The Married Feminist last week: Of Amelia Earhart and pre-nups

Among the things that intrigued me the most, amongst all that I read about her was the little-known fact that Earhart and her fiancé, George Putnam had what we might term in the modern world, a pre-nup. Putnam, a publisher, who was divorced, had proposed marriage to Earhart six times before she consented. Earhart married late. She was 33 as a bride in an era when the average age of a new bride was 21.

She was worried that marriage would clip her wings, metaphorically as well as practically. She told a friend in a letter,

“I am still unsold on marriage . . . I may not ever be able to see [it] except as a cage until I am unfit to work or fly or be active.”

She wrote a worried little note to Putnam, in which she laid down the parameters within which she would agree to be part of this marriage. These included an open marriage, and an escape clause. The letter was discovered years later in the Purdue University where, Earhart was a professor, which had a number of her papers.

She wrote, ‘I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage.’ She would not under any circumstances give up flying and wrote, “Please let us not interfere with the others’ work or play.” A statement that was generous of the other, and demanded the same generosity of spirit back.

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