The Case of the Married Woman by Antonia Fraser

The Case of the Married Woman by Antonia Fraser was a book I borrowed randomly from my library. I wanted to listen to an audiobook while I was doing something boring. Little did I know before starting the book. I only gave it 2 stars and I am wondering a bit why I didn’t stop at just 1 star. The narrator, Penelope Wilton, made funny voices for reading quotes from letters, poems or literary passages, and court records. It was slightly puzzling at first, but by the time I got to the end I would describe this as highly annoying. She was reading very slowly as it took ages to finish what is a 300 pages book as hardcover.

Caroline Norton is presented, as the blurb of the book mentions: “a 19th-century heroine who wanted justice for women”. I think that’s a bit much and this is a hagiography and not a biography. Caroline was perfect in every way, according to the author, which is clearly inaccurate. At some point the author wrote that Caroline’s child wouldn’t have had an accident if he would have been in her care. That’s a wild thing to say and rather shocking coming from a historian.

I didn’t know about Caroline before. She married the politician George Norton in 1828 and had a very active social life. She was, as Fraser described in such detail that it started to annoy me even more than the funny voices, a beauty. I have no idea why there was the need for so many descriptions of her, when a short one and a few compliments recorded at that time would have been sufficient. How beautiful was she is, in the end, irrelevant. Her peers found her attractive and a list of references to that was enough.

Her life was marked by scandal. Her husband sued the widowed prime minister Lord Melbourne for damages for “criminal conversation”, as adultery was described at that time. Melbourne was acquitted. Norton denied Caroline access to her children and used the money she was earning as an author. Caroline campaigned for years and, in 1839, the Infant Custody Act was adopted, meaning a mother could have access to her children.

The story of her life was interesting, so it is very disappointing that the author blabbed so much and the narrator did such an appalling job. I wouldn’t recommend the book, but if I would have read it on paper, I might have had a different view, as I could have glossed over yet another description of her eyes and hair.

The Case of the Married Woman by Antonia Fraser

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My rating: 2/5 Stars
Would I recommend it: at least not as an audio book!
Published by: W. F. Howes
Year it was published: 2021
Format: audiobook
Genre(s): biography
Pages: 304

About the author: Antonia Fraser is the author of many widely acclaimed historical works, including the biographies Mary, Queen of Scots (a 40th anniversary edition was published in May 2009), Cromwell: Our Chief of Men, King Charles II and The Gunpowder Plot (CWA Non-Fiction Gold Dagger; St Louis Literary Award). She has written five highly praised books which focus on women in history, The Weaker Vessel: Women’s Lot in Seventeenth Century Britain (Wolfson Award for History, 1984), The Warrior Queens: Boadecia’s Chariot, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Marie Antoinette: The Journey (Franco-British Literary Prize 2001), which was made into a film by Sofia Coppola in 2006 and most recently Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King. She was awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2000. Antonia Fraser was made DBE in 2011 for her services to literature. Her most recent book is Must You Go?, celebrating her life with Harold Pinter, who died on Christmas Eve 2008. She lives in London.
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