Breaking Conventions

Book excerpt: This rich history illuminates the lives and partnerships of five married couples – two British, three American – whose unions defied the conventions of their time and anticipated social changes that were to come in the ensuing century. In all five marriages, both husband and wife enjoyed thriving professional lives: a shocking circumstance at a time when wealthy white married women were not supposed to have careers, and career women were not supposed to marry. Patricia Auspos examines what we can learn from the relationships of the Palmers, the Youngs, the Parsons, the Webbs, and the Mitchells, exploring the implications of their experiences for our understanding of the history of gender equality and of professional work. In expert and lucid fashion, Auspos draws out the interconnections between the institutions of marriage and professional life at a time when both were undergoing critical changes, by looking specifically at how a pioneering generation tried to combine the two. Based on extensive archival research and drawing on mostly unpublished letters, journals, pocket diaries, poetry, and autobiographical writings, Breaking Conventions tells the intimate stories of five path-breaking marriages and the social dynamics they confronted and revealed. This book will appeal to scholars, students, and anyone interested in women’s studies, gender studies, masculinity studies, histories of women in the professions, and the history of marriage.