Born: 22 March 1808, United Kingdom
Died: 15 June 1877
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Lady Stirling-Maxwell, Pearce Stevenson, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan
This biography, written by Francine Ryan, has been republished with permission from the Dangerous Women Project, created by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh.
Victorian society labelled Caroline Norton a ‘scandalous woman’ but was she also a ‘dangerous woman’?
There is no doubt she was a remarkable woman. She had the audacity to challenge the power of men and highlight the suffering of women. What is fascinating about Caroline’s story is although she campaigned to change the law and ultimately secured a landmark victory for women- she was not a feminist and she did not believe in equality for women.
Caroline’s story demonstrates the plight and vulnerability of Victorian married women trapped in unhappy and often violent marriages because they had no legal status.
Caroline was born in 1808 into a genteel but impoverished family. In 1827, at the age of 19, she married Tory MP, George Norton. They had three sons. It was a turbulent marriage and Caroline was subjected to physical and emotional abuse. George wanted to control his wife but she resisted. She openly mocked him and flirted with other men. Caroline’s family was associated with the rival Whig party, and she was greatly admired by Whig men and influential in political circles. It was rare for a woman to have such political influence but Caroline was fortunate that she had friends in Parliament and was renowned as a political hostess, she held intimate gatherings of well-connected men, which allowed her to press her cause. Caroline could rely on her Whig heritage, her grandfather was Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a famous playwright and politician who had a reputation for campaigning for social justice.
George was a failed lawyer and an unsuccessful politician. Despite his abhorrence of Caroline’s connections to the Whig party he demanded she use her influence to secure him a number of judicial positions. George openly encouraged Caroline’s friendship with Lord Melbourne and yet felt humiliated by the gossip that ensued, which fuelled his misery and rage.
The Norton marriage collapsed and in June 1836, George Norton sued Lord Melbourne- the- then Whig Prime Minister claiming he had an affair with Caroline. His motive was not only to destroy the government but also the first step towards obtaining a divorce. Women were deemed the property of their husbands so despite the fact Caroline’s actions were the subject of the trial she was not represented and could play no part in trying to defend her reputation. Although, George failed to prove his case and Caroline and Melbourne were exonerated, Caroline’s reputation was still ruined.
The Norton’s were now separated but Caroline remained the legal property of George- she was unable to divorce him and had no legal rights. George was a vindictive man and refused Caroline access to her children and her own property. Caroline learnt the perilous position of married women. The law offered no legal protection because they had no legal existence. Sir William Blackstone defined the position of married women:
By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband…
(William Blackstone. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Vol, 1 (1765), pages 442-445)
Caroline was a fighter and she came to understand the only way to remedy her situation was to start a campaign to change the law. She was already an accomplished and established writer with political allies. She produced a series of political pamphlets to educate the public about the plight of mothers and to influence MPs to support a change in the law.
In 1837, she published her first pamphlet entitled ‘Observations on the Natural Claims of a Mother to the custody of her Children as Affected by the Common Law Rights of the Father’. She campaigned for all children under the age of seven to remain in the custody of their mother and the decision of where older children should live to be decided by the court not the father. Caroline was able to enlist the support of the MP for Reading, Mr Talfourd to introduce a bill into Parliament to give judges the power to allow either parent to have access to their children under the age of 12.
She published a second pamphlet ‘The Separation of Mother and Child By the Law of Custody of Infants Considered’, in which she wrote:
The fact of the wife being innocent and the husband guilty, or of the separation being an unwilling one on her part, does not alter his claim: the law has no power to order that a woman shall have even occasional access to her children, though she could prove that she was driven by violence from her husband’s house and that he had deserted her for a mistress. The father’s right is absolute and paramount, and can be no more be affected by the mother’s claim, than if she had no existence.
She followed this with ‘A plain letter to the Lord Chancellor on the Infant Custody Bill’ written under a pseudonym. It was a struggle but the bill eventually became law in August 1839, it provided that if a wife was legally separated or divorced from her husband and had not been found guilty of adultery she was allowed custody of her children up to the age of seven and access thereafter. Caroline’s campaign had brought the issue into the public domain and worn away opposition to the bill.
The significance of her achievement cannot be underestimated but the great sadness for Caroline was that despite her efforts it still did not restore her children to her. George moved the children to Scotland where the Act did not apply and it was not until one of her boys tragically died that she was able to see her remaining children.
Caroline recognized the campaign was not finished. To protect married women they needed to secure their property rights. To that end, she published, English Law for Women in the Nineteenth Century in 1854 and in June 1855 wrote A Letter to Queen Victoria on Lord Chancellor Cranworth’s Marriage and Divorce Bill. In 1857, the Matrimonial Causes Act was finally passed. It contained 68 clauses, four of which came from Caroline’s pamphlets. These included a woman’s right to form a contract, to receive maintenance as directed by the court, to inherit and bequeath property and to keep possession of her own earnings.
Caroline was not seeking female equality in her pamphlet to the Queen, she wrote:
The natural position of woman is inferiority to man. Amen! … I never pretended to the wild and ridiculous doctrine of equality.
The fight for equality would come later by other women. Her battle was forced upon her by personal tragedy, where so many women felt they had no choice – Caroline would not accept that and for the first time a woman challenged the status quo. By Victorian standards that made her a dangerous woman she defied the role of subservient wife, mother and woman. She would not accept the injustice of her situation and so became a catalyst for change. To Victorian society it was shocking that a woman would publish details of their own situation but by highlighting the tragedy of her own story and the case histories included in the pamphlets, it contextualized the suffering of married women.
Caroline secured a significant victory for women. The passage of the Infant Custody Act gave legal rights for women for the first time and made them visible before the law. Women owe a huge debt of gratitude to Caroline Norton. Her determination began the process of legislative change without this, women could not start the fight for the vote. We need the bravery of women to share their stories to engender change, Caroline Norton may inspire other women to follow bravely in her footsteps.
Caroline Norton is largely a forgotten figure but her story is timeless. It reflects the injustice women endured in Victorian society and continue to suffer today. So many elements of Caroline’s story will resonate with women – women who have escaped violence, fought for custody of their children – their struggle was her struggle. Even today, women in many cultures are still fighting for the kind of freedom she championed.
The following is excerpted from Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company.
Caroline Elizabeth Norton, an English poet and novelist. Her literary work was influenced by Byron, and while her books met with popular success, they are now seldom read.
In 1827 she made an unfortunate marriage to an impecunious barrister, the Hon. George Chapple Norton, whom she virtually supported for many years. Her marital troubles led her to write English Laws for Women, which undoubtedly contributed to the change of English laws as to the status of women, the custody of offsprint, and the protection of female earnings.
Mrs. Norton was a gifted and beautiful woman, and it is generally supposed that her story supplied the subject for Meredith’s Diana of the Crossways.
The following is excerpted from A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, written by John W. Cousins and published in 1929 by J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.
NORTON, CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH (SHERIDAN) (1808-1877). —Grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley S. (q.v.), m. in 1827 the Hon. G.C. Norton, a union which turned out most unhappy, and ended in a separation. Her first book, The Sorrows of Rosalie (1829), was well received. The Undying One (1830), a romance founded upon the legend of the Wandering Jew, followed, and other novels were Stuart of Dunleath (1851), Lost and Saved (1863), and Old Sir Douglas (1867). The unhappiness of her married life led her to interest herself in the amelioration of the laws regarding the social condition and the separate property of women and the wrongs of children, and her poems, A Voice from the Factories (1836), and The Child of the Islands (1845), had as an object the furtherance of her views on these subjects. Her efforts were largely successful in bringing about the needed legislation. In 1877 Mrs. N. m. Sir W. Stirling Maxwell (q.v.).
The following is excerpted from the Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by Richard Garnett.
NORTON, CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH (1808–1877), poetess, was born in London in 1808, and was the second daughter of Thomas Sheridan [q. v.] and granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan [q. v.] Her mother, Caroline Henrietta, daughter of Colonel Callander, afterwards Sir James Campbell (1745–1832) [q. v.], was a highly gifted and very beautiful woman, and author of ‘Carwell’ and other novels. The father having died in the public service at the Cape of Good Hope in 1817, the widow found herself in somewhat straitened circumstances, which were, however, mitigated by the king giving her apartments in Hampton Court Palace, whence she subsequently removed to Great George Street, Westminster. Caroline and her two sisters were distinguished for extraordinary beauty, and in at least two instances for remarkable intellectual gifts. ‘You see,’ said Helen, the eldest, afterwards Lady Dufferin, to Disraeli, ‘Georgy’s the beauty, and Carry’s the wit, and I ought to be the good one, but I am not;’ which modest disclaimer, however, was far from expressing the fact. During the lifetime of her sisters Caroline filled much the most conspicuous position in the public eye. After numerous slight productions, published and unpublished, of which ‘The Dandies’ Rout,’ written at the age of thirteen, seems to have been the most remarkable, she definitely entered upon a literary career in 1829 with ‘The Sorrows of Rosalie: a Tale, with other Poems.’ This little volume, enthusiastically praised by the Ettrick Shepherd in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ,’ obtained considerable success, and is typical of all that the author subsequently produced, except that the imitation of Byron is more evident than in the works of her maturity. It has all Byron’s literary merits, pathos, passion, eloquence, sonorous versification, and only wants what Byron’s verse did not want, the nameless something which makes poetry. ‘The first expenses of my son’s life,’ she says, ‘were defrayed from that first creation of my brain;’ and the celebrity it obtained made her a popular writer for, and editor of, the literary annuals of the day, which lived by a class of literature to which her powers were exactly adapted. It is stated by herself that she earned no less than 1,400l. in a single year by such contributions. Some of the most characteristic were collected and published at Boston as early as 1833; they are in general Byronic, but include two, ‘Joe Steel’ and ‘The Faded Beauty,’ full of an arch Irish humour, which prove the versatility of her gifts, and indicate what she might have accomplished in quite a different field.
Two years before her appearance as an author she had married, 30 June 1827, the Hon. George Chapple Norton, brother of Fletcher Norton, third lord Grantley, a barrister-at-law, who was just completing his twenty-seventh year. According to his own statement, Norton had been passionately in love with her for several years previously; while, according to hers, he had not exchanged six sentences with her before proposing for her by letter. If the marriage was indeed one of affection on either side, it speedily assumed a very different character; and there seems no doubt that, apart from the husband’s coarse nature and violent temper, the causes which gradually converted indifference into hatred were mainly of a pecuniary nature. Norton held only a small legal appointment, a commissionership of bankruptcy, which, according to his wife, he had obtained through the interest of her mother; and, as he does not appear to have had any considerable independent means or professional practice, there seems no reason to question her statement that the family was mainly supported by her pen. Nor is there any difficulty in believing that the husband, pressed by pecuniary embarrassment, urged his wife to exert her influence with her political friends on his behalf; nor, indeed, is it credible that Lord Melbourne, then home secretary, would have bestowed (April 1831) a metropolitan police magistracy upon Norton without very strong inducement from some quarter: Melbourne being thought to be a man of easy morals, and Norton being notoriously unsuited to his brilliant wife, a very delicate situation was created. Miserable domestic jars, of which, it is just to remember, we have only Mrs. Norton’s account, followed in the Norton household, and terminated in an open rupture between husband and wife and a crim. con. action against Lord Melbourne. The trial took place on 23 June 1836, and resulted in the triumphant acquittal of the accused parties, who were not called upon for their defence. Sir William Follett [q. v.], the plaintiff’s advocate, was careful to make it known that he had not advised proceedings; and in fact the evidence adduced, being that of servants discarded by Norton himself, and relating to alleged transactions of long previous date, was evidently worth nothing. Some notes of Lord Melbourne, to which it was sought to affix a sinister meaning, gave Dickens hints for ‘Bardell v. Pickwick.’ The one point which will never be cleared up is whether the action thus weakly supported was bona fide, or was undertaken at the instance of some of the less reputable members of the opposition in the hope of disabling Melbourne from holding the premiership under the expected female sovereign. Mrs. Norton, of course, strongly asserts the latter view, and it certainly was very generally held at the time. ‘The wonder is,’ says Greville, writing on 27 June, ‘how with such a case Norton’s family ventured into court; but (although it is stoutly denied) there can be no doubt that old Wynford was at the bottom of it all, and persuaded Lord Grantley to urge it on for mere political purposes.’ Lord Wynford, however, formally denied this to Lord Melbourne, and the Duke of Cumberland, who had been accused of having a hand in the matter, made a similar disclaimer [see Lamb, William, Viscount Melbourne].
Mrs. Norton had vindicated her character, but she had not secured peace. Her overtures for a reconciliation with her husband were rejected, and for several years to come her life was passed in painful disputes with him respecting the care of their children and pecuniary affairs. She nevertheless continued to write, contributing much to the periodical press. Her powers continued to mature. ‘The Undying One,’ a poem on the legend of the ‘Wandering Jew,’ with other pieces, had already appeared in 1830, and ‘The Dream and other Poems’ was published in 1840. Both were warmly praised in the ‘Quarterly Review’ by Henry Nelson Coleridge, who hailed the authoress as ‘the Byron of poetesses.’ A passage quoted from ‘The Dream’ rivals in passionate energy almost anything of Byron’s; but there is no element of novelty in Mrs. Norton’s verse, any more than there is any element of general human interest in the impassioned expression of her personal sorrows. Mrs. Norton had already (1836) proclaimed the sufferings of overworked operatives in ‘A Voice from the Factories,’ a poem accompanied by valuable notes. In ‘The Child of the Islands’ (i.e. the Prince of Wales), 1845, a poem on the social condition of the English people, partly inspired by such works as Carlyle’s ‘Chartism’ and Disraeli’s ‘Sybil,’ she ventured on a theme of general human interest, and proved that, while purely lyrical poetry came easily to her, compositions of greater weight and compass needed to be eked out with writing for writing’s sake. Much of it is fine and even brilliant rhetoric, much too is mere padding, and its chief interest is as a symptom of that awakening feeling for the necessity of a closer union between the classes of society which was shortly to receive a still more energetic expression in Charles Kingsley’s writings.
In August 1853 Mrs. Norton’s affairs again became the subject of much public attention, in consequence of pecuniary differences with her husband, who not only neglected to pay her allowance, but claimed the proceeds of her literary works. These disputes ultimately necessitated the appearance of both parties in a county court. Driven to bay, Mrs. Norton turned upon her persecutor, and her scathing denunciation produced an effect which Norton’s laboured defence in the ‘Times’ was far from removing. Mrs. Norton replied to this in a privately printed pamphlet, ‘English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century,’ which, with every allowance for the necessarily ex parte character of the statements, it is impossible to read without pity and indignation. The story of her wrongs, and her pamphlets on Lord Cranworth’s Divorce Bill, 1853, with another, privately printed, on the right of mothers to the custody of children, no doubt greatly contributed to the amelioration of the laws respecting the protection of female earnings, the custody of offspring, and other points affecting the social condition of woman. From a pungent passage in Miss Martineau’s autobiography, however, it may be inferred that she did not always commend herself personally to her fellow workers in similar causes.
In 1862 Mrs. Norton produced the best of her poems, considered as a work of art. In ‘The Lady of La Garaye,’ founded upon an authentic Breton history, the Byronic note is considerably subdued, and the general effect more resembles Campbell. The gain in dignity and repose is nevertheless purchased by some loss of freshness. The poem was published by Macmillan & Co., in whose magazine her novel of ‘Old Sir Douglas’ appeared in 1867. She had previously published two novels, ‘Stuart of Dunleath’ (1851), which appears to contain much veiled autobiography, and ‘Lost and Saved’ (1863). These works evince more thought and sustained power than her poems, but can only be regarded as the work of an exceedingly clever woman without special vocation in this department. During her latter years she wrote much anonymous criticism, literary and artistic. On 24 Feb. 1875 Norton died. On 1 March 1877, being at the time confined to her room by indisposition, his widow married Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, bart. [q. v.], an old and attached friend. She died on 15 June following.
Mrs. Norton had three sons. The eldest, Fletcher, born 10 July 1829, entered the diplomatic service, was attaché at Paris, and was appointed in 1859 secretary of legation at Athens, but died at Paris on 13 Oct. before he could assume the office. The second, Thomas Brinsley, born 4 Nov. 1831, is described as ‘kindly, clever, handsome, but wild;’ he married an Italian peasant girl of Capri, ‘who turned out the best of wives and mothers,’ and in 1875 succeeded his uncle as fourth Lord Grantley. He died at Capri on 24 July 1877, leaving a son, who became fifth Lord Grantley. He was the author of an anonymous volume of verse entitled ‘Pinocchi,’ published in 1856. Mrs. Norton’s third son, William, was killed by a fall from his pony in September 1842 at the age of nine.
Mrs. Norton’s portrait has been frequently engraved, but, according to the editor of ‘Hayward’s Correspondence,’ no satisfactory likeness either of her or of her sisters exists. She is depicted as ‘Justice’ in Maclise’s fresco in the House of Lords; a copy, with a harp substituted for the balance, is in the possession of Lord Dufferin at Clandeboye House. A portrait by Mrs. Ferguson of Raith is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The portrait of her engraved in Lord Dufferin’s edition of his mother’s poems is from a crayon drawing by Swinton. ‘Mrs. Norton,’ he says, ‘was a brunette, with dark burning eyes like her grandfather’s, a pure Greek profile, and a clear olive complexion.’ Mrs. Norton and Lady Dufferin would have been equally surprised if it had been predicted that the poems of the latter would eventually be preferred to those of the more brilliant sister. Such, however, has come to be the case, and with justice, for the simple lyrics of Lady Dufferin frequently startle by the uncalculated strokes that belong only to genius, while Mrs. Norton’s are always the exercises of a powerful but self-conscious talent. The emotion itself is usually sincere—always when her personal feelings are concerned—but the expression is conventional. She follows Byron as the dominant poet of her day, but one feels that her lyre could with equal ease have been tuned to any other note. Her standard of artistic execution was not exalted. Though almost all her lyrics have merit, few are sufficiently perfect to endure, and she will be best remembered as a poetess by the passages of impassioned rhetoric imbedded in her longer poems. Her social and conversational gifts were great, and were enhanced by her fascinating beauty. She had a bright wit and a strong understanding. Had she married as advantageously as her younger sister, wife of the twelfth Duke of Somerset, she must have played a distinguished part in society, and might have been a considerable force in politics. She was a gifted artist and musician, and set some of her own lyrics very successfully.
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
Grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, has well sustained the family honours. Her father was Thomas Sheridan, and her mother was the daughter of Colonel and Lady Elizabeth Callander. Mr. Sheridan died while his children were quite young, and their mother devoted herself entirely to their education. Mr. S. C. Hall, in his “Gems of the Modern Poets,” describes the early genius of Miss Caroline Sheridan, and the care her mother bestowed; his notice is doubtless correct. “To her accomplished and excellent mother,” he says, “may be attributed much of Mrs. Norton’s literary fame;—it forms another link in that long chain of hereditary genius which has now been extended through a whole century. Her sister, the lady of the Hon. Captain Price Blackwood, is also a writer of considerable taste and power: her publications have been anonymous, and she is disinclined to seek that notoriety which the ‘pursuits of literature’ obtain; but those who are acquainted with the productions of her pen will readily acknowledge their surpassing merit. The sisters used, in their childish days, to write together; and, before either of them had attained the age of twelve years, they produced two little books of prints and verses, called ‘The Dandies’ Ball’ and ‘The Travelled Dandies;’ both being imitations of a species of caricature then in vogue. But we believe that, at a much earlier period, Mrs. Norton had written poetry, which even now she would not be ashamed to see in print. Her disposition to ‘scribble’ was, however, checked rather than encouraged by her mother; for a long time, pen, ink, and paper were denied to the young poetess, and works of fiction carefully kept out of her way, with a view of compelling a resort to occupations of a more useful character. Her active and energetic mind, notwithstanding, soon accomplished its cherished purpose. At the age of seventeen, she wrote ‘The Sorrows of Rosalie;’ and, although it was not published until some time afterwards, she had scarcely passed her girlhood before she had established for herself the distinction which had long been attached to her maiden name.”
When about nineteen years of age. Miss Sheridan married the Hon. George Chapel Norton, brother of the present Lord Grantley. He had proposed to her three years before, but her mother had postponed the engagement on account of her daughter’s youth; and in the meantime Miss Sheridan had made an acquaintance with one whose early death prevented a union more consonant to her feelings. When Mr. Norton again sought her hand, he received it; but the marriage was an unhappy one, and they were separated in 1840. The world has heard the slanders to which she has been exposed, and a verdict of entire acquittal from all who listened to them, can scarcely have atoned for the cruel and baseless suspicions and persecution to which she was subjected. Her reputation as a virtuous woman is now established beyond suspicion. England may well be proud of this gifted daughter of song; and her own sex throughout the world should honour her for the noble courage of soul by which she overcame the malignity of unmerited persecution.
Mrs. Norton’s second work was “The Undying One,” a poem, founded on the legend of the Wandering Jew. In 1840, she published “The Dream, and other Poems.” In noticing these two works, a writer in the “Quarterly Review” says of Mrs. Norton—”This lady is the Byron of our modern poetesses. She has very much of that intense personal passion by which Byron’s poetry is distinguished from the larger grasp and deeper communion with man and nature of Wordsworth. She has also Byron’s beautiful intervals of tenderness, his strong practical thought, and his forceful expression. It is not an artificial imitation, but a natural parallel.” Another writer, commenting on the subject, more justly observes—”That Mrs. Norton has a fervour, a tenderness, and a force of expression, which greatly resemble Byron’s, there can be no doubt; but there all similarity ceases. Byron is the personification of passionate selfishness; his range of sympathy is extremely small. Mrs. Norton, on the other hand, has a large and generous heart, essentially unselfish in its feelings, and universal in its sympathies. (How perfectly these two persons typify the differences in the characteristics of the sexes!) Byron has a sneering, mocking, disbelieving spirit; Mrs. Norton a simple, beautiful, child-like implicitness of soul. Byron’s strains resemble the vast, roaring, wilful waterfall, rushing headlong over desolate rocks, with a sound like the wail of a lost spirit; Mrs. Norton’s, the soft, full-flowing river, margined with flowers, and uttering sweet music.”
With these opinions we entirely concur; and there are some remarks by an American writer, the Rev. Dr. Bethune, which are highly creditable to his own cultivated taste and moral feelings, as well as truly just to this distinguished lady. “The traces of Mrs. Norton’s sufferings are burned deeply on her pages. She scorns to hide the workings of her embittered memory and outraged heart; yet her tone, though unconstrained, is lofty, yielding not to man, but to the force of nature. What she has endured, has taught her not misanthropy, but a stronger sympathy with the weak and the wronged, a nobler eloquence in appeals for freedom, truth, and general justice.”
In 1843, appeared her noble poem, “The Child of the Islands;” the nominal hero was the then baby Prince of Wales, but the real purpose of Mrs. Norton was to pourtray the condition of the poor in England. The philanthropy which prompted the poem is as warm and holy as her genius is pure and fervid. The production was received with favour, and has, no doubt, been of essential service in awakening the public mind to the cause of suffering humanity.
In 1847 appeared “Aunt Carry’s Ballads,” a volume of juvenile poems, very gracefully written; and in 1851, “Music upon the Wave” gave evidence of her varied talents; while “Stuart of Dunleath,” her latest work, shewed that she possessed the power of depicting in prose the stronger passions and the sterner and sadder scenes in life.
Mrs. Norton has recently been before the public as a defender of the rights of her sex; beside the gifted Lady Dufferon, whom we have already mentioned, another sister of hers has become celebrated for her graces of both mind and person; this is Lady Seymour, now Duchess of Somerset.