7. Hardy And Marriage

• Most women regarded marriage as a fixed fact of nature, a fundamental part of their life plan, as was childbearing. Reproduction was considered a women's only occupation.
• When a women married she lost her independent legal personality as femme sole and became femme couvert
• Men could divorce a women for adultery but a women had to show proof of cruelty, bigamy, incest, or bestiality along with infidelity.
• Men could beat their wives to death and get a minimal prison sentence. Women often got the death sentence for killing their husbands, even after years of abuse.
• Matrimonial Causes Act 1923 equalized grounds for divorce by allowing women to sue an adulterous husband for divorce.
• Thought that Emma exaggerated her attachment to a local farmer in hopes of pressing Hardy into a proposal.
• Lot of problems in marriage: inability to have children, tension between Emma and his family, retreated inside himself and sought emotional connection with other women, like Florence Henniker.
• Hardy placed Emma next to his mother in the family plot.
• Florence and Hardy married in 1914 and she served as his companion, housekeeper, secretary, nurse, and was very melancholy most of the time. Died in 1937, 9 years after him.
• Hardy wasn't against marriage, just against the idea that it was an irrevocable contract.