property Act (1870), which gave women a separate legal identity for the first time.