In the same style as her excellent ‘The Suspicions
of Mr Whicher’, Kate Summerscale here reveals another Victorian scandal in the
downfall of Isabella Robinson.
From about 1852 to 1856 Mrs Robinson, an
intelligent and articulate woman who moved in upper middle class, radical
society, maintained a secret diary. In it she recorded not so much her comings
and goings but her thoughts, opinions and more crucially her amorous musings
and encounters.
The latter rarely involved her husband
Henry, who was often away on business, was cold towards her, and kept a
mistress. Who they increasingly, but not exclusively, involved was Dr Edward
Lane, a family friend and a married man.
Henry’s discovery of the diary in 1856 led
him, in 1858, to be one of the first to take advantage of the recently passed
Divorce Act (1857) and the new Court of Matrimonial Proceedings to seek a
divorce (previously only obtainable through a prohibitively expensive application
to Parliament).
The ensuing case became a cause celebre,
bringing into sharp focus the unenviable status of a married woman in
mid-Victorian Britain, or more accurately her lack of status, being a mere
chattel of her husband. The great and the good debated her case. Did she
actually commit adultery with Dr Lane, or did her diary record wishful
thinking, or even delusions brought on by her sexual frustration.
Around the central narrative of the “affair”
and the court proceedings Summerscale constructs a fascinating picture of
society at a point where many established views were being challenged by new
radical thinkers – scientists like Charles Darwin, authors such as Marian Evans
& Charles Dickens, and marginal medical practitioners such as phrenologist
George Combe – and when the issue of a woman’s right to an independent life
began to be considered.
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