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What is a ‘Boston marriage’?
An important facet of queer history in the U.S. partly originated in Boston.
If you’ve ever heard the term “Boston marriage,” you might assume it’s the name for a wedding that took place in the city of Boston. In fact, it doesn’t refer to nuptials at all. This historical term, which originated in the later part of the 19th century, refers to a once-common living arrangement for women of that era.
What is a “Boston marriage”?
A Boston marriage refers to a long-term relationship between two women who lived together. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was acceptable for an educated, independent woman who chose not to marry a man to spend her life with another woman. (Though plenty of Boston marriages occurred before and after more traditional heterosexual marriages.) Some of these relationships were romantic — and sometimes sexual — in nature, while others were purely platonic.
While researching for her book, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, Wendy Rouse, a professor of history at San José State University, discovered that many suffragists were in Boston marriages because of their shared addresses. “I relied in part on census records to determine living arrangements but more broadly on their letters, diaries, poems, legal, probate, and death records to understand the nature of and the significance of these relationships in their lives,” she explains.
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Why didn’t Boston marriages among suffragists raise eyebrows at the time? They were more or less socially tolerated because Victorian beliefs insisted women lacked sexual desire and passion.
“Because discussions about homosexuality were not widespread and there was no concept of a lesbian identity yet (that would emerge in the early 20th century) most folks probably looked at these as just odd women, or spinsters, rather than recognizing them as lesbians like we would today,” Rouse says.
At the time, women were “encouraged to kiss, hold hands, share beds, and be openly affectionate, as it was considered good training for marriage,” according to John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, who wrote Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America.
Where did the term “Boston marriage” come from?
What do Boston marriages have to do with Boston? The term is thought to have originated from the 1885 Henry James novel The Bostonians, which features two forward-thinking women in a committed, cohabitating relationship living in Boston. In the end, one of the women decides to marry a man, even though she knows she’s forfeiting her happiness.
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Some say the characters were inspired by James’ sister, Alice James, and her longtime partner Katherine Loring. Still, readers would have no reason to think this arrangement was abnormal, because same-sex relationships between women were not yet frowned upon.
The name also ties into geography: The majority of Boston marriages were formed between college-educated women from New England, who were often financially independent or had their own careers. “It’s important to note, though, that nearly all the known couples in Boston marriages were white, middle- and upper-class,” explained historian Susan Freeman on the podcast Queer America. “So as you explore the meanings of their lives and their loves, the social and economic status they held is really important to address.”
In the years after the release of The Bostonians, “Boston marriage” lived on as a label for these arrangements. They became prevalent among suffragists, as well as among the feminist-leaning women who championed social work and the establishment of settlement houses. Plenty of women who resented the dominance of men over women took up charitable causes; they turned to reform movements and in turn, developed meaningful relationships with each other.
Despite their labeling as odd, or even spinsters, women in Boston marriages played an important role in queer history in the United States.
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“In many, many cases they were every bit as passionate, loving, and committed as our modern notions lead us to assume a heterosexual marriage would be,” write D’Emilio and Freedman.
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