Courtship
social ritual
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For a respectable Victorian young woman, courtship happened under watchful eyes. She never received a gentleman caller alone, never walked out unchaperoned, and every stage of a romance — the first call, the correspondence, the proposal — was visible to family and society.
Within those bounds, feeling found its outlets. Suitors sent flowers chosen from the 'language of flowers,' each bloom carrying a coded message, and wrote letters that were treasured and kept. A proposal was expected to be formal, often made on one knee, and a father's blessing was sought before any engagement was announced.
Marriage was love's goal but rarely love's only business — it was also an alliance of families, fortunes, and futures. Queen Victoria set the tone twice over: she proposed to Prince Albert herself, as the queen had to, and her white satin wedding dress of 1840 made white the bridal color for generations.
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