Marriage, the Family, and the Nation

In 1862, the British writer William Rathbone Greg published his article “Why are Women Redundant?” in the National Review. Greg noted that there were 500,000 more women than men in Great Britain, but the women about whom he was really concerned were the unmarried ones. As Greg wrote,

There is an enormous and increasing number of single women in the nation, a number quite disproportionate and quite abnormal; a number which, positively and relatively, is indicative of an unwholesome social state, and is both productive and prognostic of much wretchedness and wrong.².

Greg believed that the only real remedy to the problem was large-scale emigration from Britain. He referred to the “deficiency” of women in Canada and Australia, contrasted it with the “excess” of women in Britain, and praised the “natural rectification of disproportions” that would ensue from emigration. His ultimate goal was to “transport the half-million from where they are redundant to where they are wanted.”4 Greg’s emigration scheme was immense: sending 500,000 women overseas, he calculated, would require 10,000 ships.