Matrimonial Maxims.
An Early Anti-Feminist Manuscript on Marriage: One View on How to Make the Best of the Lawful Bond [Manuscript]. [Trusler, John]. Matrimonial Maxims. N.p., n.d. [c.1806?]. 3 pp. 8-7/8" x 7-3/16". Addressed to Miss Betsey Seager, Sion Hill, Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England. The hand and paper suggest the MS dates to the early nineteenth century. $450. * In the form of concise admonitions, the MS gives conduct advice to women regarding marriage. Though the text is unattributed in this manuscript, the original author of the sentiments was apparently Dr John Trusler (1735-1820), the prominent legal writer, medical man, and eccentric. His works on the law were substantial and influential: e.g., in 1788 "he produced A Concise View of the Common and Statute Law of England; he also abridged William Blackstone's Commentaries in 1788" (Oxford DNB). Our manuscript text appears to be a modified version of Trusler's point-by-point advice on marriage published in Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Dr. Trusler, Written by Himself (1806), pp. 133-4. (Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman had appeared a decade and a half earlier, in 1792.) In this manuscript, we have a privileged glimpse into how one set of opinions on marriage by one legal writer struck one anonymous copyist as so compelling and edifying that they seemed worth adapting and forwarding to an unmarried female acquaintance, one "Miss Betsey Seager", in rural Worcestershire. From today's perspective, this manuscript is fundamentally anti-feminist. Submissiveness and deference, to the point of near self-erasure, are emphasized throughout. Reductively, one maxim declares: "Implicit submission in a Wife to her Husband is what she promised at the altar, what the good will revere her for, and what is in fact the greatest honour she can receive". The manuscript's pronouncement on power dynamics is, at its core, similarly absolute and dismissive, if also couched in terms of comfort and regard: "Be sure a Woman's power as well as her Happiness has no other foundation than her Husband's esteem and Love". The MS is a fascinating and chilling survival.
Price: $450.00
Book number 85901