Is this a bad thing? (all happy marriages are different, Leo)

[oursin]

Today's ODNB Life of the Day is Dorothy Hodgkin, awww, blesss!!

I posted at some length about Hodgkin way back when I read the Ferry biography, but can't find it (may be pre-tagging).

But I was a bit 'huh?' about this in the ODNB account:
With his frequent absences (and several acknowledged infidelities), [Thomas Hodgkin] could not be classed as a

Comments

[londonkds]

Sounds like current disputes in Doctor Who fandom as to whether River Song in Silence of the Library/Forest of the Dead was a self-reliant feminist role model or a male fantasy of an emotionally undemanding woman.

[tree_and_leaf]

It does, rather. I suppose the references to 'frequent infidelities' makes one more dubious about his qualities as a husband, but as far as the being around vs giving space goes, you can't generalise about whether it's good or bad in the abstract; all you can say is, does it work for that couple and that situation? Which is seems to have here.

[redbird]

I'm fairly sure the person who wrote that biography would describe my own life in terms of "frequent infidelities" (or some similar disapproving term), but I'm breaking no promises, explicit or implicit, and my partners are all quite happy with the situation. (My loyalty is to my actual beloveds, not to some stranger's idea of what marriage is supposed to mean.) I have no evidence that Hodgkin and her husband had a relationship like mine, but also none that they didn't.

[tree_and_leaf]

If you're not breaking a promise, then whatever it s, it's not infidelity, surely?

[diony]

Maybe they're imaginging supportive in the sense that a woman would have been expected to be supportive of a man -- ie: he should have been getting her dinner on the table? But as you say, what works for the couple is what matters.

[oursin]

Yes, support takes different forms, and G H Lewes carefully removing adverse reviews from anywhere that George Eliot might see them is only one, and while possibly appropriate to their situation, not a universal rule for how to be supportive partner.