Adoption and Victorian culture

Abstract

In 1888, evangelical, educator and feminist Constance Maynard adopted Effie Anthon, a six year old girl from a Salvation Army orphanage. Her mother, Rosabianca Fasulo was an unmarried, Italian woman recently "rescued" by the Salvation Army. Maynard anticipated that Effie would one day join her at her college but she met none of the expectations for her. She entered domestic service but fell ill with tuberculosis and died in a workhouse in 1915. This is one particular case history of an adoption when the practice was not yet formalized but small numbers began to adopt children unknown to them. It tentatively opens up the history of adoption in Victorian Britain. It also illuminates some broader questions about family ties, the meanings associated with motherhood, and how the body and character formation were understood.

Child Adoption in Western Europe, 1900–2015

“…In Germany too child adoption (Minderjährigenadoption) was allowed (1900), among other things, as a child protection measure to care for abandoned, often illegitimate children (Mouton 2005;Benninghaus 2013). The adoption of institutionalized children relieved the state from a financial burden and was supposed to reduce the children's risk of becoming criminals (Walker 2006). More generally, Western Europeans' suspicion against establishing a parent-child relationship with abandoned, illegitimate children may have eroded at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th centuries.…”

Rethinking Inadequacy: Constance Maynard and Victorian Autobiography

“…The autobiography, in her view, is a "sprawling, inchoate manuscript" that is "rambling, repetitive, but intense." 23 Because of its reliance on the diaries, "there is very little evidence of a detachment sufficient to allow for recognition and evaluation of her earlier selves" (10). She also finds the autobiography inconsistent in its literary merit (the "vivid vignettes" do not provide "continuous fine writing"), historical salience (Maynard's "objective contribution to women's higher education" does not "attain [in the autobiography] the prominence it deserves"), and individual exceptionality ("her [religious] struggle, though more intensely felt, was not dissimilar from that encountered by many contemporary Christians") (11).…”