Why Dora Russell Opposed Marriage

A feminist argument against state-backed marriage

Dora Russell in her later years. Photograph courtesy of Macalester College via the Boston Review

In 1929, a famous philosopher named Bertrand Russell wrote a famous book called Marriage and Morals, in which he argued against the institution of marriage. However, Bertrand Russell’s story is not the one I want to tell here. I am interested in the story of his wife, Dora Russell (1894–1986).

Photograph of Dora Russell as a young woman via Wikipedia

Dora Russell was also a writer. She shared her husband’s convictions about marriage. Yet she could not philosophize as freely as her husband could. She was seven months pregnant with her first son when she got married, in 1921 at the age of twenty-seven. Given the expectations of the time, matrimony was the only option for her if she wanted a good life for her child.

So she married the very man who would author one of the most significant critiques of marriage in the English language. Dora struggled to manage a household and raise two children, but eventually she also became a prolific writer, if not quite as prolific as her husband.

Her first book was Hypatia, or Women and Knowledge (1925), a feminist argument for women’s sexual freedom and a polemic against marriage…