Christ, I hate technology.*

Last night I had a big long post going about Wendy Moore's historical biography titled Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore. You'll just have to take my word that the post was one I was really proud of: I summarized the book masterfully and threw in the perfect amount of witticisms.** But then I went to save it and either my Internet blipped or something happened in TypePad, because all of a sudden I got kicked out of the program. Gone! All gone! And, of course, although the "back" Internet button works just fine when your boss wants to see the last twenty web pages you've looked at at work, it's no good when trying to recover blog posts--they just disappear. The skinny of the story is that I am tired and mad at the blog this morning, and so will simply dump my main thoughts about this book out there in list form.

1. I really enjoyed this book, which is about Mary Eleanor Bowes, a coal heiress in eighteenth-century Britain, who first married a title- and land-rich but cash-poor Earl (of Strathmore), endured nine years of an unhappy marriage and had five children before he died, and then was snookered into marrying a dastardly bounder named Andrew Robinson Stoney. How she was snookered is unbelievable, so I won't spoil the surprise.

2. The poor woman then spent the next decade+ of her life being knocked around and having her money spent by Stoney, before she finally had enough and tried to get a divorce. Divorce courts in the eighteenth century were not kind to women. Eventually the only people who were any help to her were her servants, many of whom went unpaid and incurred the wrath of her violent husband themselves.

3. This book needs pictures, although it ticks along at a nice pace, which historical biography sometimes struggles with (often being too detailed for my taste).

4. Let's just face it: women have never had it easy (even the rich ones).

So there you have it. Read this book, and save your work frequently when working online. That's my little public service announcement for the day.

*The irony of saying this on a blog is not lost on me.

**Not really. But it was a post and it was done, which to me constitutes the perfect post.

Comments

[Rachael]

I've had this book on my list since I saw the catalog copy (I didn't even wait for reviews to order it for the collection). It may be time to move it up in this list, although my blood pressure may not thank me.

Is anyone else becoming a feminist as they age? I didn't really give a damn when I was in college and supposed to be "passionate" about causes (even though I enjoyed the one women's history class I took), maybe because I was 18 and able to get an education better than that available to 99.9% of humanity for most of human existence, and then graduated into the best job market in recent history. I was blind to the barriers that still exist, and thought only women in third world countries (I saw what the women in Morocco dealt with, and knew about Afghanistan even then) were held back because of their gender.

I'm really starting to see bias everywhere I look, and I'm not really looking all that hard. (I confess, I'm seeing more class bias too, but that may just be from working with the public.)

Have you read the Gail Collins's book on the modern women's movement? Not perfect, but it would be a fascinating comparison. I'll have to pick this one up soon, before I forget all the details in Collins's. Hm, bad punctuation. Sorry.

[Citizen Reader]

Rachael,
Do let me know what you think. It starts out a trifle slowly, but when it gets going...

Your questions re: feminism are good ones (and I particularly like your point about not appreciating education for various reasons, which I totally understand--my parents, for being very conservative, never questioned my desire to go to college). I still never think much about the feminist cause, because I tend to think more in terms of the individual. Nobody really forced Mary Bowes to marry either idiot she did, and I mainly feel this book is a tragedy of her not having better friends or family members who could have helped her make some better choices. But perhaps I am thinking of it the wrong way.

I do tend to believe in class bias more than gender bias, simply because it's both easier to see and more insidious (in my opinion). But Mary Bowes certainly couldn't complain about that--she was at the top of the pile (money and a title) and her life still sucked. That's irony for you.

[Rick]

Thanks for another title for my consideration. I really like these books about not really famous people that take you back to another time to see how things really were.

[Citizen Reader]

Rick,
I think you might like it. It's a good solid historical biography, but not too long. I too enjoy these stories of people who may have been notorious in their time (and Mary Eleanor Bowes was that) but who aren't well-remembered now. I find them much more interesting than presidential and other "big-name" historical bios.