Legal Intimacies: Slavery and Marriage in Victorian Law and Literature.

The article examines the intertwined legal histories of British family law and slavery in the early nineteenth century, focusing on how English marriage and divorce policies drew upon and were shaped by colonial slavery law. It highlights key legal cases, such as Somerset v. Stewart (1772) and The Case of Slave Grace (1827), to show how slavery's legal status influenced the conceptualization of marriage as an indissoluble bond and how domestic slavery was framed in relation to white marital norms. Through a close reading of Charles Dickens's *Oliver Twist* (1837), the article argues that Dickens's portrayal of family, illegitimacy, and dependency reflects and narrativizes these legal intimacies, linking the Victorian family's legitimacy to the recent history of British slavery and its exclusion of enslaved families from family law. Ultimately, the article reveals how nineteenth-century British law and literature constructed the white English family in relation to imperial slavery, shaping cultural narratives about domesticity, legal status, and social belonging.