Note: I posted this a few days ago, but in the middle of the night so maybe it got no attention. Reposting now hoping someone has an answer. Mods, let me know if this is not ok.
So I'm watching the recent BBC series Poldark, which I hadn't heard of until I saw it randomly on Amazon Instant Video. (Side note: it's not bad - great production values, and a little schmaltzy, but a perfectly diverting melodrama).
Spoilers for Poldark below
Anyways, in the third episode, the main character, Ross Poldark, marries his kitchen maid. The show establishes that the Poldark family is a gentle one which owns land in Cornwall, but Ross is the son of a younger sibling, and his land is poor and unkept. He clearly marries his wife because he loves her, and despite the fact (or perhaps because of the fact) that he knows the rest of noble society will vilify him for it.
It ends up that the society at large does mock him for it, but most people are actually relatively accepting of it after an adjustment period, and she's mostly welcomed into the family despite her low birth.
Is this kind of situation remotely plausible? I know that the idea of nobility marrying commoners was just a fantasy in renaissance England, but I wonder if the fact that this occurs in 1800 (so relatively late) and the gentleman in question is not very rich or powerful makes it more plausible. And if it was plausible, what's the likelihood that the society types would "get over it" and just accept her as his wife?
It's absolutely fine to repost questions that received little to no attention.
I really don't know if the situation you describe in "Poldark" would have happened without some social repercussions (which are sort of addressed, but mostly everyone is won over by Demelza's good heart and charming unaffected nature). That said, if we go back further in history (mainly because that's the period I'm more familiar with - heh) there are some notable examples of a high born individual marrying a low born individual for love.
The first instance that springs to mind is John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and younger son of Edward III, who after two successful political marriages, married his long-time mistress Katherine Swynford. Katherine was of an educated gentry class and probably the daughter of a knight, so she wasn't a dirt poor street urchin like Demelza, but she was in John's employ as his children's governess for much of their relationship. Upon the death of John's second wife, he marries Katherine "for love" because he's got heirs coming out of his ears and doesn't need to worry too much about securing his lineage.
The other example is Mary Tudor, Queen of France, younger sister of Henry VIII, who had a brief marriage to Louis XII and when he suddenly died, she rather impetuously and scandalously married her brother's best friend, the commoner Charles Brandon. This landed them both in seriously hot water and they were banished from Henry's court until they somehow managed to get back into his good graces, after which Brandon was created Duke of Suffolk in order to be of sufficient rank to marry a dowager Queen of France and English Princess of the Blood.
Oh, and there was the little matter of Henry VIII and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, a commoner. All of Henry's wives except Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleaves were English commoners, but the term "commoner" is often confusing. In this case, it means women who were of a wealthy class of landed gentry -- daughters of knights, barons, earls at most. Their social capital was in their wealth, not in their hereditary titles, however, so it's a distinction that is hard to follow when the word "commoner" is used. These women weren't common, like what we would think of as "common"; but they weren't royal.
In John of Gaunt & Katherine Swynford's case, it seems that there was little scandal surrounding their marriage. By the time they were wed and their children legitimized, Katherine's estate was considerable (thanks to John) and her family had quite a bit of cache in the English court (her brother-in-law was Geoffrey Chaucer, who wasn't just a poet, but a seriously respected government official). So, even though she wasn't titled and didn't come from the same strata of society as John, she was wealthy and her family was well respected. As a third wife of an older Duke with several legitimate heirs to his name, their marriage might have raised a few eyebrows, but it doesn't seem to have caused any scandals.
In the case of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon, there was a bit of a dust-up in the wake of their marriage. Like I mentioned, they faced an indefinite banishment from Henry's court, but they managed to wait out Henry's tantrum and got back into his favor after a lengthy stay in the country. Brandon could have easily been executed on grounds of treason for marrying the King's sister without his permission, so it was probably a testament to Henry's fondness for both Brandon and Mary that kept them alive.
It's my thinking that morganatic marriages were easier for the very elite to pull off than it would be for someone of Ross Poldark's station where the social repercussions of marrying someone like Demelza who is so poor that she doesn't even own shoes, especially when Ross is trying to rebuild his family fortune, would be more dire.
Alison Weir, Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and his Scandalous Duchess (Random House Limited, Jonathan Cape, 2007) -- I hate the title, but it is basically the only recent biography of Katherine out there.
Maria Perry (2000). The Sisters of Henry VIII: The Tumultuous Lives of Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France.