Marriage and divorce had been fairly uncontested throughout history up until 1850 when Prime Minister Lord Russel established the Royal Commission on Marriage. This commission was meant to evaluate the state of marriage in the UK and the findings were used to create the Divorce Bill of 1854 and 1856. This bill was delayed and hotly contested by the Parliament- however, at this point, women's issues were beginning to reach a boiling point and by delaying it, the government inadvertently turned the bill into more of a feminist issue. 

The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 was pivotal in the history of marriage, as it both legalized and created a procedure for filing for divorce. Before this act, divorces were very complicated to achieve: they were very costly, often being more than £1,000; they could only be granted by a private act of parliament; and they were almost exclusively granted to men. This 1857 Act created a formal Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, which established the grounds for divorce at the time- "men could divorce their wives, as before, on the basis of adultery alone; women, however, had to prove their husbands' adultery in addition cruelty, desertion, incest, rape, sodomy, or bestiality" (Kent, 29). The sexual double standard was enforced heavily through this law, legally enforcing that a woman's infidelity was inherently worse than a man's. Additionally, this act was supposed to extend the reach of the divorce court outside of London, but this was never put into place. However, it did offer some protections for divorced women- it acknowledged and protected her future earnings and property from her ex-spouse.

Hager, Kelly. “Chipping Away at Coverture: The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. Web. 2/8/2024