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Marriage and Divorce in 1864: A Review by Gillean Chase of Emma Donohue’s The Sealed Letter
Marriage and Divorce in 1864: Emma Donohue is a novelist, playwright and historian who was born in Ireland and currently resides in London, Ontario. I appreciate her practice of taking real persons in history and fleshing out their bones, building them into characters with motives and beliefs that harm and help them. Her characters, set in whatever century, always ring true to life.
The Sealed Letter involves the scandalous divorce case of Admiral Harry Codrington from his wife Helen in an English court, circa 1864. At the time, divorce required a naming of the adulterers and proof of the occasions of that adultery—which is centuries away from our present ‘no fault’ severance of a marriage. Yet Donohue makes it clear that in a divorce, modern or otherwise, the adversarial positions of lawyers on both sides shape the trial to fit the machinery of justice. In legal petitions, both spouses resort to unsavory means of proving their arguments for rights to custody and property—rights which marriage still protects unequally. This novel points out that financial capability and culpability of character still form the basis by which custody and alimony is awarded. Why would the lesbian reader be interested in a ‘friendship’ between a very heterosexual woman and a closet lesbian who never names her desires for what they are? Perhaps because all of us remember being too trusting of our heterosexual or bi-sexual crushes. The best friend of Helen Codrington is the historical feminist Emily “Fido” Faithfull, the publisher of The Victoria Press and an earlier feminist tabloid. She and her colleagues attempt to persuade women that to marry means becoming the property of a man.. Such feminists argued that female employment would save women from literal or figurative prostitution arising from economic dependency upon males. Yet Fido herself is beholden to Harry Codrington for sheltering her for several years under his roof, until the unpleasant tension between the couple makes him ask her to leave. For years, the friends are separated by the Admiral’s posting to Malta, where he takes his bored and pretty wife. A chance meeting with Helen in Smithfield Market marks the Codringtons’ return to England. She is escorted by Colonel David Anderson, a regimental officer whom Fido regards merely as her protector. Helen ‘confides’ that Anderson has fallen in love with her and prevails upon Fido to allow her to meet with the Colonel at Fido’s home. She wants to scotch Anderson’s misplaced affection for her and cannot do so under the scrutiny of her husband. Anderson, too, involves Fido as a go-between. He has her tell Helen about his approaching marriage to his cousin. As a result, Helen’s behavior becomes more and more risk-taking as she tries to tie this man to his passions, rather than suffer the blow of being cast off by him as a woman of damaged virtue. The detective’s trail leads to a hotel and a stained dress—shades of the Clinton affair—and a plot on Helen’s part to get Fido to testify that her husband made an attempt on Fido’s virtue while she was under the influence of laudenaum. Fido agrees to sign an affidavit testifying to that ‘rape’ in the hope that the threat of public exposure will cause Harry to withdraw his petition for divorce. She wants him to agree to a custody arrangement so that Helen can recover her children. But Fido is to be called to testify in court. Whether she lies to protect her friend or tells the truth—that she simply cannot remember any such sexual incident—is the final test of her loyalty to a woman who has abused her trust and her love, for the comfort of having a devoted dog on a short leash. No wonder the woman is called ‘Fido’ Faithfull. Emma Donohue is the forty-ish author of such historical novels as Slammerkin and Life Masks, as well as other novels. She wrote a book of short stories called The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, and has published two works of literary history, two anthologies and two plays. Look for her anthology on lesbian poetry, called What Sappho Would Have Said: Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship and Desire.          
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