By Barbara Southard
The first seeds of my historical novel were planted in a discussion with graduate students while teaching US history at the University of Puerto Rico. I remember telling them that the Beecher-Tilton adultery trial caused as much sensation in 1875 as the impeachment of Bill Clinton for the alleged cover-up of sexual intimacies with Monica Lewinsky.
A student pointed out that neither woman seemed to want to push charges against her lover. I agreed. Ambitious male rivals of the reverend and the president pushed the cases forward, but the two men survived the challenges. A young woman shook her head. “Yeah, sure, the men survived, but what happened to Monica and Elizabeth?”
That question reverberated in my soul. Beecher continued to be the most famous and influential preacher in the United States, but what happened to Elizabeth? If Monica had a rough time with cyberbullying, wouldn’t it have been even more difficult for a woman named as the correspondent in an adultery trial in the nineteenth century?
I immersed myself in books about the trial. Elizabeth’s husband, the journalist Theodore Tilton, and her lover the famous Reverend Henry Ward Beecher were leaders of reform movements during the Reconstruction era who championed suffrage for freed slaves and for women. Theodore justified his extramarital affairs in terms of the radical free love doctrine that marriage should not restrict other genuine loves, but he couldn’t accept Elizabeth’s feelings for Beecher. Free love in theory and the double standard in practice.
Thinking about the double standard transported me back to my youth. In the late 1950s when I was a nerdy schoolgirl, the emphasis on women as homemakers, and the idea that brainy girls are unattractive made me feel trapped. I didn’t want to feel obliged to hide my intellectual interests to be popular or give up yearnings for a meaningful career. I disliked the Barbie image. The 1960s message of women’s liberation felt like a breath of fresh air, a chance to define myself in my own terms.
I later joined a consciousness-raising group, composed of college students. We talked about equal rights and opportunities for women as well as our need to seek personal fulfillment in a career. The group saw the sexual revolution as sparking a needed discussion of the double standard by which girls and women were judged more harshly for premarital or extramarital sex than their male counterparts, but we were skeptical that open marriage could work in a society that was still profoundly sexist.
The doubts about how women fare in open marriage expressed by my friends in the 1970s would have applied even more strongly to the practice of free love in the 1870s, an epoch when puritanical moral codes for women were fiercely enforced and most women were economically dependent on men.
I was driven to delve more deeply into primary historical sources, including trial records and letters, in the hope of illuminating Elizabeth Tilton’s motivations and the unique challenges she faced. Since she was the only protagonist in the triangle who lacked a public platform, it was more difficult to unravel her feelings than those of her husband and lover, but well worth the effort.
Instead of facing the challenges of understanding Elizabeth, most historical studies of the trial paint her as a passive victim, a woman who couldn’t stand up for herself, who gave in to both her husband and her lover and couldn’t keep her story straight. This reading of her character struck me as not only simplistic but borderline misogynistic.
My first attempt to do justice to Elizabeth’s story was an academic article, but I soon concluded that writing a novel would give me more creative leeway to present events from the point of view of a character outside the circles of power whose options were limited. My debut novel ‘Unruly Human Hearts‘ is the story of Elizabeth’s struggles to save the two men she loved, her children and herself from the disastrous consequences of public scandal. She suffers from many defeats, but ultimately succeeds in finding her own path and defining her own truth.
While writing the novel I gave some thought to the practice of polyamory today. Women involved in polyamorous relationships may experience some of the issues that plagued the Tilton marriage, because it is easier to affirm the ethical obligation to be completely truthful about other love relationships than to respond lovingly to a concrete revelation of a partner’s feelings for a third person. Hopefully, women involved in open marriages today are less likely to undergo the same degree of heartbreak that Elizabeth experienced, because the power dynamics in intimate relationships are not as skewed in favor of male partners as they were in the nineteenth century.
ABOUT THE BOOK: Elizabeth Tilton, a devout housewife, shares liberal ideals with her journalist husband, Theodore, and her pastor, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, both influential reformers of the Reconstruction Era. She is torn between admiration for her husband’s stand on women’s rights and resentment of his dominating ways. When Theodore justifies his extramarital affairs in terms of the “free love” doctrine that marriage should not restrict other genuine loves, she finds the courage to express her feelings for Reverend Beecher. The three partners in this triangle struggle with love, desire, jealousy, fear of public exposure, and legal battles. Once passion for her pastor undermines the moral certainties of her generation, Elizabeth enters uncharted territory. Telling the truth may cost her everything. Can a woman accustomed to following the lead of men find her own path and define her own truth?
Barbara Southard grew up in New York, earned a PhD from the University of Hawaii, and served as professor in the History Department of the University of Puerto Rico. In addition to academic publications on women’s history, she is the author of ‘The Pinch of the Crab’, a short story collection set in Puerto Rico, exploring social conflicts of island life, mostly from the perspective of women and girls. In her debut novel ‘Unruly Human Hearts’, Barbara once again explores social conflict from the point of view of the woman involved in a different place and epoch. She has also been active in raising funds for the Shonali Choudhury Fund of the Community Foundation of Puerto Rico, helping local community organizations working to protect women from domestic violence. You can follow Barbara on Facebook and Instagram.
