Boston marriage
noun · first attested late 19th century
The phrase describes a common Victorian arrangement that left almost no written record of its own name.
A long-term domestic partnership between two women living together independently of men.
42.3603°N -71.0578°W · Q100
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- ProbableThe conventional story is likely, with caveats.
- Attested
- late 19th century
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Boston
- In English
Boston marriage
It was used in late nineteenth-century New England for two unmarried women sharing a household, often teachers or writers living on their own earnings. Nobody has found who coined it, and it is usually linked to Henry James's The Bostonians of 1885, which describes such a household. Lillian Faderman's 1981 study revived the term, and David Mamet took it for the title of a 1999 play.