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COURTSHIP

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In traditional courtship stories, hero and heroine meet, fall in love, overcome misunderstandings or other obstacles, and, just as the curtain falls, marry each other. A courtship plot is predictable, but that does not mean it has no deeper significance. Quite the contrary: courtship stories are windows through which we can examine key values of a society and discover ways that those values are changing or being challenged. On the surface, courtship is intimately personal, but each story of individual desire and fulfillment is enacted within a particular social context, and every society is deeply invested in who marries whom. In nineteenth-century American literature, novels with courtship plots come most often from the established societies of the South and the Northeast. Courtship is defined and practiced by the privileged classes within a given society, and it is those groups that are most deeply concerned with what happens to property and family identity as people marry. Central to all courtships, whether the issue is confronted directly or not, is the value of women's chastity. The connotations of the term "courtship" are significant: they are linked to "courtly" behavior ("courts" are complex mixes of people maneuvering for favor), to genteel class traditions, and to a pattern of specific rituals followed to bring about a desired result.

Marginalized groups do not possess the leisure, property, and social standing required to participate fully in genteel courtship as defined by the privileged classes. Slaves, by law, could not enter into binding marriage contracts. Laborers, immigrants, and paupers, who could and almost always did marry, are nevertheless not included in the groups that define courtship. Precisely because courtship is a marker of "civilized" society and individual class standing, however, authors writing from the margins frequently adopt the privileged language of courtship as they work to "class up" the group they represent. African American authors of antebellum slave narratives and of novels before and after the war often portray their characters' love stories with the traditional language of courtship, and writers who depict the westward movement sometimes show the struggle of characters to maintain the genteel ideals and behavior associated with courtship in the "civilized" regions of the country.

Courtship is an intense period of unstable and volatile transition during which individuals move from one family formation to another. When authors write courtship stories, they dramatize the transitional space between single and married life and identify how various family and community groups are invested in the outcome of the courtship. By looking at both the courting couple and other characters who have a stake in the courtship, we can discover the secret strategies of the most obvious plot in the world.

COURTSHIP WITHIN THE PLANTATION ARISTOCRACY

In the antebellum South, the small planter class's control of everything from aristocratic manners to slave labor was predicated on a strict patriarchal model. For a southern girl, courtship practices governed her passage from belle to matron. For her family, this passage was critical to assuring the smooth transfer of property (especially land and slaves) from one privileged family to another and within the planter class as a whole, to perpetuating and reinforcing the strict system of race, gender, and class hierarchy. Antebellum novels about the South, then, give their authors' perspectives on how these hierarchical values could be reinforced, renegotiated, or challenged within the drama of courtship.

Caroline Lee Hentz (1800–1856) is best known for The Planter's Northern Bride (1854), a novel she wrote as a proslavery response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Hentz's story is one of many written throughout the nineteenth century in which a character representing the northern perspective courts and marries a character with a southern outlook, thereby dramatizing the victory of one or another point of view, or, especially after the Civil War, the possibility of a reconciliation of the divided portions of the country. Hentz's Eoline; or, Magnolia Vale (1852) is set entirely in the South, and while it romanticizes many aspects of southern life, it also depicts realistic elements of courtship. Slave-holding families kept strict watch over their daughters, and all encounters with suitors were to be chaperoned; the plantation patriarch exerted authority over whom and when his children married. Eoline's father demands her obedience to him, expecting her to marry the neighbor's son Horace, as the families have planned for years, in order to cement friendship and consolidate property. But Eoline refuses to be a wholly submissive daughter, insisting on her right to marry only someone she loves. Her father believes that "in a struggle for power, for a father to yield to a child was monstrous, unnatural; it was an outrage upon social regulations, an infringement of the Divine law" (p. 32). Eoline leaves home to teach rather than submit to the arranged marriage, shocking her father because of the damage to the family name caused by her choice. She rejects the courtship plan laid out for her by her family and by the planter society, but her rebellion is limited. While on her own, she fortuitously falls in love with Horace all by herself. Their second courtship is patterned more along the lines of northern courtships, as the couple's romance grows away from the close watch of their families. But since Eoline chooses to marry the man her father had selected for her in the first place, Hentz suggests, allowing daughters an increased degree of freedom in courtship will not in the end damage the planter class's control.

The Hidden Hand (1859), by E. D. E. N. Southworth (1819–1899), includes several courtship plots, all set in the antebellum South. As in Hentz's novel, these plots turn on patriarchal efforts to maintain control of courtship and marriage. But because Southworth was not protective of the slaveholding class and in fact held strong antislavery views, her plots are far more daring than Hentz's. The two heroines, Capitola and Clara, enjoy a double wedding at the end of the novel, but their paths through courtship are quite different. Capitola, who is far more interested in adventure than in romance, marries a childhood friend almost as an afterthought. Their courtship, perfunctory though it seems next to Clara's dramatic romance, is carried out in socially approved ways, with letters and visits. Since Herbert Grayson is the nephew of Capitola's guardian, Capitola, like Eoline, marries a man who has the full approval of her male guardian. Capitola's detachment from her own love story is the primary challenge to courtship tradition, which holds that a woman is naturally and deeply invested in her romantic life. The gentler heroine Clara bears out this expectation, as throughout the novel she focuses on maintaining her betrothal to Traverse in the face of ominous obstacles. Her courtship with Traverse is approved of by her father, and after her father's death she carries with her the banner of his endorsement. This banner enables her to stand up in a public courtroom to claim her engagement, to withstand efforts of the evil LeNoirs to force her into marriage and thus seize her property, and to flee from her legal guardian. Southworth's courtships follow accepted patterns of romantic interaction, but the heroines appropriate patriarchal authority for themselves, taking charge of their courtships, protecting their own sexual purity, and finally bestowing their property as they choose. The marriages partly cross class lines, with the suitors playing the Cinderella role: Capitola is an heiress and Clara is quite wealthy, while Herbert and Traverse both work their way up into the respected professional ranks, Herbert in the military and Traverse as a physician. Seen against the conservatism of Hentz's fiction, Southworth's courtship stories appear progressive: she gives her energetic heroines much more freedom of movement and authority over their own lives and demands that the heroes work for a living.

SLAVERY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF HAPPY ENDINGS

Slave narratives and abolitionist texts written by contemporaries of Hentz and Southworth provide painful testimony of what it meant to be denied the rights to protect one's chastity, to work, to court, and to marry. Antislavery literature often draws on the language of romantic love both to assert the humanity of black Americans and to draw out the sympathy of readers who were well trained to react empathetically to courtship plots and to expect happy endings to follow hardship. In his novel Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853), William Wells Brown (c. 1814–1884) blends realistic depictions of the brutality of slavery, especially the sexual oppression of women, with complex courtship plots, most of which end in disaster. Brown does offer readers a happy ending when one couple is reunited and married in Europe. This happy ending emphasizes that no such marriage is possible in the United States because both characters are slaves under the laws of their native land. In her autobiographical Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Harriet Jacobs (1813–1897) depicts a young slave, Linda Brent, who futilely falls in love with a free black man: "Why does the slave ever love? Why allow the tendrils of the heart to twine around objects that may at any moment be wrenched away by the hand of violence? . . . Youth will be youth. I loved, and I indulged the hope that the dark clouds around me would turn out a bright lining" (p. 41). Instead of being rewarded with a "bright lining," Linda must fight off her predatory master, who crushes her hopes of marrying her loved one. Linda eventually chooses to become the mistress of a white man who is not her master because that relationship allows her a small amount of self-determination. Under the laws of slavery, this is the closest she can come to courting and marrying; happy endings are illegal for slaves.

CHRISTIAN COURTSHIP IN THE NORTH

Courtship stories set in the northern sections of the country reveal a different complex of concerns and values. Northern communities were concerned with the rapid changes brought by waves of immigrants, by the growth of cities, and by the boom-and-bust economy that could suddenly create or destroy wealth. Young people had far more mobility than in the South, both in terms of location and in terms of socioeconomic status. These cultural characteristics were seen as coming into conflict with the core values of evangelical Christianity: a personal experience of religion, long-suffering, self-sacrifice, and faithfulness. In secular terms, these values play out in a strong work ethic and a scorn for, or even fear of, "fashionable society." The transitional space of courtship was almost always entangled with questions of faith, work, and duty to God.

Maria Susanna Cummins (1827–1866) provides an excellent example of such a courtship in The Lamplighter (1854). While the first half of the novel focuses on the heroine Gertrude's development from unruly child to ideal young woman, the second half dwells on the superiority of her Christian life to the fashionable, materialistic, selfish world that looks down on her because of her (apparently) humble origins. Like that of Capitola in The Hidden Hand, her courtship grows from a childhood friendship and is carried out largely through letter writing because the suitor is making his way in the world. By the time Willie returns home, having established himself in business, Gertrude has become a beautiful young woman, and each fears the other has been lured away by the glittering fashionable world. The series of misunderstandings is resolved, and the narrator brings them together at last with a summary of how an ideal courtship should work: "With heart pressed to heart, they pour in each other's ear the tale of a mutual affection, planted in infancy, nourished in youth, fostered and strengthened amid separation and absence, and perfected through trial, to bless and sanctify every year of their after life" (p. 409). The Christian values they hold dear have protected their love for one another and have also ensured their material well-being. Capitola is catapulted into fabulous wealth, but Cummins's northern story values solid middle-class status instead.

In Barriers Burned Away (1872), set in Chicago, Edward Payson Roe (1838–1888) emphasizes the same set of northern values we see in Cummins but introduces a new element into courtship that became increasingly prominent after the Civil War: the conflict of a woman's personal ambition with her desire for love and marriage. In Roe's story, Dennis Fleet, a hard-working Christian hero, courts the daughter of wealthy German immigrants. Christine is absorbed in high society, scornful of Dennis, and in quest of personal fame as an artist. But a series of events, culminating in the fire of 1871, humbles her, and she embraces the Christian faith, gives up fashion and ambition, and accepts Dennis's proposal.

COURTSHIP AND WOMEN'S CAREERS

Other authors are less eager to sacrifice women's ambition on the altar of marriage. For Augusta Jane Evans (1835–1909), a deeply prosouthern writer, ambitious heroines with northern values of work and evangelical Christianity struggle mightily throughout their courtships to reconcile their desire for fame with their investment in the conservative ideal of women's subservient role in marriage. The heroines of her novels Beulah (1859) and St. Elmo (1866) finally accept marriages defined much like Christine's, but their "happy endings" are intertwined with grief over the sacrifice of their career ambitions. St. Elmo's beloved Edna faints during the wedding, and her husband then announces: "To-day I snap the fetters of your literary bondage. There shall be no more books written! No more study, no more toil, no more anxiety, no more heart-aches! . . . You belong solely to me now, and I will take care of the life you have nearly destroyed in your inordinate ambition" (p. 65).

Inevitably, courtships began to raise the possibility of women combining marriage and career instead of being forced to choose between them. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911) tests out such a courtship in The Story of Avis (1877). Avis has sworn not to marry in order to develop her talent for painting, but she is won over by Philip when he promises that she will be able to continue practicing her art after their marriage: "I do not want your work, or your individuality. I refuse to accept any such sacrifice from the woman I love." Avis responds, "I have wondered sometimes if there were such a man in the world" (pp. 107–108). But this "happy ending" is the beginning of unhappiness. Between Philip's inability to live up to his promises and the daily grind of keeping house and caring for children, Avis fails as an artist and the marriage itself barely survives.

THE ENDURING VALUE OF COURTSHIP PLOTS

The conventional courtship plot, because of its predictable elements, provides an excellent glimpse into competing cultural values of a given time period and region. The problem of dual-career marriage, treated so pessimistically by Phelps, remains significant, even though such marriages are now the norm rather than the radical exception. In the nineteenth century, miscegenation was taboo and could rarely lead to a happy ending. Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, by Harriet E. Wilson (1825–1900), opens with such a story. Frado's mother, Mag, seduced and abandoned by a white man, is rejected by her community. Her only choice for survival is to marry the black man Jim. She is shocked at first, but "he prevailed; they married. You can philosophize, gentle reader, upon the impropriety of such unions, and preach dozens of sermons on the evils of amalgamation. Want is a more powerful philosopher and preacher" (p. 13). As time went on, interracial dating and marriage became a central issue in courtship plots and eventually led to happy endings.

Again, only slowly did writers begin to question a central assumption of the conventional courtship plot: the sexual purity of the heroine. Various negotiations of the sexual double standard began to emerge at the end of the nineteenth century and continued for decades afterward. Romance plots in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries began to challenge the cultural authority of heterosexual courtship, paralleling the contemporary debate about gay marriage. A careful reading of nineteenth-century novels will uncover the beginnings of this conflict, as same-sex friendships are sacrificed to marriage, often to the grief of the abandoned friend. For example, in The Undiscovered Country (1880), by William Dean Howells (1837–1920), the social butterfly Phillips is strongly attracted to the hero Ford and is dismayed when Ford's marriage puts an end to the (mostly one-sided) friendship.

Over time, some conflicts become anachronistic while others become more central, and with each succeeding generation of writers, new value conflicts come to the center. Through courtship and marriage, we learn whether something ought to be sacrificed or rejected and whether apparently irreconcilable differences might be settled by a happy ending.

See also Abolitionist Writing; Domestic Fiction; Evangelicals; Fashion; Feminism; Marriage; Miscegenation; Sexuality and the Body; Slave Narratives; Proslavery Writing

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Works

Brown, William Wells. Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. 1853. Edited by M. Giulia Fabi. New York: Penguin, 2003.

Cummins, Maria Susanna. The Lamplighter. 1854. Edited by Nina Baym. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988.

Evans, Augusta Jane. Beulah. 1859. Edited by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.

Evans, Augusta Jane. St. Elmo. 1866. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1992.

Hentz, Caroline. Eoline; or, Magnolia Vale. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1852.

Howells, William Dean. The Undiscovered Country. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1880.

Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. 1861. New York: Penguin, 2000.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart. The Story of Avis. 1877. Edited by Carol Farley Kessler. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1985.

Roe, Edward Payson. Barriers Burned Away. 1872. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Literature House, 1970.

Southworth, E. D. E. N. The Hidden Hand: or, Capitola the Madcap. 1859. Edited by Joanne Dobson. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988.

Wilson, Harriet E. Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. 1859. Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage, 1983.

Secondary Works

Boone, Joseph Allen. Tradition Counter Tradition: Love and the Form of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Diedrich, Maria. "'My Love Is Black as Yours Is Fair': Premarital Love and Sexuality in the Antebellum Slave Narrative." Phylon 47, no. 3 (1986): 238–247.

duCille, Ann. The Coupling Convention: Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Leach, William. True Love and Perfect Union: The Feminist Reform of Sex and Society. New York: Basic Books, 1980.

Lystra, Karen. Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Rothman, Ellen K. Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America. New York: Basic Books, 1984.

Tracey, Karen. Plots and Proposals: American Women's Fiction, 1850–1890. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

Karen Tracey