The Case of Beatrice Brooke: Fictions of Law and Marriage in Caroline Norton's Lost and Saved (1863)

In comparison with her influential political essays on matters of child custody, divorce and marital property settlements, the novels of Caroline Norton remain relatively under-studied. The purpose of this article is to revisit one of these novels, Lost and Saved, published in 1863, and to do so more particularly as an exercise in literary jurisprudence. It argues that the story of Beatrice Brooke, the unfortunate heroine of the novel, is shaped in considerable part by the law; first, by the peculiar terms of a probate settlement which serves to preclude her marriage to her ultimately duplicitous lover Montagu Treherne, and then second, by the broader terms of matrimonial law in nineteenth-century England, the construction of which serves to delude Beatrice into thinking that an ‘irregular’ marriage to Treherne enjoys some residual legal force. Though the medium is very different, the critique of marriage presented in Lost and Saved is just as urgent as that engaged in Norton's more famous political essays.     

England,France, the papacy and the Flemish succession, 1361-9

International politics in the 1360s were dominated by a diplomatic duel between England and France to secure the marriage of Margaret de Male, only child of the count of Flanders and ‘the richest heiress in christendom’. This struggle ultimately involved every major European power, including the papacy and the Empire, and resulted in wars in areas as far apart as Hainault, Castile and Lombardy. It was eventually won by the French, leaving the English with a bitter resentment both toward the Flemings and, more especially, towards the papacy, which had been instrumental in securing the victory for France.     

The dynastic triangle in international relations: Modena,England, and France, 1678–85

This article is a case study of how dynastic marriages in the early-modern period were wont to disappoint the participants. In this era, ruling dynasties frequently sought to marry suitable members of their family networks to well-placed clients in other states. These marriages were frequently intended to cement friendship or bind political wounds caused by previous conflicts. In 1673, the marriage between James Stuart, Duke of York, and Maria Beatrice d’Este, sister to the Duke of Modena, was sponsored by Louis XIV, King of France, thus giving rise to what one might term a ‘dynastic triangle’. This article, written from the Este perspective, demonstrates how the Duke of York and the King of France each subsequently failed, on two occasions, to support Francesco II d’Este's geopolitical objectives in northern Italy. For York, and his brother King Charles II, the failure to assist the Duke of Modena was as a result of their political inability to do so. On the other hand, Louis XIV's refusal to help Modena was because of conflicting French objectives in Italy. The negative Este reaction was both an indication of the Italian states’ fear and distrust of France, and a reminder that small states had ambitions and goals which were difficult to attain when not sponsored by a larger power. But these goals were often pursued when such sponsorship appeared likely, and were often unrealistic. The strains in dynastic relationships usually resulted from realisation that certain goals were irreconcilable.     

England, France, the papacy and the Flemish succession, 1361-9

International politics in the 1360s were dominated by a diplomatic duel between England and France to secure the marriage of Margaret de Male, only child of the count of Flanders and ‘the richest heiress in christendom’. This struggle ultimately involved every major European power, including the papacy and the Empire, and resulted in wars in areas as far apart as Hainault, Castile and Lombardy. It was eventually won by the French, leaving the English with a bitter resentment both toward the Flemings and, more especially, towards the papacy, which had been instrumental in securing the victory for France.     

‘Safe spaces’ and ‘bad’ girls: ‘child marriage victims’’ experiences from a shelter in Eastern India

This article interrogates the politics of safety that underpin rehabilitative practices in a state-funded shelter run by an anti-trafficking NGO in Eastern India. It focuses on the experiences of a group of female adolescents, categorised as ‘child marriage victims’, residing at the shelter. The analysis of in-depth life history interviews collected over a two-week period in October 2014 reveals that the adolescents contest the legislative victimhood imposed on them. For them, their marriages and pre-marital relationships are an expression of romantic and sexual agency, in contravention of familial norms. In this context, the adolescents perceive the shelter as a punitive space and interpret their enforced stay for ‘protection’ and ‘rehabilitation’ as an extension of familial control and regulation of their lives. The protectionism-as-safety discourse rewrites their agency as victimhood and transforms the shelter into a site where everyday forms of gendered power inequalities within social relations in the household are authorised and reproduced by the state and NGO. The adolescents perceive themselves as ‘bad girls’ and adopt various strategies to insist on their rehabilitation into ‘good girls’ to secure release from the shelter often by enacting the ‘victimhood’ expected of them. This allows for unique expressions of agency in an otherwise constrained context but hinders relationships of solidarity with other residents. Overall, the article highlights the need to challenge the ways in which patriarchal norms continue to spatially govern and discipline the expression of female sexuality and agency through 'safe spaces' in India.     

A Singular and Awkward War: The Transatlantic Context of the Hartford Convention

This essay argues that the Hartford Convention of 1814–15 unfolded as part of a wide‐ranging and vibrant debate concerning the role of the United States in the turbulent Atlantic community of the early nineteenth century. The author’s approach to the convention stands in sharp contrast to those of other scholars, many of whom have treated the convention as either the last gasp of the Federalist party or as a manifestation of New England’s insularity during the War of 1812. This orthodox view fails to account for the distinctly international quality of the convention. Review of newspapers and pamphlets produced in and around Boston, the intellectual and political center of New England, during the period between late 1814 and early 1815 suggests that for all their ideological differences, both Republicans and Federalists in Massachusetts understood the convention as attempting to negotiate a place for New England in the newly formed international relations triangle that comprised Britain, France, and the United States.     

中法建交谈判中关于台湾问题的“三项默契”——《周恩来总理谈话要点》形成考释

1963年法国前总理富尔的中国之行是中法建交中的关键阶段,而定稿于11月2日的《周恩来总理谈话要点》又是富尔访华最终取得成功的基础。富尔访华初期,中法虽都有建立大使级外交关系的愿望,但在台湾问题上的分歧使会谈陷入僵局。其后,中方在坚决反对任何形式的"两个中国"原则的基础上,先后提出了有步骤建交方案、直接建交方案,最终在三项默契基础上同富尔达成了一致。中方把最终形成的默契以文本形式交给富尔,这就是《周恩来总理谈话要点》。总的看来,该要点是中法平等协商的结果,法国在其中承担了承认中华人民共和国政府为代表中国的唯一合法政府、支持中国恢复在联合国的合法席位、法台不再保持"外交"关系等义务。但谈话要点也是求同存异的结果,并未全面解决中法在台湾问题上的分歧。     

MARRIAGE-RELATED DECISION-MAKING AND YOUNG WOMEN'S MARITAL RELATIONS AND AGENCY

There is little research that has explored how marriage arrangements, i.e., family-arranged, semi-arranged marriages with some say in spouse selection and self-arranged marriages, affect young women's married life in settings traditionally characterised by arranged marriage. Using data from 13,912 married young women aged 15–24 in India, we explore associations between marriage arrangements and young women's marital relations and agency. Logistic regression analysis shows that women experiencing semi- and self-arranged marriages were more likely than those in family-arranged marriages to communicate and interact with their husband (OR, 1.3–2.8), and exhibit agency in their life (OR, 1.2–2.3); those in semi-arranged marriages were less likely to experience marital violence. These associations were, however, stronger and more consistent among women from southern and western states than in northern and eastern states. Findings call for expanding the discourse on marriage to ensure young people's right to free and full consent in spouse selection.     

West over Sea: studies in Scandinavian sea-borne expansion and settlement before 1300

This article explores marriage settlements in national political debate and legal usage in three Swedish towns, c. 1870–1920. During this period one of the central issues for the Swedish women's movement was to abolish the legalized male dominance within marriage. Despite some ambiguities towards marriage settlements, the women's movement tried to encourage women to write up contracts before marriage, as a way to both protect their property and to achieve more power within marriage. Traditionally, marriage settlements were exceptions in Swedish legal practice, but they became somewhat more common during the period under investigation. This development could be explained by the population increase and industrialization, but only partially. The analysis of the initiators, their social background and civil status as well as the change of contents in the marriage settlements are interpreted not only as reflections of economic change, but as evidence of female agency and emancipation.     

Problematic Conjugations: Women’s Agency,Marriage and Domestic Violence in Indonesia

Abstract:

This paper examines women’s experience of domestic violence within marriage in Makassar, South Sulawesi. It analyses the meaning of marriage for men and women, the roles of men and women within marriage, shifts in marriage practices – particularly the shift from arranged to “love” marriage – and unequal gender positions within marriage. We discuss some salient issues in the “margins of marriage” in Indonesia: polygyny and constructions of masculinity that condone the practice of polygyny/affairs, and attitudes towards divorce, particularly for women. We then examine women’s perception of the causes and triggers of domestic violence as revealed by fieldwork data, using the lens of women’s agency. Our findings are that women perceive that their expressions of agency – for instance in challenging men’s authority, moral righteousness and adequacy as breadwinners – are the most common triggers for male violence within marriage. Finally, we discuss the difficulty for women of escaping domestic violence, thereby getting some purchase on the relative capacity of women to resist, deflect or deal with the violence.     

浅论一战期间的赴法华工及其婚姻

一战期间,法国女多男少的现实、华工对配偶的需求促使不少华工与法国妇女结为夫妻,而法国政府错误的婚姻政策及急功近利的遣返华工政策又在客观上起到了推波助澜的作用。北洋政府为了维护国内的伦理秩序及与法国的外交关系,采取了一些限制华工婚姻的措施,但受制于其法律制度的自相矛盾而不能很好地解决问题。     

Girls on film: Affective politics and the creation of an intimate anti-trafficking public in Singapore through film screenings

The interstices between film and politics occupy a prominent place in recent scholarship in political geography and cognate disciplines, focusing on the ways film establishes relations between viewers and characters. Such processes often utilise affective referents to create ‘intimate publics’. This paper focuses on the relations human trafficking films establish between ‘victims’, viewers and anti-trafficking stakeholders in creating an intimate anti-trafficking public in Singapore. I argue that the third world girl is rendered a moral object of sympathy both through trafficking film and performances by anti-trafficking stakeholders in the cinema. However, in comparison to both film viewers and anti-trafficking stakeholders she is cast as muted and lacking agency. Intimate anti-trafficking publics can emerge through the harnessing of negative emotions that, in this case, privilege the plight- but not the agency – of the female child trafficking victim and are inculcated through film storylines and cinematic performances.     

The Special Relationship Transformed. The Canada–Quebec–France Triangle after de Gaulle

ABSTRACT

Because of France’s unique role in Quebec’s international relations, any study of Quebec’s emergence on the international scene necessarily involves an analysis of this relationship. This article proposes an examination of Canada–France–Quebec relations in the decades following de Gaulle’s resignation in 1969. Several scholars focus on France’s implicit support for Quebec independence, considering that to be the essential ingredient of their “special relationship,” whereas I demonstrate that the foregoing interpretation overlooks the fact that France began to withdraw from the Canadian internal debate soon after de Gaulle’s resignation. During the last forty years, France’s abstention from interfering in Canadian internal affairs enabled both the flourishing of Quebec diplomacy and the deepening of the France–Quebec relationship.     

Unpicking the web: the divorce of Ecgfrith and Æthelthryth

The concept of a woman who is a ‘peace-weaver’ is known chiefly from Anglo-Saxon literature, yet is also a role that must have been reflected in the actual marriage alliances among the Anglo-Saxon dynasties. This article considers how networks of marriage and kinship may have functioned among the Anglo-Saxons of the late seventh century, and to what extent a woman could have real value in the role. It takes as starting point the historian Bede's account of how the marriage of Ecgfrith, king of Northumbria, and his wife, known to history as St Æthelthryth, was dissolved on grounds of non-consummation. Bede's claims that Ecgfrith was reluctant to let his wife go, sometimes dismissed as hagiographic convention, are here taken seriously and used to explore what reasons Ecgfrith might have had to want to maintain the marriage by looking at the politics of peace and war in the English kingdoms of the period, the role played by seventh-century marriage ties in relations between kingdoms, and what the value of such a marriage and the consequences of dissolving it may have been.     

Materiality and Autonomy in the Pocumtuck Homeland

The Indigenous people of New England’s middle Connecticut River Valley are often imagined as having been subservient to powerful tribal nations elsewhere. Yet, archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence suggests Pocumtuck independence and autonomy in relations with neighboring Native groups and with Dutch, English, and French colonizers during the seventeenth century. We employ a decolonizing framework, drawing on H.M. Wobst’s critique of the preoccupation with dominance and geopolitical “centers” to analyze this evidence. By framing artifacts, colonial texts, and cultural interactions as both past and present “material interventions,” we can generate better understandings of Pocumtuck political autonomy, agency and identity.     

The messianic journey of Jonathan ha-Kohen of Lunel to the Land of Israel re-examined

In 1210, thanks to increased contacts between Jewish communities in western Europe and in the eastern Mediterranean in the wake of the crusades, Jonathan ha-Kohen, head of the yeshivah of Lunel and leading Jewish Provençal sage of his time, set sail for Alexandria, from where he proceeded on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. A year later, a group of sages from northern France and England arrived in Marseille, en route to Palestine. A number of scholars have investigated the messianic aspects of this second wave of immigration, called the “‘ aliyah of the three hundred rabbis”. This article, however, seeks to examine the messianic aspects of the earlier journey, undertaken by Jonathan ha-Kohen and his followers, within their local Provençal context.     

Charles the Bald and Aethelwulf of Wessex: the alliance of 856 and strategies of royal succession

Scholars have usually supposed that the marriage of King Aethelwulf of Wessex to the daughter of Charles the Bald in 856 signified the creation of an anti-Danish alliance between the two rulers. That this union signified a royal accord is not in doubt but there is no evidence to associate it with any venture against Danes. Though the evidence is not conclusive it appears more probable that Aethelwulf's marriage to Princess Judith was part of a scheme to prevent or to undermine a rebellion in England then being fomented by Aethelwulf's son Aethelbald who desired his father's throne. For his part Charles the Bald aimed at gaining influence in England. At the time of her marriage Judith was crowned and anointed and this was a rare occurrence. When analyzed in the proper light it suggests the existence of a compact by the terms of which Aethelwulf would disinherit Aethelbald at some future date should Judith bear a son. The marriage, then, did not signify an alliance against Danes. Rather it denoted an alliance against Aethelwulf's son Aethelbald.     

Harehope Hospital and The Arrival of The Order of St Lazarus in England*

A previously unknown deed of the mid-twelfth century significantly changes our understanding of the foundation of the leper hospital at Harehope (Northumberland), which belonged to the Knights of St Lazarus. The deed prompts a reexamination of the introduction of the order of St Lazarus to England. A rereading of contemporary evidence allows parallels to be drawn with the introduction of the order to France, clarifies the founding role of Roger de Mowbray, and opens the possibility that the order’s first establishment in England was at Harehope rather than at Burton Lazars in Leicestershire.     

Monuments,Reputation and Clerical Marriage in Reformation England: Bishop Barlow's Daughters

The impact of the English Reformation upon women and women's agency in effecting religious change has been much debated. This paper examines the key innovation of clerical marriage by studying the family of Bishop William Barlow (d. 1568), whose five daughters married five bishops. It establishes that Barlow himself married well before it was lawful to do so, and reviews the circumstances that led to his daughters’ remarkable marital achievements. Subsequently, the commemorative acts of this family between 1595 and 1630 were crucial to the creation of an honourable role for the clergyman's wife in English society. By manipulating the representation of the dead, Barlow's daughter Frances Matthew improved her and her sisters’ place in the world. Monuments and their influence upon historical memory are therefore shown to be a hitherto unrecognised means available to women for transforming social order.     

Fragments of the Modern City: Material Culture and the Rhythms of Everyday Life in Victorian London

This essay analyses the influence of Charles Baudelaire's and Théophile Gautier's fetishist poetics on the early works of Algernon Charles Swinburne. If the crucial role played by the Victorian poet as a cultural ‘passeur’ between France and England has often been highlighted in recent criticism, his aesthetic delight in certain forms of sexual deviance such as podophilia has rarely been explored in relation to the verse of his French mentors. Swinburne, Gautier, and Baudelaire may have indeed shared this erotic fascination with feet: this is a fascination that was partly grounded in these poets' common interest in antique literary models, in particular in Sappho's poetry. Rather than extolling the Hellenic ‘sweetness and light’ which some of his contemporaries set so high, Swinburne indulged in dangerously eroticised Dionysian aesthetics which were perceived as both ‘too Hellenic’ and ‘too French’. I argue that the fetishism of the poetic foot may be read as one of the keys to the Victorian poet's subversive shift away from the serenity often associated with Victorian neoclassicism in favour of a Dionysian energy that anticipates Friedrich Nietzsche's works.