Rachel Hope Cleves. Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America.

Abstract

Charity Bryant put it simply, “‘On the 3rd of July 1807’ … Sylvia Drake ‘consented to be my help-meet and came to be my companion’” (p. 101). Thus, the two women initiated their lifelong union in western Vermont. They built a home and a tailoring business together, shared their finances and their bed, and over time earned the admiration of their fellow congregants and the town's ministers. They were widely recognized as a couple and when they died they were buried together under a shared headstone. Rachel Hope Cleves's deeply researched and compelling biography tells the story of their marriage and reveals how their community, family, and friends made sense of this same-sex union in early-nineteenth-century America. Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America is a love story. Cleves boldly, and convincingly, asserts that the two were lovers who bound themselves to one another in the most fundamental ways that marriage was understood at the time: as a spiritual and sexual union in which two became one. Diverging from earlier historical studies of women's intimacy in same-sex romantic friendships, Cleves argues that sexual attraction and physical sexual intimacy were unquestionably part of their relationship. A central goal of the book is to understand how those around them reconciled acknowledgement of Charity and Sylvia's union with a general societal condemnation of same-sex sexual practices. Cleves's answer is that Charity and Sylvia gained tolerance by being modest, productive members of their community and enmeshing themselves in public and religious service. By being otherwise exemplary reputable women, Charity and Sylvia encouraged their community to remain silent about their sexuality and treat it as an open secret. Cleves evokes the concept of the open closet wherein the denizens of Weybridge, Vermont strategically chose to remain ignorant of the couple's sexual intimacy in order to avoid the necessity of condemnation.