The Anti-Marriage Plot: The Mistress as Heroine in G.W.M. Reynolds's Rosa Lambert

Abstract: This essay uses George W.M. Reynolds's novel Rosa Lambert; or, The Memoirs of an Unfortunate Woman (1853) as a case study to illustrate various types of "anti-marriage" plots circulating in Victorian popular fiction in the 1850s—representations of romantic and sexual relationships that challenge and even subvert middle-class Victorian views of marriage as the only desirable path to domestic happiness, particularly for women. Reynolds's representation of Rosa's successful career as a courtesan and professional mistress demonstrates the parallels between marriage and prostitution while also exposing marriage as primarily an institution that served the interests of men, highlighting many of the same flaws in English marriage laws that mid-century feminists were trying to reform.