Marriage and the Dodgsons

[jenny2write]

Elsewhere in this forum someone says that CLD's parents married for love. I am not doubting it, but I don't know where that information came from. Does anyone know?

The reason I'm a little curious is that so few of the Dodgson children got married, and CLD seemed certainly to be quite against the idea of marriage. He seemed to associate it with women spending men's money and pushing them around, and he also seems to have decided at an early age that he would not plan on getting married himself. He also is utterly unable to depict a normal happy marriage in any of his works - or indeed portray a realistic mother-son relationship, so far as I can see.

All this suggests to me that he may have had some kind of hang up about marriage. Or at the very least, things in his family circle may not have been quite as simple as they now appear to us. Yet his mother genuinely does seem to have been a sweet woman whose life revolved around her family. I wonder if anyone has any observations or comments on this.

[johntufail]

Hi Jenny,

I didn't mean to infer that the Church frowned on love marriages! Rather that because Dodgson Snr married a blood relation (cousin) the law of consanguinity kicks in. Although marriage to cousins is not forbidden, it is certainly discouraged and requires a special dispensation from the Church. I haven't found evidence, in Dodgson's case, whether that dispensation was given - but even if it had been, there would still have been people who would have felt that it remained 'bad form' for a leading cleric to enter such a union.

The problem with using terms such as 'High Church' of course is that it oversimplifies what was a very complex situation. The High Church movement itself was quite divided and hugely controversial debates about all aspects of itual, belief and practice were going on at the time Dodgson Snr was married.

The assumption that Dodson Snr's marriage was a love marriage as opposed to veing a marriage of either convenience or property is based on the elimination process that a) it was inconvenient and b) that neither partner appears to have gained financially from the marriage. In fact the contrary appears to be the case.

Such evidence as there is (including Carroll's own reminiscences) describes a warm and healthy environment. Carroll's mother appears to have been a genuinely warm and living mother. Carroll's fathe appears to hasve been, by the standards of the time, a truly liberal, even radical father in the way he allowed his children to be raised.

I agee that Carroll's siblings do seem to have been an odd lot. Indeed his relationship with most of his family seems to have been very much based on duty rather than genuine empathy and affection.

There remains a great deal of work to be done in this area and I am far from satisfied that an accurate portrait has yet emerged about Carroll's early years and especially his relationship with his father.

All statements, including mine, on these matters should be treated with caution. I would delighted if someone had the time and interest to do some serious work in this area.

Regards

John Tufail

[jenny2write]

Hi John
Your comments are very interesting. But there are things that simply do not add up about the whole setup, and one of the oddest things is the way the siblings avoided marriage. One sister was married shortly after Dodgson Sr's death, and it has been suggested that perhaps the family was glad to have the responsibility for her taken off their hands and were quite grateful to her husband. (Not, I hasten to add, that this is any insult to her, just a bit like some third world families with lots of daughters might feel today.) Dad D. went to considerable trouble to set up financial provision for his daughters to enable them to all live together after his death - heavens they weren't THAT old but he seemed to assume they would continue in spinsterhood, as indeed they did. I actually think CLD got on very well and liked them, he visited often and talked about them a lot in a genearlly positive way, so don't quite know why you think the opposite. Wilfred married and had 9 children, but only one of those married, I think, and I have always had the impression, probably not founded on much, that this marriage was not terribly happy. Skeffington marreid very late in life, and kept it a secret. Perhaps this was becuase he had had considerable difficulty in holding down a job, and indeed was very poor, so the family may have felt he couldn't support a family in the right style. . Yet that sounds like a very happy marriage indeed. Nonetheless there were very few people in the next generation, and .... well, it's just not quite right.....?? I just don't feel it quite adds up....

[quemaqua]

I've often wondered about this as well. There seem to be rather conflicting images and accounts that show different things. Maybe that's not so unusual, as relationships between family members often have many facets, but you're right, it does seem a bit difficult to draw a real solid idea beyond that which is merely foundational.

[Jules]

Ooh very interesting Jenny!

There's a bit in In the Shadow of the Dreamchild about the Dodgson children. I think it suggests Dodgson Senior was very controlling and perhaps wanted to maintain his children's dependence on him.

[jenny2write]

Um, but actually he was trying to help his girls to be financially independent. This was a pretty good thing for him to do, since they would have been in a pretty pickle without a settlement. It saved them from having to be governesses. Come to think of it, one reason they may not have been that keen on marrying is that in those days a married woman was only allowed to keep a bit of money (even money she'd earned herself) for trinkets and personal bits and pieces. The rest of it was her husband's, to spend as he liked. He didn't even have to leave it to her in his will! That he devoted so much of his scarce resources to enabling his girls to have some independence again puts him in a good light and shows him to have been enlightened.

[sunset]

May 27, 2008 17:05:54 GMT -5 jenny2write said:

Come to think of it, one reason they may not have been that keen on marrying is that in those days a married woman was only allowed to keep a bit of money (even money she'd earned herself) for trinkets and personal bits and pieces. The rest of it was her husband's, to spend as he liked. He didn't even have to leave it to her in his will!

That's true, up to 1870 I believe..