Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America by Rachel Hope Cleves (review)

In 1850, the famous American writer William Cullen Bryant detailed the marriage of two women in his Letters of a Traveller:

If I were permitted to draw aside the veil of private life, I would briefly give you the singular, and to me the most interesting history of two maiden ladies who dwell in this valley. I would tell you how, in their youthful days, they took each other as companions for life, and how this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage, has subsisted, in uninterrupted harmony, for forty years.... I could tell you how they slept on the same pillow and had a common purse, and adopted each other’s relations, and how one of them, more enterprising and spirited in her temper than the other, might be said to represent the male head of the family, and took upon herself their transactions with the world without, until at length her health failed, and she was tended by her gentle companion, as a fond wife attends her invalid husband.¹

Rachel Hope Cleves has drawn aside that veil in telling the remarkable stories of these two (extra)ordinary women, William Cullen Bryant’s aunt, Charity Bryant (1777–1851), and Sylvia Drake (1784–1868). In the past, even the intimate lives of notables, while subjected to speculation, were not discussed or written about openly, and few left traces of their sexual feelings and practices. When such traces are found, historians must read them in a way that respects specific historical context and changing language. Both Charity and Sylvia wrote frequent letters, often employing biblical passages or allusions to poetry that suggest their private feelings. Such allusions might easily escape notice, yet Cleves misses little, analyzing these and other sources with great imagination, rigor, and eloquence.

Charity and Sylvia managed to share a life together, but they could not do so in a vacuum. They interacted regularly with family, neighbors, shopkeepers, town clerks, and customers who sought their tailoring services. People understood the nature of their relationship, Cleves argues, but they chose not to contest it because Charity and Sylvia had become valuable members of the community. In essence, they were good neighbors and good aunts.

Though discreet, these two women constructed their sexuality both personally and publicly, and how they did so challenges—and in some ways reinforces—what we thought we knew about early America. Their world imposed great pressure on young women to marry. With so few employment opportunities, unmarried women could easily become an economic burden to their families. Cleves describes in heartbreaking detail Charity’s efforts to remain single. Charity had little interest in men, and by age twenty-three she had made it clear that she would not marry one. Maintaining this choice was not easy, and Charity’s single status inspired gossip and innuendo, forcing her to move several times to avoid rumors. My heart went out to Charity when I read Cleves’s simple yet poignant line: “With nowhere left to move, Charity took to bed in deep despair” (49).

Charity ultimately became close to several women she met through various avenues, including her teaching, one of the few professions open to women. Charity and her friends wrote elaborate and secretive poetry to each other. Cleves points out that we do not know the precise nature of these friendships, but we do know that the women paid careful attention to what they wrote and worried that family members who read their letters might suspect transgressive intimacy.

Sylvia, too, preferred the company of women to men. As a teenager, she pursued female friendships with an intensity that provoked her sister’s warning: “You may often find, my dear, under the mask of friendship the most completed treachery” (56). In the letter, her sister referred to the biblical story of Lot and Sodom, which suggested all manner of sexual sins, to...