The Meanings of a Transnational Life: The Case of Mary Berenson

Abstract

Such was the lament in 1888 of a North American woman, Mary Berenson, some three years after her move to Britain following her marriage to a London barrister, Frank Costelloe. That sense of perpetual alienation would pursue her for the rest of her life through further border crossings and other relationships. This chapter explores a premise prompted by her lament: are women, less embedded in the national, more able to live in the transnational?

I do not feel myself to be any different as an English subject than as an American. I have not the vote in either place, as I am not a citizen of either and have no call to be patriotic. In fact, I do not see how women can ever feel like anything but aliens in whatever country they may live, for they have no part or lot in any, except the part and lot of being taxed and legislated for by men.¹