During the 1800s and the 1900s, “boston marriage” was a term used for households where two women lived together, independent of any male support. It is not a strictly lesbian marriage. Such a relationship may have intimacy and commitment, with or without having a sexual component. In those days, having a “romantic friendship” was perfectly acceptable, even though homosexuality was not.

Boston marriage was an essentially feminist relationship—the women chose each other as long-term housemates not only because of the depth of their friendship, but also because marrying a man at the time would lead to a lifetime of servitude. Feminist women wanted to change marriage—but in the meantime, they did not want to bind themselves in the institution as it existed. Boston marriage gave feminist women a home life as they pursued social and legal reform efforts—and thus, Boston marriage was eventually seen as a threat to patriarchy. Psychologists began describing romantic friendship and Boston marriage as “perverted” around same time as feminists were achieving their most dramatic victories, such as suffrage. The leading psychologist then was Sigmund Freud.

Origins

The term “Boston marriage” came to be used after Henry James’ book The Bostonians detailed a marriage-like relationship between two women—”New Women” in the language of the time, women who were independent, not married, self-supporting (which sometimes meant living off inherited wealth or making a living as writers or other professional, educated careers). The Bostonians was first published as a serial in The Century Magazine in 1885-1886, then as a book in 1886. This bittersweet tragicomedy centers on an odd triangle of characters: two cousins, a woman and a man, vying for the affection of a young feminist.

Prominent Women in Boston Marriages

Born in 1849, Sarah Orne Jewett was an American novelist and short story writer whose works were set in or near Maine, a declining New England seaport. Jewett established a close friendship with writer Annie Fields and her husband, publisher James T. Fields, editor of the Atlantic Monthly. After the death of James Fields in 1881, Jewett and Annie Fields lived together for the rest of Jewett’s life. Modern scholars have speculated that the two were lovers.

Jane Addams was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Jane’s father encouraged her to pursue a higher education, but not at the expense of losing her femininity and the prospect of marriage and motherhood, as expected of upper class young women. Jane wanted to pursue a degree in medicine, but her parents felt that she was sufficiently educated and feared for her marriage prospects. Wanting more in life than marriage, Jane developed the idea for Hull House. In 1889, Jane and her partner Ellen Gates Starr founded the Hull House in Chicago - one of the first settlement houses in the United States. Its facilities included a night school for adults, kindergarten classes, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, a gymnasium, a girls club, a swimming pool, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group, a library, and labor-related divisions.

Katharine Lee Bates, famous for her poem “America the Beautiful”, lived for twenty-five years with Katharine Coman in a committed partnership that has sometimes been described as a “romantic friendship.” After Coman died, Bates wrote, “So much of me died with Katharine Coman that I’m sometimes not quite sure whether I’m alive or not.”

Boston Marriages Today

In 1999, David Mamet came out with a play entitled Boston Marriage, his depiction giving it an explicitly sexual component. The play concerns two women at the turn of the 20th Century. Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman played the lead in one of the productions.

In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to allow legal same-sex marriages, which makes Boston the only major city in the U.S. where a “Boston marriage” can also be a legal marriage, if the couple wishes it to be.