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:

    In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx’s Capital.
    —W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)

    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)

    Mr. Roosevelt, this is my principal request—it is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you leave the presidential chair, recommend Congress to submit to the Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without doing this.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)