Frances Wright’s remarkable life was destroyed as a result of her not having the power to maintain custody, while her ex had the power to take and alienate her child from her.
Frances would often visit France and became friendly with the Marquis de LaFayette, hero of both the American and French Revolution. It was rumored that she had an affair with him.
When LaFayette later came to the U.S., he introduced her to the founding fathers. Still in her ‘20’s, she got Thomas Jefferson to agree with her plan to end slavery and soon founded her own utopian community, the Nashoba Commune, in Tennessee.
Frances was against organized religion. She believed in an education based on science, free from religious superstition. She supported the rights of working people and advocated for universal education, along with equal rights for women.
Frances was the foremother of the liberated woman and was the first to condemn marriage as a form of slavery. This threatened men’s control over women and earned her a lot of backlash. She was described as a “harlot of infidelity” and “bold blasphemer and voluptuous preacher of licentiousness” and a “female monster” who dared to take the public-lecture platform—unacceptable female behavior.
In 1830, she sailed to France and became pregnant by one of her lovers. This posed a problem because, although she openly believed in sex outside of marriage, she thought she would be ostracized from polite society and it would harm her activism. She was most concerned, though, that her child would bear the stigma of “illegitimacy”, quite damaging to the lives of illegitimate children in those days.
So she went into seclusion in Scotland to hide her pregnancy, and the French father went with her. In December of 1830, Frances gave birth to Sylva, but it was not until six months later that she married the father. She gave birth to another child in 1832, who died shortly after birth.
Problem solved. Frances gave Sylva her deceased child’s birthday so it would appear as if she had been married when she gave birth to Sylva. No issue of illegitimacy. It was a secret they would both keep until their death.
Unsurprisingly, Frances did not like being married. By 1836, when Sylva was just 4 (really 6), they had separated. Thus began a childhood-long battle for custody of Sylva and the father’s attempt to take all of Frances’ money.
The father was given temporary custody of Sylva and began his campaign to alienate her from Frances. Frances’ mental and physical health declined precipitously. She suffered “nervous breakdowns” (as they were called in the day).
Frances never regained custody, though she tried mightily throughout Sylva’s childhood. She had all the money necessary for the best representation in court, but it made no difference. He was the man/father with all the power, and she was the woman/mother with no power.
In 1838, Frances withdrew from public life and activism. She was never again able to be the powerhouse she had been, lecturing and fighting for equality. It is ironic that her own inequality and lack of power led to her inability to maintain custody and protect her own child from being alienated from her. Not to mention being financially devastated.
By her teenage years, Sylva was estranged completely from Frances. As a young adult, Sylva even started a campaign publicly opposing Frances’ work for for women’s equality. That’s how bad the brainwashing had been.
In 1850, after Sylva was an adult and aged out of the system, Frances was finally granted a divorce. Her ex-husband and Sylva were awarded her entire property, including all her earnings from lectures and royalties.
Towards the end of Sylva’s life, she apparently realized the truth—that she had been alienated from her mother by her father. She seemed to have even realized that her mother was right about women being equal to men.
Lest you think this is a rare phenomena, check out the results from one of our surveys. Nearly half of the mothers were completely alienated from their children, with nearly 40% experiencing hostility, after custody was switched to the father.
This power to take and alienate children goes back to the beginnings of Patriarchy circa 12K years ago. Despite women’s progress, women have no more power in the family than they did 200 years later. Only now, men have created a specialized “Family Court” system that makes it even easier for judges to lie about women and switch custody.