My husband is always falling in love. The women he finds attractive are always my exact opposite: tall, slim, young and exceptionally beautiful. Not, that I am particularly short, fat and ugly, nor am I nearly as old as my husband! He enjoys telling me about his latest passions teasing me into a fit of jealousy (or at least the pretence of it).
There are times I have challenged him and told him to go and live out his fantasies, start a new family, take up a full time job so he can provide for them and have his liberties severely curtailed. I’m not surprised he makes his excuses and declines my generosity to set him free. ‘It confounds me,’ he says, ‘how some men find time to have a mistress as well as a family, not to mention the cost and the energy. In short: I’m too old.’
Delving into the world of women who have become the unmarried companions of men (who often have legitimate families as well) is fascinating. It is sometimes romantic: a love match where circumstances have not permitted the couple to marry. Mostly, though, the stories are heartbreaking and it is often the woman who is left bereft not only losing the man she loves but her legal rights regarding inheritance and custody of children. She also becomes a social pariah; to be known to have lived in sin (as it used to be called) meant no respectable household would entertain you.
Men, on the other hand, seemed to get off lightly by comparison. To take more than one female sexual companion was seen as a sign of virility. Men could treat their wives and lovers abominably in many ways and still keep hold of children from the union, legitimate or otherwise. They often had the right to access their wives’ incomes and fortunes even if it meant the family went without food and shelter. A man could sire as many bastards as he was able, but if his wife played away and got pregnant then she may well have been made to send her child away for adoption.
To be fair, there were cases of women who ditched their poor, long-suffering husbands and children to run away with someone they were in love with. These unfortunate men did not try to stop their ex-wives from seeing their children, nor did they try to make their lives a misery. In order to keep a fragment of their former happiness alive, some faithful husbands turned a blind eye to what was happening. Their poor hearts must have bled quietly for years.
Having been born into the era when men and women may divorce whenever they want and there is no longer the awful stigma attached to illegitimacy it can be difficult to understand how women put up with the conditions they had to endure for centuries. It is easy to become judgemental from the viewpoint of the twenty-first century. However, when the social conditions of the times these women lived in (and some of them were not that long ago) are known then I defy any decent reader to not feel deep compassion and sorrow towards most, if not all, the women who became enthralled by a man who was not married to them.
'Other Women' is a book by Fiona McDonald. Fiona is a writer and illustrator with a diverse range of interests. She has illustrated 'The Little Book of Genius' by Keith Souter, (THP, 2012) and is the author and illustrator of 'Gentlemen Rogues & Wicked Ladies' (THP, 2012). She lives in Australia.