29, Jul, 2010

Changes In Courtship

One who felt that a change was overdue in the pattern of courtship was Robert Louis Stevenson. In his essay 'On Falling in Love' (Virginibus Puerisque, 1881) he doubted whether the 'innumerable army of anaemic and tailorish persons who occupy the face of this planet with such propriety' could possibly experience a love affair. He felt that for man to be always proposing was 'a little bit abject and somehow just a little bit gross; and marriages in which one of the parties has been thus battered into consent scarcely form agreeable subjects for meditation. Love should run out to meet love with open arms. Indeed, the ideal story is that of two people who go into love step by step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark room.' Stevenson was ahead of the manuals on etiquette, though even in these there were signs of a fresh wind blowing. The writer of a Ward Lock sixpenny manual, How To Woo, published contemporaneously with Virginibus Puerisque, pleaded for more freedom in social intercourse:

If it could once be understood ... that man could be kind, polite and brotherly to women, married or single, without either scandal or suspicion of marriage, the whole face of society would be changed. But now if a gentleman looks at a lady he is smitten; if he spends an hour in her company it is a courtship; if he gives her his arm they are engaged.

Very daringly, this writer suggested that they managed these things better in France:

The first attraction of a very young man is likely to be a lady of mature years, and this sentiment, when it can be indulged without ridicule or scandal and has for its object a woman of taste and character, is a great good fortune. . . . In France where, under all forms of government, there have been more social freedom and true refinement among the educated classes than in other countries, this relation exists now as it did in the days of Chesterfield, and with the finest social results.

In Britain there was more suspicion and hence less freedom. The result was that for fear of ridicule men fell into foolish flirtations and inconsiderate courtships with girls of their own age.

The writer noted that young ladies were now claiming the right of deciding for themselves how and by whom they should be courted, 'and the formality of asking papa is not always complied with'. But he (or she) was not prepared to say, Eke Stevenson, that 'love should run out to meet love with open arms'. Young women were solemnly advised that 'matrimony should be considered as an incident in life which, if it comes at all, must come without any contrivance of yours; and therefore you may safely put aside all thoughts of it until someone forces the subject upon your notice by professions of a particular interest in you'. Girls were in danger of acting unnaturally in male company, of becoming bashful and silent, because they allowed themselves to think too much about love and romance.