Dating in the 20th Century

Yet ironically at the same time that courting couples were often so open in their expression of their affection, young women, in particular, more openly disclosed their fears of marriage. "There can be no medium in the wedded state," noted one Massachusetts woman. "It must either be happy or miserable." While men were likely to stress the pleasures marriage would bring, women, in their correspondence, expressed fears about marriage. It was a "sad, sour, sober beverage bringing "some joys but many crosses." In their courtship letters, women often associated marriage with the loss of their liberty--often linking marriage with loss of self--and forebodings about the dangers of childbearing--often omitting children from their fantasies of an ideal marriage.

Marriage was such an awesome step that few women in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries entered into the relationship lightly. After her husband died in 1767, Mary Fish, a Connecticut widow, remained unmarried for nine years despite at least three proposals of marriage. She finally remarried in 1776, but only after her future husband read a document Mary had composed describing the qualities she wanted in a spouse. Entitled "Portrait of a Good Husband," the document stated that he should "gratify" her "reasonable inclinations," enter into her griefs and participate in her jobs, should not be jealous or abuse his wife or stepchildren, and should not mismanage or dissipate her inheritance.

To move from "girlhood" to housewifery had become a rite of passage so difficult that many young women experienced a "marriage trauma" before taking or failing to take the step. Many women wrote that they "trembled" as their wedding day approached, that their "spirits were much depressed," and their minds were "loaded with doubts and fears." One woman, Sarah Williams, noted that she felt "rather depressed than elevated" at her impending marriage and Catharine Beecher, a prominent educator, worried that after her betrothed got over the "novelty" of marriage he would be "so engrossed in science and study as to forget I existed."

In colonial New England, marriage was regarded as a social obligation and an economic necessity, and virtually all adults married. But by the early nineteenth century, the number of unmarried women increased to an unprecedented 11 percent.

Marriage became a far more deliberate act than it had been in the past. Marriage was regarded by young women in a new way--as a closing off of freedoms enjoyed in girlhood. Between 1780 and 1820, young women between the ages of l4 and 27 enjoyed unprecedented opportunities to attend school and to earn a cash income outside of their parents home. Many prospective brides who did eventually marry hesitated to leave the relative independence they had enjoyed in girlhood.

At the same time that marriage become a more difficult transition point for young women, the rituals surrounding engagement and marriage radically changed. By the 1840s, a host of elaborate, formal new rituals had arisen, which helped young women and men maneuver the difficult steps toward marriage.

To signify their intention to marry, men and women began to give each other engagement rings. (Over time, it became more common for a man to present a ring to his fiance). Families began to announce their children's engagement in letters to friends and family or formal newspaper announcements.

At the same time, marriage ceremonies increasingly became larger and more formal affairs, attended not simply by near kin (which had been the custom during the colonial period) but by a much larger number of family members and friends. Guests received printed invitations to the ceremony and were, in turn, expected to send wedding gifts.

It was during the 1840s that many of the rituals that still characterize wedding ceremonies today first became widespread, such as the custom that the bride wear a veil and a white dress and that she be assisted by formally costumed attendants, that the bridegroom present his bride with a wedding ring, and that the bride and groom and their guests eat a white wedding cake.

These rituals were intended to mark off marriage as an especially beautiful and solemn occasion, the supreme occurrence of life. The bride was dressed in white to signify her purity and virtue. At a time when civil marriage was becoming prevalent on the European continent, it was only in Britain and America, the twin archetypes of the emerging market economy, that a sacramental conception of marriage triumphed.