SELFISH INTENTIONS - K-REx - Kansas State University

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Introduction In the early 1880s, a young wife and her husband moved from Denison, Texas, to Kingman County, Kansas, after their farm failed in Texas. Mary Elizabeth Lease and her husband, Charles, homesteaded around the town of Kingman. Besides farming Charles Lease was a druggist and worked for local pharmacies in both Texas and Kansas. The Leases lived in Kingman until 1885 when they moved to Wichita. During the 1880s, Mary Elizabeth Lease became involved with several reform movements including the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Knights of Labor and the Farmer’s Alliance. When the Farmer’s Alliance formed the Populist Party, Mary Elizabeth Lease traveled to give lectures in support of the Party and eventually moved to New York City with her children, leaving Charles Lease behind in Osage Mission, a small community near Wichita. And then, in 1902, when Mary Elizabeth Lease was in her early fifties, she returned to Kansas to file for divorce. In her divorce petition, she cited her husband’s “non-support” as her grounds to sever their union after thirty years of marriage. 1 Lease’s actions were not that unusual. By the year of her divorce, approximately one in eight Kansas marriages was ending in divorce; over two-thirds of those divorces were initiated by women. Mary Elizabeth Lease’s case was, however, unusual in several respects. Unlike most women, she did not rely on her husband for support: her speaking career had provided her the means to support herself and educate her four children. In addition, sixty-five percent of the women who filed for divorce cited abandonment or extreme cruelty as the cause. Lease’s divorce petition was not therefore, as was so often the case, the product of physical terror or financial desperation. Though no one can be certain why she sought divorce, it is likely that 1 Kathryn Price, “Mary Elizabeth Lease: Lawyer, Politician and Hellraiser,” Women’s Legal History Biography Project, Stanford Law School, Fall 1997, womenslegalhistory.stanford.edu, 2-3, 33-34. viii
after five years away from Kansas, she had simply lost interest in the marriage, since no one who knew him believed that Charles Lease was the “deadbeat” husband that her petition claimed he was. He was just a man who made less money than his wife. The Kansas constitutional provisions that granted married women the right to their own property were probably on her mind: a divorce would allow Mary Lease to keep what was hers for her use alone. In any case, Charles Lease did not file a counter petition (although he could have accused her of “abandonment”). In fact the Wichita Daily Eagle reported her husband’s response: “Mrs. Lease is all right,” said Mr. Lease to a reporter for the Eagle yesterday, with sorrow depicted in every line of his face. “She is wonderfully ambitious, and I presume she thinks she can make her own way in the world better without me. I never made any resistance to her getting a divorce, when I once made up my mind that she desired to have one. …I have not one word to say against Mrs. Lease. She had to say something to get her divorce and my mind was made up to allow her to say whatever she thought best.” 2 It appears that Charles and Mary Elizabeth Lease had mutually decided (although reluctantly on his part) to end the legal “contract” that had established their marriage. Why then did she accuse him of being a “ne’er do well husband” who “squandered” her earnings? 3 The answer is that the state of Kansas did not view the Lease marriage as a contract, but rather as a social unit in which the state had an interest. In seeking to end her marriage, Mary Elizabeth Lease’s petition had to fit one of the ten grounds that Kansas law allowed for divorces and all those “grounds” were based on the claim that one party had violated the very nature of the role he or she had assumed upon becoming a “husband” or a “wife.” 2 Wichita Daily Eagle, “Mr. Lease is Forgiving,” May 25, 1902, Mary Elizabeth Lease folder, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas. 3 Price, 32. ix
Page 1 and 2: SELFISH INTENTIONS: KANSAS WOMEN AN
Page 3 and 4: Abstract In the United States, lega
Page 5 and 6: Table of Contents Acknowledgements.
Page 7: Dedication To my Lord and Savior Je
Page 11 and 12: One other factor is important here.
Page 13 and 14: law analysis. Riley’s study expla
Page 15 and 16: CHAPTER 1 - Divorce Law in the Unit
Page 17 and 18: government regulations focused on t
Page 19 and 20: What is abundantly clear from the N
Page 21 and 22: conception of marriage.” 25 It wa
Page 23 and 24: divorce reflected the changing tren
Page 25 and 26: Constitution. In his dissenting opi
Page 27 and 28: family was poor, a legislative divo
Page 29 and 30: nineteenth century America, divorce
Page 31 and 32: divorce. They had to have been aban
Page 33 and 34: addition, protected the property ri
Page 35 and 36: presented an opportunity for change
Page 37 and 38: divorce was not unheard of in those
Page 39 and 40: The procedure to file for divorce i
Page 41 and 42: the district courts exclusive juris
Page 43 and 44: Many of the features outlined in th
Page 45 and 46: esidence was where her husband live
Page 47 and 48: years, and that into their large an
Page 49 and 50: active part in the city’s most pr
Page 51 and 52: had availed themselves of the quick
Page 53 and 54: CHAPTER 3 - Concerns about Liberal
Page 55 and 56: would come to Kansas for the sole r
Page 57 and 58: Kansans were concerned about the st
Page 59 and 60:
tried within six months of the fili
Page 61 and 62:
y default. In a majority of them ar
Page 63 and 64:
Breeze dated July 18, 1899, Thompso
Page 65 and 66:
grounds used to petition for a divo
Page 67 and 68:
marriages. Thus, we are apparently
Page 69 and 70:
e accompanied by other flagrant vio
Page 71 and 72:
in Kansas, the reporter of this art
Page 73 and 74:
equired any divorce plaintiff to st
Page 75 and 76:
District Court for a divorce. This
Page 77 and 78:
only the right to divorce would ins
Page 79 and 80:
using her capital (plus a $70 contr
Page 81 and 82:
Downing therefore asked for divorce
Page 83 and 84:
possibility that one of her sons fr
Page 85 and 86:
Conclusion Ida Marion Selts, Bertha
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etween the promise of the law and t
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Primary Sources Books Bibliography
Page 91 and 92:
Secondary Sources Books Bardaglio,
Page 93 and 94:
________. Untying the Knot: A Study
Page 95 and 96:
Gonzales, Deena, “The Widowed Wom
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SELFISH INTENTIONS - K-REx - Kansas State University

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