An Unconventional Wife: The Life of Julia Sorell Arnold

by Mary Hoban

Overview

A riveting biography that shines a shaft of light on a hidden but captivating life, told with the pace, depth, and psychological richness of a great novel.

Julia Sorell was an original. A colonial belle from Tasmania, vivacious and warm-hearted, Julia’s marriage to Tom Arnold in 1850 propelled her into one of the most renowned families in England and into a circle that included Lewis Carroll and George Eliot. Her eldest daughter became a bestselling novelist, while her grandchildren included the writer Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, and the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley.

With these family connections, Julia is a presence in many documented and famous lives, but she is a mostly silent presence. When extracted from her background of colonial life, extracted from the covers of marriage and family life, her story reveals an extraordinary woman, a paradox who defied convention as much as she embraced it.

What began as a marriage born of desire soon turned into a relationship riven by discord. Tom’s sudden decision to become a Catholic and Julia’s refusal to convert with him plunged their lives into a crisis wherein their great love for each other would be pitted against their profoundly different understandings of marriage and religion. It was a conflict that would play out over three decades in a time when science challenged religion, when industrialization challenged agrarian forms, when democracy challenged aristocracy, when women began to challenge men. It was a conflict that would shape not only their own lives and that of their children, but also touch the lives of all those who came into contact with them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781950354771
Publisher:	Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Publication date:	12/07/2021
Edition description:	Paperback edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mary Hoban is a Melbourne-based writer and historian. Her first book was a history of Melbourne’s celebrated Queen Victoria Market. She has also authored, co-authored, and edited various textbooks, papers, and journal articles on Australian and Asian history and cultural studies. For some years she was employed in the philatelic section of Australia Post as a writer, editor, and researcher for the nation’s postage stamps, where she wrote and edited books on subjects ranging from Christmas Island to the Antarctic, from royalty to rugby. She holds a graduate diploma in biography and life writing from Monash Universityand an MA in public history from the University of Technology, Sydney. In 2012 she was awarded the inaugural Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship to write the biography of Julia Sorell Arnold.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

The Family of Julia Sorell Arnold xvi

The Family of Thomas Arnold the Younger xvii

1 A Tumultuous Inheritance 1

2 Entering Society 15

3 A Colonial Belle 22

4 An Unusual Man 31

5 Finding Love 41

6 A Woman's Destiny 51

7 An Impossible Choice 62

8 Between Two Worlds 76

9 Facing Reality 83

10 A New Beginning 92

11 Adrift 112

12 A Dark World 121

13 Returning to the Fold 130

14 A Landscape of Desire 140

15 Coming Adrift 158

16 Into the Abyss 168

17 Separate Lives 175

18 A Revolutionary Wife 181

19 Disintegration 198

20 Aftermath 224

Acknowledgements 235

List of Photographs and Illustrations 239

Bibliography 243

Chapter Notes 255

Index 289

Editorial Reviews

An illuminating portrait of a Victorian wife and mother who was rescued from silence...A sparkling biography and cultural history.” STARRED REVIEW
—Kirkus Reviews

“An Unconventional Wife, Mary Hoban’s elegant biography of Julia Sorrell Arnold, who was born in Tasmania in 1826 and died in England 61 years later, challenges traditional notions of biography, examining a woman other writers might have ignored…An Unconventional Wife performs a worthy act of recovery in lucid prose, revealing an intelligent woman caught up in the struggles and limitations of her time.”
—Weekend Australian

“In An Unconventional Wife, Mary Hoban has given us an inconvenient heroine: a woman hobbled by her times, champing at the bit, going nowhere but telling us everything. Pieced together through impeccable research and told with all the urgency and intrigue of a soap opera, the story of Julia Sorell demands recognition of—and respect for—a woman who would otherwise be lost to history. Utterly charming.”
—Clare Wright

“An exceptional exercise in factual delving and a feat of imaginative sympathy.”
—Gideon Haigh

“A magisterial work of biography, utterly assured in research and style. This compelling and moving book reanimates the lost life of Julia Sorell Arnold, a spirited, independent woman in an age when women were expected to be quiet. With deep insight and empathy Hoban brings to life Julia and Tom’s troublesome marriage. Their passionate but fractious relationship speaks directly to the irascible relations between women and men in our own divisive times. This book is a remarkable achievement by an expert and gifted biographer.”
—Rod Jones

“Hoban has uncovered the story of a woman, admired by many friends and family, who refused to bow to the customs of the day, spoke her mind when others would have kept quiet and stayed true to her faith…a remarkable life that needed to be told.”
—Barry Reynolds, Herald Sun

“An Unconventional Wife is superbly written, and skilfully draws on a number of diverse sources, compensating for a lamented lack—an intimate diary kept by Julia herself. Mary Hoban has got to the kernel of this story, since she has correctly conceived it as an exercise in the recuperation of women’s history.”
—Jim Davidson, Australian Book Review

“Hoban portrays her as an independently-minded woman at a time when women were expected to conform to their husband’s views.”
—Andrea Ripper, Courier Mail

From the Publisher