Divorce In The Victorian Era

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Today, hundreds of couples get divorced a year. Some people even say it is too easy to get a divorce these days and people do not even bother to try or work at their marriage. But it was not always this way. During the Victorian Era before the Matrimonial Causes Act in 1857 it was nearly impossible to obtain a divorce, especially for a woman. This act brought many new changes to England: a climbing divorce rate, women petitioning for divorces and plays that were deeply rooted in the themes of marriage and divorce and its effects on an individual. But more importantly, these plays touched on their audiences biggest fears and insecurities, how a divorce or affair could and would ruin their reputation and cost them their place in society.
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Newspapers soon discovered the increasing sales of divorce court trials and all the details regarding the couples. One of the most popular articles was regarding the trials in the seventeenth century of the Countess of Essex who poisoned her husband Sir Thomas Overbury with the help of her lover, or of the trial of Lord Audley who forced his servant to have intercourse with his wife while he committed an "unnatural crime" on the servant(Horstman 10). In the year 1779 alone a "seven volume collection complete with prints of scenes from the lives of the lover, enough to gratify even habitual followers of such suits"(Horstman 10). This of course ruined people's reputations and any high status jobs or place in society they had. This was especially true for wives since they were most always the one being tried for adultery because men were the only ones able to get divorces at this time. Wives also face a number of other risks besides humiliation. Their lovers were often locked up in prison and many women became pregnant as a result of their affairs, which was never a safe thing in the eighteenth century (Horstman 11). In the years before 1800, there had only been 127 parliamentary divorces, but in the years between 1801 and 1857 - the year which the Divorce Act was issued - 190 marriages resulted in Parliamentary divorce showing the increasing need from the people of London and that something needed to

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