rachelmanija (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija) wrote2022-06-16 11:56 am
rachelmanija) wrote2022-06-16 11:56 am
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So THAT'S what was going on!
There's a funny bit in Biggles Fails To Return in which Ginger, impersonating a Spanish onion-seller in Monaco, shares some bread and an onion with a local. The local nearly spits out the onion, appalled at its sharpness, and asks Ginger where the heck they came from. Ginger is forced to quickly come up with an explanation of why he has English onions rather than the presumably sweeter Spanish ones.
I've been reading books for more than forty years, and this is the first time I realized that when characters take nothing but a loaf of bread and a raw onion as journey provisions, or eat bread and a raw onion for lunch, they're eating something like a sweet Vidalia onion, not the onions that make your eyes water and would be torture to eat whole and raw. I did vaguely wonder why they were always eating raw onions rather than, say, a raw turnip that at least wouldn't be actively painful to eat, but I supposed, without really pausing to interrogate it, that people in times past were so horrendously deprived that eating a raw onion for lunch barely registered!
This made me think about other bits in books that make more sense with context, whether that context is new information, other books, or just more life experience.
In The Once and Future King, the boy Wart, who will become King Arthur, is going on and on about the glory of fighting. Merlyn argues with him, then "seems to change the subject" and asks Wart which he had liked better, the ants or the wild geese. The chapter ends there. When I read the book as a child, I took that literally: Merlyn was frustrated with the Wart and changed the subject.
When I re-read the book as an adult, I realized that the geese were peaceful and didn't believe in national boundaries, and the ants were totalitarian and had the motto "Everything not forbidden is compulsory." Merlyn wasn't changing the subject, he was winning the argument... but the Wart, like me, missed the point.
More recently, I listened to Watership Down on audio, read by Peter Capaldi. I had mixed feelings about his performance, but while listening I suddenly understood something that I never had before, and I must have read that book twenty times.
In the warren of the shining wires, Silverweed recites a poem. It's quite beautiful and initially seems fantastical, with a rabbit asking to accompany the stream and become rabbit-of-the-water, accompany the falling leaves and become rabbit-of-the-earth, accompany the wind and become rabbit-of-the-wind. Finally, he openly asks to join Frith and die. Fiver is horrified at the poem (the others don't understand it) and says it's taking something true (all rabbits must die) and making it into something twisted and perverse (making the pursuit of death seem beautiful).
I always wondered about that poem. The final verse is straightforwardly what Fiver says the whole poem is about, but the earlier verses aren't clearly about death - they seem much more in the vein of other rabbit legends where magical things happen. I had puzzled over it, and finally decided that they're in the real world, so asking to be a magical being like a rabbit of the water or a rabbit of the earth was asking to go to the magical realm after death. But that never felt quite satisfactory to me.
Then, listening to Capaldi read the poem, I suddenly understood. Silverweed is talking very poetically about something that isn't a fantasy or metaphor at all. When he says he wants to go down with the leaves and be rabbit of the earth, he means that he wants to die and have his body decay and literally become part of the earth, and eventually, as it breaks down more and more, the water and the air. No wonder Fiver was horrified!
Have you ever understood things in books long after you first read them?
I've been reading books for more than forty years, and this is the first time I realized that when characters take nothing but a loaf of bread and a raw onion as journey provisions, or eat bread and a raw onion for lunch, they're eating something like a sweet Vidalia onion, not the onions that make your eyes water and would be torture to eat whole and raw. I did vaguely wonder why they were always eating raw onions rather than, say, a raw turnip that at least wouldn't be actively painful to eat, but I supposed, without really pausing to interrogate it, that people in times past were so horrendously deprived that eating a raw onion for lunch barely registered!
This made me think about other bits in books that make more sense with context, whether that context is new information, other books, or just more life experience.
In The Once and Future King, the boy Wart, who will become King Arthur, is going on and on about the glory of fighting. Merlyn argues with him, then "seems to change the subject" and asks Wart which he had liked better, the ants or the wild geese. The chapter ends there. When I read the book as a child, I took that literally: Merlyn was frustrated with the Wart and changed the subject.
When I re-read the book as an adult, I realized that the geese were peaceful and didn't believe in national boundaries, and the ants were totalitarian and had the motto "Everything not forbidden is compulsory." Merlyn wasn't changing the subject, he was winning the argument... but the Wart, like me, missed the point.
More recently, I listened to Watership Down on audio, read by Peter Capaldi. I had mixed feelings about his performance, but while listening I suddenly understood something that I never had before, and I must have read that book twenty times.
In the warren of the shining wires, Silverweed recites a poem. It's quite beautiful and initially seems fantastical, with a rabbit asking to accompany the stream and become rabbit-of-the-water, accompany the falling leaves and become rabbit-of-the-earth, accompany the wind and become rabbit-of-the-wind. Finally, he openly asks to join Frith and die. Fiver is horrified at the poem (the others don't understand it) and says it's taking something true (all rabbits must die) and making it into something twisted and perverse (making the pursuit of death seem beautiful).
I always wondered about that poem. The final verse is straightforwardly what Fiver says the whole poem is about, but the earlier verses aren't clearly about death - they seem much more in the vein of other rabbit legends where magical things happen. I had puzzled over it, and finally decided that they're in the real world, so asking to be a magical being like a rabbit of the water or a rabbit of the earth was asking to go to the magical realm after death. But that never felt quite satisfactory to me.
Then, listening to Capaldi read the poem, I suddenly understood. Silverweed is talking very poetically about something that isn't a fantasy or metaphor at all. When he says he wants to go down with the leaves and be rabbit of the earth, he means that he wants to die and have his body decay and literally become part of the earth, and eventually, as it breaks down more and more, the water and the air. No wonder Fiver was horrified!
Have you ever understood things in books long after you first read them?
no subject
12-ish was indeed the LEGAL minimum. It was not the SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE minimum. It happened! But not often, and it was looked down on.
Super bluntly the younger the wife got pregnant, the more likely she was to DIE, and on top of that the baby will also die, and the mediaevals and early-moderns were VERY well aware of this, as they were also well aware that every single act of coitus is risking a pregnancy. You don't actually want to kill off your incredibly-valuable-political-alliance-token (ie: your wife, or your son's wife) via a pregnancy Too Young.
So in the upper ranks, while the wife might actually take off to live in the other dynasty's home at an earlier age, you can track both in writings and in dates of birth, and in social opprobrium for those who broke this norm, that you're still looking at ~18 or older.
Get lower in society and ahhahaha actually our average age of first marriage (ie: this has EXCLUDED the widows and widowers who are remarrying, so no they are NOT skewing the results) is mid-twenties. Sometimes, it's LATE twenties. Only in very specific boom times does it go down below that.
This is because the way that the culture worked, and the demands on a new household, you literally couldn't afford to do it before then. It would take you to that age to be ABLE to AFFORD to be married, because mediaeval and early-modern Western European and especially English society relied heavily on both genders as part of the economic unit that allowed a household to survive, and at that time actually really disapproved of wide age gaps in marriage.
This is a significant departure both from Antiquity (that tended to marry off much younger women to older men, because women really weren't part of the economic unit as much) and quite different from your period (where age gaps between husband and wife were increasing, probably in part because of the increasing industrialization of base-level production - that TENDS to be the thing that correlates, but obviously as you know bob correlation may not be causation**): in the mediaeval and early modern periods, marriages were usually between similar ages and that age was "in their twenties."
Again, the LEGALITIES were not that: it was LEGAL to marry (and consummate) as young as 12-ish (assuming she'd passed menarche) and there was nothing about age differences being a problem. But legality and social acceptability are two different things, and even social ACCEPTABILITY is very different from social NORM.
And socially we have a LOT of evidence that it was considered a really dick move (and one that implied you were a shitty husband and/or in-law) to have a teenage bride get pregnant; that age-gaps especially where the man was significantly older than the woman were Not Cool (and could end up with a rough music harassment - SIGNIFICANT and up to assault sometimes); and that you only BOTHERED with the marriage younger than the 20s if you had significant property you were trying to lock down, and even there sexual consummation was often delayed specifically because of the known risk.
Now note: this is very much Western-by-Northwestern Europe: Germania-Francia-Britannia (to name landmasses instead of countries because hahahaha), and Southern Europe was its own thing and had very different culture influences. This is part of why Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet in Italy (Those Crazy Italians and their Crazy Thing With Marrying Off Babies), and you are still supposed to think that Paris and Capulet are being gross and creepy to marry off Juliet to an older man that young, it's just expected that Italians Are Weird And Creepy.
Speaking of which: Romeo and Juliet! Totally different play after deep-diving early-modern English culture, except then you come around and realize he literally told you in detail what the play was about in the prologue so it's weird that we miss it so much. (tl;dr: this play is about the Feud and the total failure of anyone to deal with the feud until it killed their babies, because they're Morons. The end.)
ETA: BUT ALSO - fwiw I have also seen the occasional fantasy commentator who has indeed probably been told some of this at some point and has interpreted this as "our age-of-consummation norms are accurate to the mediaevals" which is itself deeply stupid, in much the same way that the same kind of person often takes "actually mediaeval and early modern women were central to the economic unit and operated with a particular kind of significant influence/etc" as "mediaeval and early-modern culture weren't actually virulently misogynistic and anti-woman", which is ALSO not correct!
It's just more complicated and the simplistic formula of "well this was the norm in 1830 and The Past Was Worse so it must've been even worse in 1330" that gets applied is ALSO not going to steer you the right way; the society of 1330 might have hated women plenty, and it did, but it also needed a lot of them doing significant jobs in public to FUNCTION . . .and did, and humans being human most of these women turned around and took what power they could where they could, and so on.
Nobody was going to STOP eg the Duke of whatever from having sex with his twelve year old bride, but they were definitely going to JUDGE him for it, judge his father-in-law for allowing it, and consider it not something they were about to allow happen with their own daughter who definitely wasn't going off to the new ally's house until she was 16 and was going to go with her confessor and a retinue who were to Discourage Nuptial Visits until she'd been there a year or three.
The law wasn't going to STOP Old Man Miller from marrying 16 year old Elizabeth from the village but his house being surrounded by masked, torch-bearing locals chanting about his shame and not-so-subtly threatening to burn his house down might well make him think twice, or make her father think twice and keep her home until she was 20 and married one of the three 20yo men from the village instead.
And so on. And that did in fact change as we moved into the latter half of the 17th and into the early 18th century: women married younger and younger, and were also less and less part of the PUBLIC economic unit, all the more so the further up the ranks of society you went. It became different.
**(nb yes I know you said late 17th century ie 1670s-onward, not late 1700s, but even at that point COMPARED to eg 1450 production in food etc was moving towards a mass organized scale associated with what we call "industrial", which you probably know but I wanted to put here because I know some people might be like "1690 was way before the Industrial Revolution!" and like yes, but it was still increasingly industrialIZED compared to what came before)
no subject
Yeah, that was definitely true of the lower classes in my period: they couldn't afford to get married, so the average age of first marriage for domestic servants was late twenties/early thirties. (As you note, the ages and types of marriages for servants did change significantly between 1670 and 1790, and also there was a gradient from north to south.)
For heads of state? War. War, impending war, avoiding war, recently ended war, dictated who married who when. You can see them holding on their daughters until their 20s in order to drag more concessions out of their neighbors during peacetime, and you can see them shipping off their daughter the moment the war is breaking out and they need an alliance too badly to quibble. [Impressionistic, but I read a lot of diplomatic history.]
You also see royal fathers of my period going "Why isn't my teenage daughter pregnant yet! What's wrong with my son-in-law?!" or "What do you mean, my son let a thirteen-year-old girl tell him she didn't want to have sex? Show her who's boss, son! You've got to get this marriage off on the right foot!"
Compleeetely different considerations from the class whose first question had to be "can I afford to have kids?"
Mind you, even among heads of state, there was also the consideration of "Will I be able to find a husband for all my daughters?" and "Will I have to support them forever?" and "If I support them forever, what happens when I die? Will they have an income of their own?" that led even heads of state with large treasuries to want to get their daughters married off asap.
For readers who might not know this--I'm sure you do!--there was even, at least in France, symbolic marriage consummation for children who were too young or if one party was unwilling and the other wasn't going to force it. They would lie side by side in bed, fully dressed, and the sharing of the bed would be witnessed by courtiers and make it more official than if they hadn't done this, but less official than if sex had taken place. (Sometimes the sex was actually witnessed! as with Henri II and Catherine de' Medici in 1533, both 14 years old.)
If the parties were really not on good terms, the bridegroom might just stand beside the bed and touch his leg to hers without fully getting in the bed. Those marriages were even easier to annull than your average marriage.
no subject
So hilariously through most of my period consummation was actually much less important for the "realness" of the marriage. That was something that became more important again after the Reformation, because the Protestants de-sacralized marriage and even though the Catholics didn't, there was a significant knock-on effect that got more intense as time went on, getting into the stuff you're familiar with.
The theological rule for marriage in my period was: you were married if you said you were married in "words of the present tense" (eg "I marry you" or "I do" in response to the "do you"), or if you said you'd GET married in words of the FUTURE tense and then had sex (so yes: boys who got girls to sleep with them on the basis of "I'll totally marry you later" were absolutely dragged in front of canon courts to discover hahaha ACTUALLY, bro, you ARE married now already).
This was a hard line; your only way out of it in terms of "annulled for non-consummation" was in fact if one party (usually the man) had DECEIVED the other party about whether he was CAPABLE of consummating. So eg if a woman found out that her husband was impotent and he'd KNOWN (or should have known) that he was impotent before they married, then the marriage could be annulled.
There were detailed examinations for this by "knowledgeable women of the village". (So a dude couldn't get OUT of a marriage free and clear by lying ABOUT this just because he didn't want to sleep with his wife.) Which yes does in fact mean that there are court cases where as far as we know two or three village matrons took a guy into another room to determine whether or not he could get it up via a handjob in order to determine whether a marriage could be annulled, because the mediaevals are WONDERFUL like that.
On the other hand if he became impotent after the marriage or didn't know or hadn't known, nope!
Otherwise, if you said "I do" and there was no destructive impediment (ie thing that made marriage theologically impossible regardless of anything else), you were married. End of story. The sacrament had been performed, the union was complete in God's eyes, that's it!
The Church had to work for a few centuries to ESTABLISH this, mind, and as I said it fell apart come the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and also obviously the powerful did their best to ignore it or get the Pope to magically annul things based on impediments they either made up, or which should have made the marriage impossible AND other FUTURE marriages impossible, but who cares I'm the King (looking at you Eleanor and Henry . . . )whenever they could! But the other flipside was the obsession with the Witnessed Consummation was a later thing that came back in AFTER the Reformation thanks to the effect that Protestant desacralization of marriage had on the entire affair, and attendant theological confusion, especially when countries were switching back and forth on what they were every ten years or so.
Shakespeare's era would have been at the wobbly point in time for this one, but still solidly erring on the side of, even the nobility were mostly reserving their daughters until at least late teenagerhood if not beyond, or if they surrendered them were doing so with retinues and support staff.
And again: outliers definitely happened! But there's a difference as we know bob between the outliers and the norms. (I have some speculation about the changing role of women OVERALL also having an effect on how willing the bride's family were to have younger women in the diplomatic role - there's also a strong indication a lot of the time in my period that they also tended not to be interested in sending the daughter out to the husband until she was old enough to be a USEFUL driver of their dynasty's interests, which a 14 year old is usually not - and vice versa - in a society where politics was less symbolic and much more rooted on individual personalities and talents than it was moving to be later on, but I don't have the transitional knowledge to back that up as my focus area obviously trickles off after the early-moderns pretty abruptly; I find the Wars of Religion a headache. XD)
no subject
This is ringing a bell from translating medieval canon law in Latin, thanks for the reminder!
also obviously the powerful did their best to ignore it or get the Pope to magically annul things based on impediments they either made up
"After umpteen years of marriage, we just discovered we're too closely related! I need an annulment so I can go marry someone equally closely related who might not be barren!" One historian I was reading recently got snarky about this. Most of them just report it. :P
One party saying they were forced into the marriage was also valid grounds for annulment, at least in the Renaissance and continuing into my period. Usually (impressionistically speaking, I have no stats) this is the woman speaking, but 15th-century Louis XII comes to mind: he wanted a divorce, so he argued that he was married against his will below the age of consent (they were both about 11-14, of course no one knew exactly), and also claimed he'd never consummated the marriage (something his wife contested).
Women obviously had a stronger case, overall, for being made to do things without their consent.
(Which reminds me, in my period, Protestant King Frederick William I asked his local pastors if filial piety meant he could marry his daughter off against her will. They all agreed marriage was a sacrament and required the consent of both parties. His response? "I don't like your answer, so I'm going to do it anyway.")
my focus area obviously trickles off after the early-moderns pretty abruptly; I find the Wars of Religion a headache. XD)
See, I agree with this, which is my focus starts when the Wars of Religion are over and everyone is openly fighting over territory and trade! Hence my period begins with the late 17th century. XD
no subject
“and also claimed he'd never consummated the marriage (something his wife contested).”
Right, of course, non-consummation could be used as EVIDENCE of lack of consent, in particular cases! Which often led to lay confusion about what non-consummation meant.
no subject
Whereas in my period, historians are at pains to tell us modern readers that contemporaries would not have batted an eye at a huge age difference among nobility and royalty, and that when your first wife died, of course you married another 17-yo to raise and/or replace the kids from your first marriage--and that was the nicest husbands!
Uncle/niece marriages, or marrying below your class, were the things that were *done* by nobles and royals, but definitely not the norm and quite scandalous.
ETA: BUT ALSO - fwiw I have also seen the occasional fantasy commentator who has indeed probably been told some of this at some point and has interpreted this as "our age-of-consummation norms are accurate to the mediaevals" which is itself deeply stupid, in much the same way that the same kind of person often takes "actually mediaeval and early modern women were central to the economic unit and operated with a particular kind of significant influence/etc" as "mediaeval and early-modern culture weren't actually virulently misogynistic and anti-woman", which is ALSO not correct!
This and this!
"well this was the norm in 1830 and The Past Was Worse so it must've been even worse in 1330"
I have facepalmed at this very argument!
This is part of why Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet in Italy (Those Crazy Italians and their Crazy Thing With Marrying Off Babies), and you are still supposed to think that Paris and Capulet are being gross and creepy to marry off Juliet to an older man that young, it's just expected that Italians Are Weird And Creepy.
Huh. Yeah, a number of the examples I can think of off the top of my head, from 1000-1800, have involved Italians, but usually intermarrying with German or French nobles/royals.
As for Italian-internal practices among "normal" people, the only thing I would know well enough to speak to is Renaissance Florence. To copy-paste the stats from John Najemy's History of Florence:
Among all classes, men in the city married in smaller numbers and later in life than did men in the countryside. And while there was less variation in the ages at which women married, the city had many more widows than the contado. In all cities of Florentine Tuscany surveyed by the Catasto, the average age of marriage for women was just under 19, and for men just under 28. In the Florentine contado it was over 19 for women and just under 24 for men. But in Florence the average age of women marrying for the first time was between 17 and 18, and the vast majority of women who married did so by their early twenties; those who did not mostly entered convents. For men in the city, the average age at first marriage was around 30, but 12% of all men never married. The large age difference between husbands and wives (averaging 12 years, and in many cases much more) accounts for the startling number of urban widows: 25% of women over the age of 12 were widows in 1427. Many were widowed in their twenties, and few ever remarried.
You also get stats from the police records in Renaissance Florence (scandalous among contemporaries for its pre-Savonorola laissez-faire attitude toward male same-sex relationships) relating to sodomy, where, say 90+% of the "passive" partners recorded between 1478-1502* are below 18, and 90+% of the "active" partners are above 18. The passive partners start at age 6 and really take off at 13, peaking in the 15-18 range. Which is skeevy as hell by modern standards! But not UNHISTORICAL as some seem to believe.
* Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence.
no subject
I mean to be fair I should have made it clear that this was an area where that was the perception by English people of Italians (which would have been heavily depending on Specific Stories About Rich Folk itself, as well as a hell of exotification and the combination of Italy Is Civilization and Italy Is Horrible Decadence), so; in terms of definites all I know is that I know in Southern Europe things WERE somewhat different, and my social history grounding in those regions is insufficient to be able to make definite statements, other than a general awareness that among the nobility in the city-states, women were much more cloistered/controlled in their movements, and often married off younger and so on.
But English PERCEPTION of Italy was that Shakespeare could set his play there and have it be a Feud with Creepy Nobles Forcibly Marrying Babies . . . .without it appearing to be him actually saying "English nobility sucks" and getting in shit for it. XD Italy was, in terms of the cultural imaginary, familiar enough to be able to set stories that made sense to the audience, while being foreign enough to get away with things he might not otherwise have been able to get away with (and exotic enough to be exciting).
Having an ENGLISH noble say things like "younger than [13] are happy mothers made" would revulse the crowd to the point that you'd have to, like, somehow have Paris be VILLAINOUS and probably even somehow not REALLY a noble, or else you're implying that Our Own Nobility is somehow very bad (and they'll get upset with you); having an Italian one makes use of the "oh those weird and crazy Italians" enough that it's just a signal that both Capulet and Paris himself (who is a relative to the prince) are selfish and semi-corrupt and care more about their own benefit than about making good choices for the realm (as Paris is enmeshing his family with Capulet's which is going to make it harder for the Prince to properly adjudicate and manage the feud's detrimental effect on Verona; Mercrutio's behaviour and enmeshment with the Montagues is doing the same on that side; and the Prince is doing exactly fuck all to prevent this; thus spreading the responsibility for "this feud is wrecking Verona" around nice and thick).
Were a few of those English nobles probably still marrying and consummating with teenagers? Yeah probably but that doesn't mean anyone would TALK about it or publicly APPROVE of it. Because social norms are different from social approval are different from legality. XD But yeah.
no subject
From what I have read, including those two sources, Renaissance Florence was demographically a lot more like classical Athens in this sense, in that you get the upper class women cloistered, married off at young ages, men having to wait until they were almost 30 to get married, and a lot more homosexuality due to men having far fewer options. The government even came up with state-sponsored prostitution at one point to get the men to stop fucking each other and start fucking lower class women like God meant them to!
Having an ENGLISH noble say things like "younger than [13] are happy mothers made" would revulse the crowd to the point that you'd have to, like, somehow have Paris be VILLAINOUS and probably even somehow not REALLY a noble, or else you're implying that Our Own Nobility is somehow very bad (and they'll get upset with you); having an Italian one makes use of the "oh those weird and crazy Italians" enough
Ah, that makes sense and is not something I would have picked up on! 16th century English perceptions of Italians is too far outside my wheelhouse. I have an idea of who was doing what outside my period (including your points about women as economic actors, the older age of marriage outside the upper classes, individual cases of medieval and Renaissance political marriages, etc.), but what was perceived how by whom outside my period is not something I can speak to. Thank you!
Were a few of those English nobles probably still marrying and consummating with teenagers? Yeah probably but that doesn't mean anyone would TALK about it or publicly APPROVE of it.
From earlier in the century, off the top of my head, Catherine Howard comes to mind (she wasn't a super young teenager, but the age difference was significant), and Mary, Queen of Scots (she was young, but she and her husband were roughly the same age, and the marriage might never have been consummated), and Lady Jane Grey (but she was 16, not 13, and I don't know if it was consummated, and she and her husband were roughly the same age)--was public perception of these marriages (the marriage, not the head-chopping part) that bad? (Oh, lol, I just realized all three were executed. Only one by her husband. :P)
no subject
Haha so. Poor Howard: yes, honestly, except you can’t criticize the king so instead it became important to portray her badly instead so that somehow it’s her fault that she’s in this skeezy marriage. Gotta love it.
The other two as you note were either not big age differences and/or were unclear if they were consummated (and in Mary’s case was Extremely Political).
no subject
Yeah, that checks out. There's a lot of that in all periods.
no subject
Okay, so, question that came up a few months later! (If you don't mind.) Does that "Weird Italians" thing also apply to Juliet being the first one to bring up marriage, i.e. propose? What *would* an English marriage proposal look like in those days? (Assuming a marriage of love and not an arranged marriage.)
no subject
And to be clear, Shakespeare is absolutely and deliberately using the exoticism of his Italian location to talk ABOUT things in English society with plausible deniability; he is using his setting as a way to throw things into a sharper more dramatic relief, but without either a) actually saying that his OWN nobility (who could, you know, fuck his life right over) were that bad, or b) making his audience defensive and annoyed at his play (which he needed them to come see in order to make money).
Feuding and violent armed brawls in the streets were absolutely a London Problem, but an Italian setting let him ramp everything up to 11, AND avoid the risk of being seen as critical of the powers that actually had control over his life and/or their partisans.
English women were absolutely seen as more robust (wholesomely so) than their Continental and especially Southern European counterparts. Obviously we lack as MUCH documentary evidence for How These Things Are Done at that point in time than we have in, eg, 1750, let alone 1890, but there's no indication that it was particularly shocking for the woman to be the one declaring love and pushing the marriage. To some extent, particularly in eras where war was not an ever-present constant, if it didn't roll out that way it was because bluntly SHE was a more valuable commodity than he was - he might have more power, but given mortality rates for women in childbirth, unless there was a war on frankly most fertile women would have at least two suitors actively pursuing her.
I will note, however, that Juliet does not actually propose; what she says is this:
Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed.
If that thy bent of love be honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,
By one that I'll procure to come to thee,
Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite;
And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay
And follow thee my lord throughout the world.
She says if his intent is marriage - if all of his love-pleading is an honourable and morally upright one, seeking a moral and licit outcome, rather than to just exploit her - then tell her where to meet him. And that's absolutely within the bounds of normal.
Now there IS a thing going on with her specific and active and delighted mutual involvement in the love-process, which is a literary one and is Shakespeare basically shit-talking Petrarch (who was at the time a kind of overwhelming Exemplar of Love/Love Poetry/Etc in elite contexts) and saying Petrarchan love (and sonnets) sucked and his own portrayals (and sonnets) were way better. But that's only coincidentally entwined with the "usage of exotic locales to talk shit about local problems without getting called out for it".
(You'd think it would be moreso, given Petrarch is, well, Italian! But no, because Petrarch was Italian of a couple hundred years ago and part of the Intellectual Movement that Defined Elite Everything at that point in time so he wasn't the same KIND of Italian as Those Hotheads of Right Now Brawling in the Streets, because humans are very good at this kind of curly thinking.)
no subject
She says if his intent is marriage - if all of his love-pleading is an honourable dand morally upright one, seeking a moral and licit outcome, rather than to just exploit her - then tell her where to meet him.
Interesting, because to me, a marriage proposal is indicating that you're interested in marrying and asking the other person if they are too, and that seems to be what Juliet is communicating. What nuance am I missing here?
Also, are there any sources you can recommend that would talk about the rituals of marriages and proposals during this period, in some detail?
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:tilts head: So by your definition any time a person says or indicates "I would be interested in marrying you" or "if you asked I would say yes", that's an active proposal?
For me the nuance is: she's not saying "will you marry me?". She's saying "if you're interested in marrying me, I will show up where you tell me to go and say yes". She says this because he has already gone at length in declaring his love and also figuratively pledging faithfulness/indicating he really, really wants to have sex with her. She's saying, yes, I'm amenable to that as long as it's in this Honourable/Correct fashion, so if that's what you want then let me know where I'm supposed to show up and say "yes".
In all of their interactions, he is the initiator; the closest she comes is him overhearing her private musings about how hot and perfect he is. The most she does is first a) not TOTALLY shoot him down/tell him to get fucked when he's approaching her at the party, and then b) vehemently admit that yeah he totally just heard her say all of that, does HE mean he what he just implied about wanting her?
Now in a literary sense, that second part is remarkable and part of Shakespeare's extremely conscious and deliberate deconstruction of Petrarch. (I'm assuming you're familiar with Petrarch and Laura and their Totally Onesided Love Affair ending in her perfect chaste death and his perfection of a sonnet form): Romeo writes stiff and banal Petrarchan sonnets to Rosalind, who could care less whether he's alive, in proper Petrarchan form - until he meets Juliet, who is NOT silent, sexless and remote, but who answers him and answers him passionately and agreeably and - critically - in joint Shakespearean sonnets and is basically as close to the anti-Laura as an archetype as you can get. But Romeo still always initiates, and Juliet's responses are just emphatic "yes I like that and am totally encouraging that implication you've made that you want to marry me and then have a lot of totally licit amazing sex, where did you want me to show up".
Also, are there any sources you can recommend that would talk about the rituals of marriages and proposals during this period, in some detail?
Hrm. So I am not currently aware of any off the top of my head that were like "here is how people in Tudor England asked each other to marry one another"; this is an area where I do articles, primary sources, and of course a huge number of course-packs from when I actually did my degree, which are filled with facsimiles of articles and primary sources. A quick google tells me that the current favourite layperson accessible book is by someone named Carol McGrath, but I haven't read it and tend to squint warily at popular history books whose authors' major degrees are in English.
A quick google reminds me of Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England by Diane O'Hara who I recall threading the needle well between the ideas of individual choice that were present and the community and culture contexts; if you want to keep going with its relationship to these kinds of texts, Marriage Relationships in Tudor Political Drama looks like it might apply. And, of course, there's (careful) looking at the era through its literature, which is by and large quite content with women being pretty clear about who they want (and who they don't) - including women framed by the narrative to be Perfectly Acceptable and Respectable, Thanks, particularly when "common" or "ordinary".
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Yep, that's pretty much the definition of a proposal in my book. I don't remember exactly what words I used to propose to my wife, but definitely not "Will you marry me?" Something along the lines of "You know the Supreme Court decision this week means we could get married." *pause indicating the ball was in her court* I was proposing that we get married if she was game, just as Juliet is proposing that they get married if Romeo is game.
But regardless of semantics, your explanation of the Petrarch deconstruction is fascinating. I am familiar with Petrarch and Laura at a superficial level, but not in any way that involves knowing what Shakespeare did with that tradition.
A quick google tells me that the current favourite layperson accessible book is by someone named Carol McGrath, but I haven't read it and tend to squint warily at popular history books whose authors' major degrees are in English.
Yeah, this is why I always ask for recs if I can. Because I can google with the best of them, but if it's outside your area of expertise, you're as likely to find BS as anything else.
A quick google reminds me of Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England
I will take a look at this, thank you! You are extraordinarily knowledgeable and helpful.
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Hmm. Interesting! By that standard there has never been a point where it was socially improper for women to do something that definition would term a proposal; there have literally always been socially acceptable ways for women in any of the societies I'm familiar with to indicate to men "yes I would be interested in marrying you". Some of them are more restricted than others, or more ritualized; the Regency well-to-do woman would have some particular social dances to make, but that still amounts to communicating "yes you should get around to asking this out loud."
In terms of social expectations I'm familiar with in early-modern (and previous mediaeval), it was expected for the man to make the first public and formally recognized motions, but as the woman it was pretty normal to make it as clear as Juliet does here that the answer will be "yes", and he can just go ahead and DO that. (In a non-covert scenario this would of course involve more than just finding a clergyman to witness; it would also involve talking to her father, hammering down the dowry, posting notice of the marriage with the parish, and so on.) The formal proposal, if you like, the societal motions that put a recognized marriage in process, are definitely male-led and it would seem weird to the audience to have the woman driving that and making those actions happen.
This is something that the Courtship and Constraint will delve into - in terms of understanding early-modern marriage it's important to understand how intensely you were part of a community which universally had its nose in all of everyone's business, so that contracting a marriage even out of individual love-match (or like match, or whatever match, but done by you personally for your own reasons) was still a communal event and involved a lot of communication via behaviours and norms.
And a woman it verbally clear that If He Wants To Get That Started, That's Cool, She's Totally Onboard is 100% within norms; Juliet is totally unremarkable in that part.
Also to be fair to Carol McGrath I have ALSO not found her work being excoriated or screamed about on any of my mediaevalist/early-modernist spots, so my guess is that she wouldn't be terrible as a foundation/starting point as long as one keeps in mind It's Popular History And Probably Simplified. But yeah.
but not in any way that involves knowing what Shakespeare did with that tradition.
So if you imagine Petrarch as the Trope Norm - the idea that he and Laura were the Epitome of Perfect, Strongest, Purest Love, and that this was a literary THING - and you start looking at how often Shakespeare invokes this trope to explicitly then send it up, undermine it, or outright point and mock it, it becomes very clear that for whatever reason, Will found this trope personally irritating and stupid and wanted everyone to agree with him. R&J is merely one of the times that he explicitly sets up "here is a Perfect Petrarchan Swain and His Remote, Disdainful/Indifferent Love! And here's why this is the stupidest fucking thing and my resolution will involve bombing it and then stamping on the rubble."*
*tho ironically his sonnets are not among them, and his sonnet cycle is actually a deeply cynical and dark little story! But they're very pretty.
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I have ALSO not found her work being excoriated or screamed about on any of my mediaevalist/early-modernist spots, so my guess is that she wouldn't be terrible as a foundation/starting point as long as one keeps in mind It's Popular History And Probably Simplified.
Good to know, thank you!
you start looking at how often Shakespeare invokes this trope to explicitly then send it up, undermine it, or outright point and mock it, it becomes very clear that for whatever reason, Will found this trope personally irritating and stupid and wanted everyone to agree with him.
Huh! Things I did not know. If this was covered in any of my English classes, I have long since forgotten it.
By the way, my 18th century discussion group (hosted at
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Our culture (given I believe you're an English speaker out of the states) tends to think that there are stages to contracting a state we call "marriage", which is a particular kind of pairbonding that we because of our culture and history put HUGE social and emotional weight on. You start in a state of not-married, even if you are engaged in Romantic Partner Behaviours and agreements of relationship with another person. Then there's something called a "proposal" which puts us into a state we call "engaged to be married", that is not a legal commitment but is a huge SOCIAL commitment, so that now we are in this state we are MORE firmly "partnered" with the other person than we were previously even if literally nothing else changes; then we engage in a legal ritual called "marriage" which results in a massive legal and social state change.
"Proposals" matter at all because they're the trigger for that middle state of "engaged", where you're more pairbonded than you were before you were "engaged" but less than when you're "married". What counts as a "proposal" is going to depend on what the people involved (most importantly the two halves of the pairbond, but to some extent also the rest of society around them) consider sufficient to trigger this change from "not engaged" to "engaged".
By and large I would say most people require that to be some kind of active request from one party to the other to Enter This State With Them, answered by the other person with some kind of agreement. I do not think most people would agree that literally any indication that marriage is desired by one party is enough to count as a proposal for their purposes; it's extremely common for people to discuss in detail whether or not moving on to being "engaged" is something they want, and it's frankly a huge TROPE in our culture that women start dropping Huge Clear "Hints" up to and including "are you EVER going to ask me to marry you?" when commitment phobic men have not yet done so, with the very clear indication that they don't consider themselves in that "engaged" state yet, nor such questions to be Them Proposing. (And such questions make clear - and the prevalence of the trope itself makes clear - that there's definitely a cultural understanding that it is the man's job to initiate this state change to "engaged" via the correct form of the question).
On the other hand in terms of any given individual, what counts as triggering it is basically whatever discussion THEY have that they feel is adequate to announce to the rest of the world they're engaged. So could "I want to marry you" be enough to count as a proposal? Sure, if both parts of that pair-bond think it is. This is a human communication and social indicator matter, not a chemical state change, y'know?
But I wouldn't think MOST people would consider their partner just saying that to be "a proposal", and if articles and history or sociology books are discussing things like "was it appropriate for women to propose? No not at all", I would consider myself safe to assume that what they mean is "it wasn't appropriate for a woman to flat out say to a man 'will you marry me?', a question which the answer to either constitutes an agreement to be engaged or a rejection of the proposal/idea outright". I would definitely not assume they mean it wasn't appropriate for women to make it clear that they'd ACCEPT a proposal if the guy made one.
And, coming back around, I definitely would not expect an Elizabethan or Jacobean context to frame the statement "I want to marry you" as a proposal that the person saying it enter into the "engaged" state with the person it is being said to. It's just a statement about their feelings and desires and doesn't even indicate intent; it's as likely to be followed by "I want to marry you, but I can't" as anything else.
In re Shakespeare and Petrarch, it's extremely possible that they never got into it. I was extremely lucky to MOSTLY have Shakespeare teachers
bar one and his was the worst classwho were also rigorous in their scholarship of Shakespeare's context and treated him like an actual living person who spent decades of his life writing plays, performing in and directing plays both his own and other people's, and otherwise being a real human who lived in a real city (and happened to be a sodding genius), rather than some kind of Platonic Writer; it meant they were way more alert to intertextuality and intertextuality that wasn't necessarily "literary" (ie didn't conform to literary theory). It was invaluable to have eg the one who was like "hey did you notice how Romeo starts this play as a not particularly kind satire of a Petrarchan lover, but the minute he's talking with Juliet they're speaking in SHAKESPEARE's sonnet form?" or for that matter the other one who pointed out that we had to remember that just about literally any modern-language version of Shakespeare, or for that matter any version that wasn't literally a facsimile of the First Folio, was going to be a product of editorial choices and sometimes those editorial choices were quite sneaky and influential, because we got our knowledge of these plays from real physical OBJECTS, physical books that we got a hold of, and those books have an object history, and that also matters (and there's some damn weird printing anomalies in the actual books themselves).Then I went into the mediaeval and early modern social history stuff and just kept diving onwards. XD
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Then there's something called a "proposal" which puts us into a state we call "engaged to be married"
My definition is: a proposal is a thing you say that commits you to be engaged and puts the ball in the other person's court, such that if they accept, the two of you are now engaged. A proposal can't enter you into an engaged state, because you can't engage someone else, but a proposal can cover your half of the consent, if you imply that engagement automatically follows if the other person says the right thing.
I guess it comes down to, suppose an exchange went like this:
Partner A: "If you're interested in getting married, tell me when and where and I'll show up."
Partner B: "Okay. I choose tomorrow at 2 pm at the church."
Would they be engaged to get to be married tomorrow at 2 pm? In my world, yes: that's proposal + acceptance = engagement. In Juliet's world, maybe not?
Likewise, if "I want to marry you" (or antyhing else) takes place in a context where it can logically be followed by
*pause to indicate ball's in the other person's court*
Partner B: "Okay!" (or some more romantic or formal way of accepting)
and they are thus engaged, that's a proposal in my book. And my "books", literally--hunting through some of my Kindle selection using the search function earlier, I found a number of things the authors called "proposals" that consisted of one person expressing their interest in marriage with implied or stated commitment upon acceptance, then waiting to see what the other person would say.
I think this is where I got the idea that there are many ways to phrase proposals, direct and indirect. At least some English-speaking authors from the States (you are correct) and Britain also use it this way.
If there are some ways of proposing that are socially acceptable for women to utter and others that are not, then sure, I think we're on roughly the same page.
I was extremely lucky to MOSTLY have Shakespeare teachers who were also rigorous in their scholarship of Shakespeare's context
I am delighted on your behalf and wish I'd had literature teachers I clicked with at all! (I had a couple, to be fair, but only in Classics, which is how I ended up pursuing degrees in Classics.)
sometimes those editorial choices were quite sneaky and influential
Ooh, any examples you want to throw our way?
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. . . .except none of the original sources attribute these lines to Claudio. He's THERE; he's on-scene. But the lines in the actual primary sources are given to Benedick.
Now as an editor you have to make a choice here. It doesn't seem like it makes sense for Benedick to say these lines (it's most of the beginning of this scene), because Benedick isn't the one who needs forgiveness? And we do have other instances where we have far more clear evidence that this kind of thing is a printer's error: there are a couple of cases where we've got multiple examples of the play that are all "good" copies/versions except that in one of them a line is attributed to someone it makes no sense to attribute it to, and we DEFINITELY have plenty of examples of printer's errors in all kinds of OTHER texts.
So it's PLAUSIBLE that this is a printer's error.
. . . but we don't HAVE any other copies of this particular play. So we have no actual evidence for that. All we have is the fact that it's a bit weird that Benedick would be saying these things instead of Claudio.
The prof that first pointed this out went on to note, however, that it's only weird if you're supposed to see Claudio as a sympathetic and "heroic" character; if you're NOT supposed to see him as kinda shallow and kind of a dick, if you're supposed to see his about-turn on the topic of Hero after her death as genuine remorse. If that's what Shakespeare MEANT you to see, if you assume that, then sure: it makes most sense that this is a printer's error and you reassign these lines to Claudio, who clearly means them.
. . . but that's not the only way to read Claudio, and Shakespeare isn't always inclined to portray his "heroes" in the best light. Claudio IS shallow enough to throw Hero off on the strength of a rumour from someone he doesn't even like or supposedly trust, and without any internal conflict about it, and moreover to do so in public in as cruel a way as possible, because it offends HIM that he might not have a pure bride.
Moreover one of the problems that's really solved by this funeral rite and so on is the conflict between Claudio and Benedick. At this point in the play, they're bound by military brotherhood and comradeship and friendship, but Beatrice has also issued her ultimatum to Benedick: if you love me, you'll do what I CAN'T and make Claudio pay for what he's done to my cousin ("oh God that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace").
And reluctantly, he's agreed to do it. The revelation of the whole deception and lie saves Benedick from having to duel his friend as much as it saves anyone else: he's proved himself a worthy suitor for Beatrice (choosing her and her righteous cause over Claudio and his shallowness), and now he's saved from having to (probably, because he's a better soldier/fighter) kill his younger friend. Therefore it's extremely in HIS interests to chivvy Claudio through this whole thing.
We have no other evidence, but who you assign these lines to is going to affect how Claudio is portrayed: is he penitently going through this ritual of apology to Hero's supposed ghost, or is he silently waiting for someone else to get on with it so he can LOOK like he's doing this (so as not to be in conflict with his buddy and, you know, look like a heartless asshole to everyone else in the world) and Benedick is the one prodding him thru, and doing a bunch of it on his behalf?
As an editor, you have to make that decision - and most editions not only decide to give the words to Claudio, they don't even footnote it. Heck even some editions of the First Folio in the original spelling (but as a newly typset thing, rather than a facsimile aka a direct image-copy) "correct" the line attribution without saying.
If you're not lucky with your undergrad profs you don't find this shit until deep into grad seminars, if then. XD
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I, uh, was the one who brought up the question to mildred about Tudor marriage proposals, and possibly due to the differences in the way we have been culturally exposed to marriage proposals, I understand it (and asked the question) in the sense you mean rather than the sense she does. That is to say, "so, I'd totally be up with this idea of marrying you" is different from the actual question "Will you marry me?" and I'm specifically interested in how one might characterize the latter. Part of the distinction is that I am also talking about characters who have a sense of the "tropes" of the day (and sometimes use them, though more-or-less ironically), so while they have already had conversations in the former sense and have an understanding that they both want to get married, they'd also have some impetus to do whatever sort of contemporary tropey thing was called for. In 21st century US, of course, the contemporary tropey thing would be something like the man getting down on one knee, holding out a ring box with a diamond engagement ring, and saying, "Will you marry me?" This is the kind of thing I'd be interested in -- not how they get to the proposal (for this particular application), but what are specific tropey things that might occur in the proposal itself in this time period. (E.g., Does the man kneel? I understand there are betrothal rings -- which does apply here -- but does he present it as part of the proposal? Are there specific words that one would expect to use from contemporary culture? I don't need a book necessarily! Though the ones you have recommended look neat and I am definitely interested!)
Not to say all the rest of this isn't wildly interesting, because it is and I'm absolutely here for all of it, thank you again! <3
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That's definitely something I would want to dig into before I gave you an answer I felt super confident about, because I'll admit when I was neck deep in this my interests were far more about broader questions of social roles and how the relationships started and reached that point, and so on, but I will say that my sense and my memory is that a lot of it is ironically much less ritualized.
Like modern "proper" proposals are quite ritualized, perhaps because secular culture has so few of them comparatively; ironically, literally as I think of this, a lot of the trappings of it are interestingly feudal and I'm now distracted by a line of thought that wonders if this came out of the Victorian deconstruction of feudal and chivalric tropes specifically and nearly solely into the shapes of courtly romance*.
But that digresses: the point being, this level of EXTREMELY ritualized behaviours around The Engagement is, to be honest, comparatively new as far as I know.
My sense from memory is that there are definitely steps that were most often followed: a private conversation to obtain consent/agreement, either before or after telling the putative bride's family (if this is an independent love-match almost certainly before; if there's more familial or community Interference, very possibly after) in order to get them on-side; there's an exchange of gifts, often but not exclusively rings; there's the posting of the banns; and also there's now a bit more leeway for the bride and groom presumptive to act like they're sexually interested in each other in public without social opprobrium/censure (gossip? probably! negative toned gossip, less so) - nothing dramatic, but walking together publicly arm in arm, or sitting together at church, or whatever. WEARING the gifts publicly, whether it's a ring, or some other kind of jewelry, or garment, or whatever.
And as long as the community on the whole/etc doesn't disapprove for some reason, that will also be acknowledged and accepted. Then after the required amount of time for the banns to be in the parish, you get married.
*So this is a tangent: in courtly romance the knight is almost always either directly feudally - that is, militarily - sworn to either the Lady in question, or to her husband. (the latter theoretically not being a problem because the courtly romance is supposedly chaste**) This feudal relationship has specific rituals attached to it, not least of which is the kneeling in homage that is part of the specific declaration of military fealty and loyalty. In its original form, this chivalric and feudal context is actually a significant factor and part, and plays into the politics and the concepts of the whole, in ways that are easy to miss if you're looking at it through the wrong lens, which the Victorians often/usually did.
I would have to follow this up but I am now having some DEFINITE thoughts about the way that the Victorians took what they understood about mediaeval fealty, essentially stripped it of context down to a simplified set of courtly gestures, and then focused those gestures in particular around ideas of male and female romance, and so ported the rituals of homage into the rituals of courtship wholesale.
**Narrator: Actually, this caused many problems.
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I definitely had the impression that private sexual behavior was fine for betrothed couples who weren't nobility -- would this also be true for higher-class (but non-royal, non-arranged-marriage) couples? (The couple in question would both be children of knights -- one from an old family, one a merchant family fairly recently knighted.) In either case, presumably kissing, necking, etc. (that is to say, sexual behavior that is well short of causing pregnancy) in private is considered reasonable?
This feudal relationship has specific rituals attached to it, not least of which is the kneeling in homage that is part of the specific declaration of military fealty and loyalty. In its original form, this chivalric and feudal context is actually a significant factor and part, and plays into the politics and the concepts of the whole, in ways that are easy to miss if you're looking at it through the wrong lens, which the Victorians often/usually did.
I would have to follow this up but I am now having some DEFINITE thoughts about the way that the Victorians took what they understood about mediaeval fealty, essentially stripped it of context down to a simplified set of courtly gestures, and then focused those gestures in particular around ideas of male and female romance, and so ported the rituals of homage into the rituals of courtship wholesale.
Whoa. I hadn't thought about any of it this way and this is wildly interesting to me. I would like to know more about these thoughts!
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I definitely had the impression that private sexual behavior was fine for betrothed couples who weren't nobility -- would this also be true for higher-class (but non-royal, non-arranged-marriage) couples? (The couple in question would both be children of knights -- one from an old family, one a merchant family fairly recently knighted.) In either case, presumably kissing, necking, etc. (that is to say, sexual behavior that is well short of causing pregnancy) in private is considered reasonable?
I mean it will depend a bit on exactly when, and what the currents are around them, and also their own, like, sense of what's proper - a bit like now, tbh.
The Moral Ideal, of course, is that you have None Of That until you are legally married, because that's bad; some people will even be that kind of Dedicated, and there's certainly the possibility of SOME people tutting if they think there are indications that the couple are fooling around before the vows, even if there's no actual penetrative intercourse going on.
And of course beyond some kissing, only p-i-v is moral ANYWAY, so. (And that's EXTREMELY wide as a cultural attitude, much more so than the variety of attitudes to how bad having sex while betrothed but not married might be.)
But like, there's a difference between "officially" socially allowed, and "this will probably get you tutted at or maybe even scolded by some, but will be considered natural and par for the course by others, and still more will pretend 'they don't know'"; and even more between that and attitudes of "well we all know we're not SUPPOSED to fuck until we're actually married but also we all know that's stupid and nobody actually DOES that, and nobody's gonna give anyone else shit for it either". And which of those it's gonna be will also change depending on whether there's a general or localised bout of Moral Reforming going on, and so on.
That said OVERALL yeah nobody's going to be like SHOCKED!!! and APPALLED!!! or otherwise find it totally outside the norm if they're making out in private, although even betrothed it's quite possible there's only going to be SO long that they're actually going to be left alone in private before someone's keeping an eye on. You've got a reasonable range of potential attitudes from other people from "literally nobody is ever ACTUALLY a virgin - either sex - on their wedding night if they've lived in the same town as their betrothed, don't be stupid, why would they be" to "I DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE BETROTHED THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS" and everything in between to play with, with the bulk of people being definitely around "it's totally normal for an engaged couple to go mess around behind a tree when they think nobody's looking, bless them."
The different families might even hold different attitudes, or different PARTS of the family. But Officially, of course, you're not supposed to do any of that before you're properly married, that's wicked.
XD The Victorian use of the distorted mediaeval mirror in their own sense of self and of history would take way more than I have time for here, but yeah it's something I'm now pondering.
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...I'm kinda realizing that I have read WAY too much Victorian or Victorian-inflected fiction where even kissing between an engaged couple is like WELL WE CAN'T SHOW THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENING, WOULD BE CORRUPTING TO THE YOUTH. So I appreciate the sanity check!
And of course beyond some kissing, only p-i-v is moral ANYWAY, so. (And that's EXTREMELY wide as a cultural attitude, much more so than the variety of attitudes to how bad having sex while betrothed but not married might be.)
Oh wow! This I didn't realize. (Though
I'd be quite interested if you ever get around to articulating more about the Victorians looking in a mediaeval mirror!
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