CAROLINE NORTON was the mother of modern divorce in England. She actively campaigned for liberalizing divorce laws in the early Victorian era in an effort to leave her husband and retain custody of her children. She succeeded in lobbying for the Custody of Infants Act of 1839, which made it possible for mothers to procure custody of young children. She was also influential in passage of a later law transferring adjudication of marital dissolution from ecclesiastical to civil court.

I find this photograph of her intriguing.  Her entire expression seems to say, “Eat my shoes!” However, Norton was opposed in some senses to the modern liberal view of marriage. “The natural position of woman is inferiority to man. Amen! That is a thing of God’s appointing, not of man’s devising. I believe it sincerely, as part of my religion. I never pretended to the wild and ridiculous doctrine of equality,” she wrote in The Times in 1838.

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