ABSTRACT
[The anonymous “Concordia” was one of the many women who regularly contributed to the Owenite press, thus bringing feminist issues to a wider audience within the movement (Moriarty 2012, 119; Gleadle 1995, 118). In this letter to the editor of the Crisis, which was the leading socialist publication in the 1830s, the author voiced her reservations with Robert Owen’s views on marriage reform, which he had first publicly expressed in an 1826 pamphlet, Oration Containing a Declaration of Mental Independence (Durieux 2005, 96). While advocating free unions outside the church, Concordia argued, Owen was being too idealistic, as he ignored how difficult it was for a woman to thrive on her own. Without specific directions to guarantee the economic independence of all, and unless men were rapidly trained to see their female companions as their equals, women would remain very much subordinates, even after the advent of the “New Moral World”. As Barbara Taylor has argued, Concordia was not alone in voicing such concerns. When she accidentally became pregnant, Frances Wright decided, despite her opposition to the institution of marriage, to marry Gustave Phiquepal d’Arusmont, whom she did not love, in order to protect her unborn child from the shame and stigma of illegitimacy. In that context, Concordia believed that “increased sexual freedom for men would only be compatible with increased social power for women […] when all other sources of sexual inequality had been eliminated. Until then, greater liberty could only become greater libertinism” (Taylor 1983, 180–190).]
