Boston Marriage - Origin of The Term

Origin of The Term

The term Boston marriage was used by Henry James in The Bostonians (1886), a novel involving a long-term co-habiting relationship between two unmarried women, "New Women". The use of the term is thought to have persisted in New England for several decades. The term was less well known before the debut in 2000 of the David Mamet play of the same name. Many cite in particular the Maine novelist Sarah Orne Jewett and her companion Annie Adams Fields, widow of the editor of The Atlantic Monthly.

Read more about this topic:  Boston Marriage

Famous quotes containing the words origin of the, origin of, origin and/or term:

    The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.
    Georges Bataille (1897–1962)

    For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I am a colored woman or a Negro woman. Either one is OK. People dislike those words now. Today these use this term African American. It wouldn’t occur to me to use that. I prefer to think of myself as an American, that’s all!
    Annie Elizabeth Delany (b. 1891)