Since spending time together without witnesses was to say the least not encouraged it was difficult to really get to know somebody. Cousins had much more freedom to be together and because the Church of England did not prohibit such marriages, a good many cousins fell in love.’Modern euphemisms sometimes mislead readers of Victorian fiction. In the nineteenth century, ‘making love’ meant ‘flirting’. A ‘lover’ was a suitor or admirer. This was all perfectly respectable; no sexual activity was involved’.
Since flirting was usually frowned upon, encouraging the hopes or engaging the affections of someone you did not intend to marry was not only considered to be thoughtless, but immoral. However, subtle suggestiveness would be acceptable when the flirting technique was done with a personal accessory, such as a fan, or a parasol, for example.
The fan was probably the most elegant accessory that a Victorian lady could carry, it could be made of a variety of materials such as lace, silk, feathers, paper, leaves, ivory and wood, and as the literary accounts of that times say ‘it whispered of perfumed flowers, etiquette and of forbidden love’. Some of the fans which released fragrance were able to sent a gentle, feminine message when they were appropriately warmed by the lady's hand. However, the main task of a fan had always been: to convey intimate thoughts. Though it was, of course, not an exact science, Victorian ladies codified this silent speech into a system of distinct signs and signals. There was the confused flutter, the merry flutter, the amorous flutter, etc. Fluttering a fan at varying speeds indicated anything from rage to interest, to utter indifference. A folded fan that was touched to milady's chin, for example, told a gentleman that she found him attractive. However, a folded fan that was gently touched to her lips was an unspoken declaration of her love for him.
Another kind of a necessary accessory in art of flirtation was a parasol, which was also considered the most essential part of Victorian fashion. Victorian parasols were as much a part of a well-dressed lady's outfit as were her gloves, hat, shoes and stockings. The original purpose of carrying a parasol by a lady was of course to protect her delicate and soft complexion. Parasols were made of different expensive materials such as chiffon or silk, and their hands were even sometimes decorated with precious stones. With time, the parasol, however, became a status symbol. Though the differences between a parasol and an umbrella may seem to be of little importance today, they were quite significant and absolutely unquestionable in the cirlces of Victorian society. Victorian fashion dictated that a lady never be caught in the rain. Umbrellas were carried by men to protect a lady as he walked her from the front door to the enclosed carriage and visa-versa. A woman who carried an umbrella was publicly conceding that she could not afford to own or hire a carriage for transportation in the rain. However, a woman who carried a parasol was most assuredly a lady. She carried her parasol in sunny weather, not rainy, and as it was always important for a lady to convey her unquestionable status and class, when she rode in her carriage, the convertible top would be down so as to be sure that she and her parasol were clearly visible to all.
Parasols - while indeed serving a practical purpose - were associated with the greatest of femininity and romance. Like the fan, parasols were an inseparable part of the subtle art of flirtation. With practice, a felicitous lady could untilize her parasol to send any number of discreet messages. She could emphasize her dazzling eyes and her demure smile, or she could sheepishly gesture the change of her mood or thoughts. A skilled practioner could conceal from her chapperone the direction of her gaze, and even camouflage or disguise her imperfections.
Moreover, enchanting parasols became also one of the most prevelant gifts that a gentleman could give his sweetheart during the 19th century. ‘Because of their elegance, extravagance, and expense, it would have been a grave impropriety for a gentleman to give a parasol to a young lady for whom his intentions were not serious, and in return, a proper and decorous young lady would not have accepted such a gift unless she intended to receive the gentleman, as well’ Therefore, it became conventional for a groom to give to his bride a parasol as part of his wedding gift to her.
Another kind of customary accesory used either by women or by men in a variety of circumstances were calling cards. Once a couple had been formally introduced, a gentleman could then offer to escort the young lady home by offering his card to her. The woman might collect several calling cards throughout the evening, but then, to the gentleman that she most preferred, she would present her own card, thus, accepting his offer.
In the Victorian era there were many other etiquette laws that dictated a person's actions in every imaginable situation. The laws were most of the time unwritten, but understood by most of the society. Following these social rules would put a person in good social standing with his or her peers and would give them a good reputation. There was even established a kind of a group - a camaraderie among upper class women- supervising the social affairs. ‘They were the chief arrangers of social affairs: they advised, gossiped, told secrets and wrote passionate letters to each other. Anyone who made an enemy of them could be even ostracized forever from society’. On the other hand, however, when a young girl was on good terms with these social select, she could expect help in making an advantageous match.
When choosing a wife or a husband there were strict rules to follow, one had to take into consideration many important factors, but first and foremost – age, economic status and social class. Marriage was encouraged only within one's class. To aspire higher, one was considered an upstart. And on the other hand to marry someone of lesser social standing was considered marrying beneath oneself. Until 1823, the legal age for marriage in England was 21 years - for men and women the same. After 1823, however, it has changed and a male could marry as young as fourteen without parental consent, and a girl at 12. Most girls, however, married between the ages of 18 and 23, especially in the upper classes.
The age difference was on the other hand not such a serious problem. Someone her own age, or even a few years younger, was perfectly acceptable for a young woman, but so was a husband who was substantially older than she. What parents and young ladies looked for mostly would have been a solid character, an established position in society, and a comfortable income. However, some fear of passing through life unmarried led women to marry unwisely. Men did not seem to face this stigma; the assumption was that they could marry if they wanted to. If they did not, they were always called ‘bachelors’, no matter their age, while women over 30 were referred to slightingly as ‘old maids’.
Lucky were the ones who went through all the stages of courtship and despite all the Victorian requirements found love within their class, and within the approval of their families. Yet there was still one thing that needed to be discussed and that was the financial situation of the future married couple. A man had to prove his worth in keeping his wife in the level of life she was accustomed. A woman, often looking to improve her social standing, used a dowry as a lure. To protect an heiress, her family could set up an estate trust for her, which would be controlled by Chancery Court. The woman would have access to this property if she applied, but her husband could not touch it.
An unmarried woman of 21 could inherit and administer her own property. Even her father had no power over it. Once she married, however, all possessions reverted to her husband. She couldn't even make a will for her personal property, while a husband could will his wife's property to his illegitimate children. Therefore, marriage, although almost every Victorian woman’s aim in life, had to be very carefully contemplated. It was not ethical for a man to pay serious attention to a woman unless his financial prospects would allow them to marry at some predictable date. And similarly it was dangerous for a young woman to let herself fall in love with a man who had not indicated his interest, because she might be committing her heart to a man who would not be able to marry. Because many marriages were considered a business deal, few started with love. Although as the years passed, many couples grew tolerably fond of each other, often resulting in a bond almost as deep as love.
After the bank accounts have been studied and political connections explored the pair ‘in love’ could go on to another step, which was the engagement. Men were very anxious about their financial status and because ‘maintaining an acceptable middle - class life required a substantial investment in housing, furniture, and servants many of them tended not to marry until they were past age thirty’ - when they were able to afford all these things. That is why many engagements could last several years. Fortunately, it was not a rule and most of the engagements lasted from six to twelve months.
If it had not already been done, the man was then introduced to girl's parents and her peer group. Permission for asking for the daughter's hand in marriage had to be granted by bride's father, although the gentleman could wait until he had his bride's consent before asking. The father’s duty was to inquire into the suitor’s prospects and establish how long would it be before the marriage could take place. A proposal was best made in person, with clear, distinct language, so the girl might not misunderstand the gentleman's intent. If he could not bring himself to propose in person, he could do so in writing. A girl did not have to accept her first proposal. She could play coy. A short time was allowed to elapse before an engagement was announced, except to the most intimate friends or family of both parties. This was a kind of precaution, in case the engagement was ended by either party.
Once the engagement was announced the mother usually hosted a dinner party. The purpose of this dinner was to introduce the fiancé to his bride's family. A more formal evening party may have followed. Once the groom had been introduced to bride's family, the bride was then introduced to his. This could be a very trying time for a young girl, as a mother-in-law's eye was often critical. After the engagement was announced to the family, the bride wrote to the rest of her friends with the news. At the same time, her mother wrote to the elders of these families.
The engagement was of course finalized with a ring. The size and stone of which depended upon the groom's finances. ‘They could be in the form of a love knot, a simple band, or a band embedded with different stones whose initials spelled out a name or word of love. For example, the Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, gave Princess Alexandra of Denmark a 'gypsy ring' with the stones Beryl, Emerald, Ruby, Turquoise, Iacynth and Emerald, to spell out his nickname, “Bertie”’. A woman could, in turn, give her fiancé a ring, although it was not required. The couple also exchanged lockets containing a lock of hair; hers was worn around her neck and his hung from his watch-chain.
The couple could become a bit more intimate once they were engaged. They could stroll out alone, hold hands in public, and take unchaperoned rides. Things such as a hand around the waist, a chaste kiss, a pressing of the hand, were already allowed on this stage in a relationship. They could also visit alone behind closed doors, however they still had to be dutifully separated by nightfall, or overnight at country parties. Thus, if the engagement was broken, the girl suffered the consequences of a ruined reputation because of her previous behavior. An honorable man never broke an engagement, so as not to cause the girl discomfiture.
Unfortunately, there were cases when engagements did end, with resulting embarrassment and possibly even legal action should it be terminated by one party over the protest of the other. A ‘breach of promise’ suit might have resulted in one party paying for the other's damages, such as cost of a wedding gown and trousseau. 19th and early 20th centuries were actually full of cases in which women, who were able to prove men had made promises to marry them and then broken the promises, managed to get compensations by lawsuits. Promises Broken: Courtship, Class, and Gender in Victorian England written by Ginger Frost is one of the books which examines hundreds of true-life cases of breach of promise, and makes comparisons with cases from fiction.
As callous as all this sounds, there was true romance and love during the Victorian era. It can easily be proved by all the samples of heart-rending verses and flowery cards that were created throughout the 19th century. Even the advice books, that were so popular at that time in England, emphasized the importance of love in choosing a husband and said that ‘the affection that links together man and wife is a far holier and more enduring passion than the “enthusiasm of young love”, (“enthusiasm of young love” would be a euphemism for what we would blatanly refer to today as “sexual attraction”)’. Love was more and more often considered one of the most essential, all-important ingredients in relationships, and while arranged marriages still occurred in some European countries like Great Britain, in the United States for example, they were definately not. As one of the famous documentary accounts of women’s lives in nineteenth- century England says: ‘Victorian women could well have looked for greater emotional satisfaction from these lengthy marriages than their ancestors had, for a new emphasis on romantic love as a basis for union raised expectations for marital happiness’. Victorians more and more often started to appreciate the importance of love and desire in their relationships, knowing that a bad marriage could become a hell from which there was no exit. Perhaps it was these very constraints and rules that made true love all the more special to those who found it.
Advice manuals were a real hit at that times and many people treated them as guides to correct behaviour and kind of today’s glossy magazines - providing glimpses of the life led by the rich. Today it turns out however, that they provided contradictory messages about the young girl’s proper place and all the problems concerning marriage. For example, almost all advice manuals of the time warned against marrying young. In one particular manual written in 1874, it stated, ‘A young woman cannot be considered in any sense prepared for this union under 21; 25 is better’. However, at the same time, statistically, women who didn't marry early in life, might not be able to marry at all. A book published in the 1870's called A True Friend, wrote that after analyzing marriages in Massachusetts, it was concluded that ‘an unmarried female at the age of 20 has lost one-fourth of her chances of ever becoming united in wedlock; at 25, three-fourths, and at 30, nine-tenths’. But, even then, the book goes on to emphasize that even though a woman's chances of marrying decreases dramatically after the age of 20, and basically were non-existent after 30, that she should not go out and marry the first man who was willing. The book states, ‘A female at twenty-five is far more likely to marry well than at an earlier period’ .Although, the book doesn't make clear what the exact meaning of ‘marrying well’ is; whether that would be by achieving happiness in marriage, or achieving financial security in marriage - or possibly both.
Under a section entitled How to Avoid a Bad Husband, the manual however, provides a little bit funny kind of list of warnings for the would-be-wife: ‘Never marry for wealth....Never marry a fop, or one who struts about dandy-like, in his silk gloves and ruffles, with a silvered cane, and rings on his fingers.....Never marry a stranger, or one whose character is not known or tested.....Never marry a man who treats his mother or sister unkindly or indifferently.....Never, on any account, marry a gambler, (or) a profane person.....Never marry a man who is addicted to the use of ardent spirits.....Take especial and seasonable care....that your children shall not have an ass for a father’.
Although some of these manuals were real best-sellers not all of the Victorians were fascinated by them. Members of the upper class did not need such guides as they learned how to behave at home, and the working classes did not care to read them as they did not pay calls and they were not presented at the court. The situation in which the working class was at that time was generally much more difficult then that of the middle or upper classes even as far as the social activities were concerned. Young girls and boys were obviously also interested in founding husbands and wives, their status however, did not give them as much oportunities to find attractive candidates as had the young people from other classes. And despite the low social and economic status the working class still felt it was crucial to maintain respectability. While flirting was condemned, so also was the failure to find a husband: ’ Married life is woman’s profession: and to this life her training – that of dependence – is modelled. Of course by not getting a husband, or losing him, she may find that she is without resource. All that can be said of her is, she has failed in business; and no social reform can prevent such failures’.
The widened employment opportunities that fortunately opened up to girls and young women in the last decades of the century did alter general views about the place of marriage in a person’s life. ‘Marriage was no longer seen as the only possibility for a lower middle - class girl, and with this shift in attitudes toward matrimony came a recognition that the mores governing contacts between young men and young women had changed to some degree’. Nevertheless, the workplace became also another opportunity for a young middle-class girl to meet a possible future husband. For some people, however a girl who pursued a career might have well be levelled to a one who had damaged her matrimonial chances.
Men and women from the working class met at work, but also got to know each other in some other ways like, for example, through social events, at chapel, and in organizations such as singing clubs. Although there was no chaperonage, private conversations generally took place out-of-doors. ‘Walking out’ was the synonym for ‘going steady’, and when the couple were ready to marry, they announced it without getting ‘permission’ from their parents.
In order to observe the proprieties during their engagement, a respectable working-class couple often brought along a young brother or sister as a sort of chaperone. ‘Taking that role was called ‘playing gooseberry’.The couple might spend all day together in the country and hire a boat for atrip on the river if they took along a child to play gooseberry-and the child’s presence probably ensured that even akiss would be reported to the family at home.
Not all of the members of the working class, however, were so well-mannered and as some of the marriage registers and christening records in village churches show there was a rather large number of couples who began their sexual contacts before getting married. The evidence for this is that there were many children born less than nine months after their parents’ weddings. The fact is, that for some members of the laboring class the sexual activity was indeed acceptable but on the condition that a potential couple intended to marry, and it turns out that they did marry but the child was usually already on the way.
The last decades of the century, generally provide many other examples of a begining of a kind of shift in the attitudes towards a behaviour of a 19th century girls and young women and their contacts with men. The correspondence columns that were a popular feature of late-nineteenth-century magazines for girls and women provide a good source of evidence for a sort of a new, daring advice about relationships with men that started to be offered to the middle-class girls. Answers to queries include, for example, advice about the appropriate age for marriage. A correspondent to the Girl’s Own Paper was sternly informed that she was too young to marry: ‘Seventeen is too early an age for marriage in this country. Physically, your bones are not hard till past twenty or twenty-one. Mentally, you are too inexperienced; and in such matters more especially, you cannot be sure that you know your own mind’.
Correspondents to advice columns who wrote asking for guidance in their selection of a mate, might also receive a reply in the sort of this one: ‘Jenny T - E - . Give him up. A girl is mad to marry an avowedly ‘unsteady man’. No, you will not be able to reclaim him. Cast aside the thought and be sensible. I am sorry for you, but run from your infatuation as if for your life.
This new fashion for seeking advice in magazines is but one indication of a more general shift in opinion about the appropriate amount of independence from a family that a girl was beginning to gain. Such responses indicate also that by the last decades of the century, it had become acceptable for girls to meet men outside their enclosed family circle, and to seek advice about their personal lives from sources outside the home. The change in perception of women and the way in which the contacts between two sexes should look like was a very slow and gradual process, nethertheless many of the values of Victorian feminity continued for a long time and some are even present in today’s world.
Dating in the Victorian Era definatelly much differred from the one that is present in today’s world. Couples had to follow strict rules which nowadays may only amuse or fascinate the historians or other people interested in the culture of the 19th century. For the Victorians however, their manners were not silly, they were needed and they had a basis in people’s every day lives. They were the love child of morality and social conventions, they were the hallmark of civilisation, that which separated man from beasts, high society from the battlefield. They were a way of keeping the darker angels of human nature from surfacing. Something that in my opinion would be at least in some quantity worth restoring into our present culture in order to make our modern world of telephones, chat rooms, television and email a little bit more glamorous, attractive and maybe a little bit more peaceful.
Conaway, Judy, “Courtship and Manners”.
Mitchell, Sally, Daily Life in Victorian England, p.155
Gorham, Deborah, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal, p.214
Mitchell, Sally, Daily Life in Victorian England, p.155
Briggs, Asa. Victorian People. A Reassesment of Persons and Themes 1851-67, p.89
“Victorian Parasols – A Victorian’s Lady’s Most Essential Accessory”.
Hoppe, Michelle J., “Courting the Victorian Woman”.
Mitchell, Sally, Daily Life in Victorian England, p.156
Hoppe, Michelle J., “Courting the Victorian Woman”.
Hellerstein, Hume, Offen, Victorian Women, p.120-121
Corke, Helen. In Our Infancy: An Autobiography, 1882 – 1912. p.152
Corke, Helen. In Our Infancy: An Autobiography, 1882 – 1912, p.153
Gorham, Deborah, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal, p.196
Mitchell, Sally, Daily Life in Victorian England, p.156
Gorham, Deborah, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal,p.205