Marie Stopes - Marriage and Married Love

Marriage and Married Love

A year into her marriage with Gates and the pair were struggling. She had maintained her name out of principle rather than taking on her husband's. Her work was blooming while his was struggling. He was disturbed by what seemed to him her suffragette support. He had failed to assert his position as head of the household and was thus frustrated. After another year she sought legal advice as to how she could end the marriage. Not receiving useful help, she took to reading the legal code looking for a way to get a divorce. The marriage had fallen apart amid squabbling over the house and rent. On 11 May 1913, Stopes filed for divorce, citing that the marriage had never been consummated. Gates left England in the following year and did not contest the divorce.

Some time around the start of the divorce proceedings, Stopes began to write a book about how she thought a marriage should work. In July 1915, she met Margaret Sanger, who had just given an address on birth control at a Fabian Society meeting. Stopes showed her what she had written and sought her advice regarding a chapter on contraception for her book. Her book was finished before the year was out, offering it to Blackie and Son, who declined. The book was too hot, as she found out with refusals from several publishers. It wasn't until Binnie Dunlop, secretary of the Malthusian League, introduced her to Humphrey Verdon Roe, her future second husband, in 1917 that she received the boost that helped her publish her book. Roe was a philanthropist interested in birth control and he supplied the finance to entice Fifield & Co. to publish the work. The book was an instant success, requiring five editions in the first year and elevating Stopes to a national figure.

On 26 March 1918, the day Married Love was first published, Stopes was to her publisher's dismay visiting Humphrey Roe, who had just returned from World War I with a broken ankle after his plane had crashed. Less than two months later they were married and Stopes had her first opportunity to practise what she preached in her book.

The success of Married Love had stimulated the need for a follow-up, which Stopes provided in the form of the already written Wise Parenthood: a Book for Married People, a manual on birth control, published later that year. It also brought an avalanche of letters seeking her personal advice, which she energetically endeavoured to give.

The following year she had published a condensed form of Wise Parenthood aimed at the poor entitled A Letter to Working Mothers on how to have healthy children and avoid weakening pregnancies. It was a pamphlet of 16 pages and was to be distributed free of charge. Stopes' intended audience had—until this work—been the middle classes. She had shown little interest in, or respect for, the working classes, but the Letter was aimed at redressing her bias.

Stopes was now pregnant and a month overdue she entered a nursing home on 16 July 1919. There was a conflict between Stopes and the doctors over the method of birth—she was not allowed to give birth on her knees—and, when the baby came, it was stillborn. The doctors suggested that the incident was due to syphilis, but an examination excluded the possibility. She was furious and claimed that her baby had been murdered. She was 38 years old.