An exceptionally rare work directly lifting the language successfully applied to elicit compassion and action on behalf of fugitive slaves in the North and applying it to the plight of “fugitive” women, who were, according to Chase, enslaved in their marriages in a nearly identical way. It was a bold argument, but completely in character for Chase, with the emerging women’s rights movement more broadly, and for the publisher, who had long been committed to women’s rights and the plight of the enslaved.
Warren Chase was a prominent nineteenth-century American reformer, abolitionist, and politician who co-founded the utopian Ceresco commune in Wisconsin. And Bela Marsh was a well-known Boston publisher specializing in anti-slavery literature. From the early 1840’s forward, Marsh published biographies of liberated slaves and black freemen like Archy Moore, Lewis and Milton Clarke, William W. Brown, Daniel Drayton, etc., These in addition to pro-abolitionist works by Parker Pillsbury, Lysander Spooner, etc.
During this era, marriage was legally governed by the doctrine of coverture, which meant a woman's legal rights were subsumed by those of her husband upon marriage. A married woman could not easily own property [except in Missouri], keep her own wages, or secure a divorce, even in cases of severe abuse or neglect. A "fugitive wife" was a literal and legal reality: a woman who fled an unhappy or abusive marriage was often viewed by the law similarly to a runaway servant or enslaved person, as her husband could legally compel her return and claim her property or children.
By framing the book as a criticism of marriage, adultery, and divorce, Chase aligned himself with radical contemporary thinkers like Mary Gove Nichols and Stephen Pearl Andrews. These reformers argued that true morality could only exist when individuals were free to enter and leave relationships based on mutual affection rather than legal or economic coercion. Chase used the text to attack the legal inflexibility of traditional marriage, arguing that forcing individuals to remain in abusive unions institutionalized immorality and caused the very adultery the law sought to prevent.
Almost impossibly rare, with no copies in the trade and we trace no examples at auction since 1973, and before that, 1909.
Chase, Warren. The Fugitive Wife: A Criticism on Marriage, Adultery, and Divorce. Boston. Bela Marsh. 1861. 116pp.
A good + example in original cloth; some rubbing and spotting as shown. Very sound. Water stain on lower left of page, decreasing in intensity from the ffep toward the rear of the book. Textually clean and bright otherwise.
