The Evolution of Cicely Hamilton’s Edwardian Marriage Discourse: Embracing Conversion Dramaturgy

Cicely Hamilton Marriage As a Trade appeared at the height of the suffrage movement, a systematic assault on the compulsory nature of the Edwardian patriarchal marriage calling for a voluntary marriage state that allows female agency. She further explored the possibilities of her theoretical discourse in three of her non-suffrage plays: the comedies Diana of Dobson’s, Just To Get Married, and the one-act Jack and Jill and a Friend. To date, scholarship on Hamilton’s pre-World War I plays tends to explore either the influence of melodrama and the romantic comic formula, not their connections with suffrage drama. This article argues that Hamilton’s dramaturgy employs a “conversion narrative,” a tool frequently employed in British suffrage drama, to highlight the pragmatic, ideological constraints of the prevailing marriage paradigm outlined in Marriage As a Trade. In all three plays the man is converted by the woman to her way of thinking about marriage to bring about a resolution that allows marital harmony to ensue. These plays successfully refashion and reimagine a marriage paradigm that assumes female agency and is, if not strictly voluntary, at least less compulsory.