My doctoral research builds on a previous thesis that explored the marriages and affairs of four women in 1870s New South Wales. Using their divorce files, I asked how social class influenced and even determined the adulterous woman’s capacity to act with agency.

In this new thesis, I consider how snowballing changes in the wider society – political, economic, social and cultural – affected gender relationships and women’s sense of autonomy and empowerment. Once more using the divorce records and a micro-historical approach, my thesis will take ten individual cases involving adulterous women who appeared in the Divorce Court between 1880 and 1914. It aims to gauge how an accelerating emancipation transferred to intimate lives, this time adding cultural background to my intersectional approach. 

In this paper, I present three case studies, using a theoretical approach taken from the history of the emotions. This argues that we can trace historical evidence of emotions just as we can other manifestations of the past.  As such, I explore how protagonists expressed and experienced romantic love in 1880s Sydney. My ultimate aim is to bring to light the history of ordinary women, most of whom have left few documentary traces.