Courtship and Marriage in Victorian England

(Hardback)

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This book examines the popular publications of the Victorian period, illuminating the intricacies of courtship and marriage from the differing perspectives of the working, middle, and upper classes. In contemporary culture, the near obsessive pursuit of love and monogamous bliss is considered "normal," as evidenced by a wide range of online dating sites, television shows such as Sex in the City and The Bachelorette, and an endless stream of Hollywood romantic comedies. Ironically, when it comes to love and marriage, we still wrestle with many of the same emotional and social challenges as our 19th-century predecessors did over 100 years ago. Courtship and Marriage in Victorian England draws on little-known conduct books, letter-writing manuals, domestic guidebooks, periodical articles, letters, and novels to reveal what the period equivalents of "dating" and "tying the knot" were like in the Victorian era. By addressing topics such as the etiquette of introductions and home visits, the roles of parents and chaperones, the events of the London season, model love letters, and the specific challenges facing domestic servants seeking spouses, author Jennifer Phegley provides a fascinating examination of British courtship and marriage rituals among the working, middle, and upper classes from the 1830s to the 1910s.

Reviews

Numerous illustrations and a marriage law chronology enliven the text, and the bibliography is notable for its bounty of nineteenth-century source material. Phegley's lucid discussion of the Victorian marriage market does indeed illustrate the consistent rhetorical focus on the companionate ideal, despite the plethora of ways in which Victorians sought partnership. * Victorian Periodicals Review *

Author Bio

Jennifer Phegley is professor of English at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, MO.