Charity and Sylvia

This book is for anyone whose family had open secrets—shocking, taboo, untraditional stories that could be tolerated as long as they remained unspoken. Rachel Hope Cleves thinks sometimes we should just say the secret out loud.

Shrugging off a scholarly tradition of delicacy and caution about sexuality in history, she marches into Charity and Sylvia's tiny New England bedroom and says: yes, these two women loved each other, yes, they considered themselves husband and wife, and yes, they definitely had sex. How do we know? How did their small town tolerate this? How could they have been church leaders?

I… show more.

This book tells an incredible story—not just of a same-sex marriage in the early 19th century, which would be remarkable enough, but also of the extent to which this couple was accepted by their community and family. Cleves found a motherlode of diaries and letters that document their lives together, their ability to earn a living during an era when most women relied on male breadwinners, their mutual love of reading and writing poetry, and the ways they sought to reconcile their love with their religious faith. I can’t emphasize enough how many times I paused to marvel at what… show more.