Tying the Knot

Tying the Knot
Author: Rebecca Probert
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2021-09-23
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1009003070

The Marriage Act 1836 established the foundations of modern marriage law, allowing couples to marry in register offices and non-Anglican places of worship for the first time. Rebecca Probert draws on an exceptionally wide range of primary sources to provide the first detailed examination of marriage legislation, social practice, and their mutual interplay, from 1836 through to the unanticipated demands of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. She analyses how and why the law has evolved, closely interrogating the parliamentary and societal debates behind legislation. She demonstrates how people have chosen to marry and how those choices have changed, and evaluates how far the law has been help or hindrance in enabling couples to marry in ways that reflect their beliefs, be they religious or secular. In an era of individual choice and multiculturalism, Tying the Knot sign posts possible ways in which future legislators might avoid the pitfalls of the past.

Flirtation and Courtship in Nineteenth-Century British Culture

Flirtation and Courtship in Nineteenth-Century British Culture
Author: Ghislaine McDayter
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2022-08-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000550117

This is volume two of a three-volume set that brings together a rich collection of primary source materials on flirtation and courtship in the nineteenth-century. Introductory essays and extensive editorial apparatus offer historical and cultural contexts of the materials included Throughout the long nineteenth-century, a woman’s life was commonly thought to fall into three discrete developmental stages; personal formation and a gendered education; a young woman’s entrance onto the marriage market; and finally her emergence at the apogee of normative femininity as wife and mother. In all three stages of development, there was an unspoken awareness of the duplicity at the heart of this carefully cultivated femininity. What women were taught, no matter their age, was that if you desired anything in life, it behooved you to perform indifference. This meant that for women, the art of flirtation and feigning indifference were viewed as essential survival skills that could guarantee success in life. These three volumes document the many ways in which nineteenth-century women were educated in this seemingly universal wisdom, but just as frequently managed to manipulate, subvert, and navigate their way through such proscribed norms to achieve their own desires. Presenting a wide range of documents from novels, memoirs, literary journals, newspapers, plays, poetry, songs, parlour games, and legal documents, this collection will illuminate a far more diverse set of options available to women in their quest for happiness, and a new understanding of the operations of courtship and flirtation, the "central" concerns of a nineteenth-century woman’s life. The volumes will be of interest to scholars of history, literature, gender and cultural studies, with an interest in the nineteenth-century.

A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Age of Empire

A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Age of Empire
Author: Denise Amy Baxter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2018-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350114073

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the production of dress shifted dramatically from being predominantly hand-crafted in small quantities to machine-manufactured in bulk. The increasing democratization of appearances made new fashions more widely available, but at the same time made the need to differentiate social rank seem more pressing. In this age of empire, the coding of class, gender and race was frequently negotiated through dress in complex ways, from fashionable dress which restricted or exaggerated the female body to liberating reform dress, from self-defining black dandies to the oppressions and resistances of slave dress. Richly illustrated with over 100 images and drawing on a plethora of visual, textual and object sources, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Age of Empire presents essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, and visual and literary representations to illustrate the diversity and cultural significance of dress and fashion in the period.

Peril and Protection in British Courtship Novels

Peril and Protection in British Courtship Novels
Author: Geri Chavis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2020-10-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1000195546

Peril and Protection in British Courtship Novels: A Study in Continuity and Change explores the use and context of danger/safety language in British courtship novels published between 1719 and 1920. The term "courtship novel" encompasses works focusing on both female and male protagonists’ journeys toward marriage, as well as those reflecting the intertwined nature of comic courtship and tragic seduction scenarios. Through careful tracking of peril and protection terms and imagery within the works of widely-read, influential authors, Professor Chavis provides a fresh view of the complex ways that the British novel has both maintained the status quo and embodied cultural change. Lucid discussions of each novel, arranged in chronological order, shed new light on major characters’ preoccupations, values, internal struggles, and inter-actional styles and demonstrate the ways in which gender ideology and social norms governing male-female relationships were not only perpetuated but also challenged and satirized during the course of the British novel’s development. Blending close textual analysis with historical/cultural and feminist criticism, this multi-faceted study invites readers to look with both a microscopic lens at the nuances of figurative and literal language and a telescopic lens at the ways in which modifications to views of masculinity and femininity and interactions within the courtship arena inform the novel genre’s evolution.

The Year-book of Facts in the Great Exhibition of 1851

The Year-book of Facts in the Great Exhibition of 1851
Author: John Timbs
Publisher:
Total Pages: 386
Release: 1851
Genre: Great Exhibition
ISBN:

Describes the origin and progress of the Great Exhibition of 1851, including the French national expositions from 1797 to 1849, the origin and construction of the Crystal Palace, the lay-out of the exhibits and the objects exhibited. There is also a description of the close of the exhibition. The appendix contains a list of the medal winners, tables of the daily number of visitors to the exhibition including the amount of money received at the doors on each day and a financial statement of the proceeds and expenditure of the exhibition. Finally a statistical note on the official catalogue is quoted from The Edinburgh review. Includes index.