The Great Catastrophe of My Life: Divorce in the Old Dominion. By Thomas E. Buckley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xiv, 346 pp. $19.95 paper; $59.95 cloth).

Something like fifty percent of American marriages end in divorce: This is a figure much quoted, and much lamented, in the American media. And of course, to the extent that it is true, it is lamentable; blasted hopes and unfulfilled expectations usually are. But we should be careful not to blindly use the divorce rate as an indicator of the health of the institution of marriage. In the nineteenth century, there were fewer divorces--and, as a consequence, more miserable marriages. By stigmatizing divorce and making it more difficult to obtain, Victorian courts and legislatures ensured that an important minority of couples drifted along in ghostships of unhappiness. Given inequalities in the law, this was more often true for women. But men too stayed in marriages that hollowed out their hearts. While on a business trip in 1860, Mississippian Henry Craft shuddered at the prospect of returning home to his wife. "In my intercourse with men," he wrote in his diary, "I hear them talk of their homes and their families with a pang at my heart. Others seem to be hurrying home as the benumbed man seeks the fire.... Home. What a mockery to talk of my having a home." (1)

How prevalent was such unhappiness? How healthy were Victorian marriages? These are tricky questions. The Victorians' reputation for prudery has been ridiculously exaggerated, but their penchant for privacy was very real. In The Great Catastrophe of My Life, Thomas E. Buckley provides a rare glimpse behind the curtain of Victorian propriety in his examination of the 471 surviving divorce petitions to the Virginia legislature for the years 1786 to 1851.