20 Courtship Rules Young Couples Once Had To Follow

Bundling, the practice of allowing a courting couple to share a bed while remaining clothed, wasn’t limited to colonial New England. In rural Wales, couples sharing a bed might have a wooden board running lengthwise between them, or be put inside a canvas bag together while their parents dozed nearby in the same room or a separate one. The reason for this, says historian David Hackett Fischer in his 1989 book Albion’s Seed, wasn’t sex; it was warmth and the long distances between farmsteads.

If a man behaved improperly when courting a woman, she could give him the “cut direct,” a deliberate public snub. All she had to do was simply stare straight ahead when they met in public and not return his bow or salutation. This sent a clear message that he was now persona non grata, or socially unwelcome, to all the right families, the ones with children to marry or businesses to merge. The etiquette book Decorum (1879) tells us how it should be done.

By the 1920s, courting couples had found a new way around one of the biggest dating rules: constant supervision. The cars of the 1920s gave couples private, on-the-go space away from watchful eyes and mothers. Some parents tried to get the upper hand again by making sure that a chaperone or younger sibling occupied the car’s rumble seat — a separate, exposed seat that folded out from the rear of the car (also called the “mother-in-law seat”). The historian Paula S. Fass argues that the automobile was among the most disruptive factors undermining traditional chaperonage.

In the classical form of Spanish and Latin American courtship, the suitor never came inside the house; he stood in the street below and talked to the girl through la reja, an iron grille placed over a ground-floor window. A dueña, an older female chaperone, sat within and listened to each word. It has been described as a long-standing regional practice, rather than a law applicable to a single era.

A gentleman was not permitted to speak to, nor even bow to, a lady in public unless they had been formally introduced first by a parent, chaperone, or trusted family friend. No matter what his intentions, this was an infraction of etiquette, which could cost a man a chance at marriage.

Because it was considered very bad form for a gentleman to speak to a woman he had not been formally introduced to, there were escort or acquaintance cards, little pieces of paper with flirtatious lines such as “May I C. U. Home?” A man could simply hand a woman one of these cards if he wanted to express interest at a party or dance. It bypassed the introduction rule without technically breaking it.

From the 1910s through the late 1960s, responsibility for chaperoning young people increasingly shifted from family members to US universities. Universities enforced such rules under the doctrine of in loco parentis, which allowed schools to act in place of students’ parents. Some dorms required visiting couples to keep at least three feet on the floor and keep doors propped open, typically no more than the width of a wastebasket. These were school rules, not government rules.

If the mother was unable to accompany a courting couple, often a younger sibling was dispatched, a “gooseberry” that played its own unpaid role. The term has been used in British slang since at least 1837 (in a book of the Devonshire dialect) and was especially common during the Victorian era as a cheap way to keep tabs on courting pairs.

During the mid- to late-1800s, when seaside resorts became popular, big wooden carts called bathing machines were rolled right into the surf for women to disrobe and wade in without being seen. Beach matrons walked along the water’s edge to prevent unchaperoned men and women from mingling too freely. Even vacationing had chaperones!

There was no way that an unmarried woman would be found sitting alone in a closed carriage with a man. That was considered far too private, and no one could see what was taking place inside. If a woman had to ride with him, then the carriage had to be open so all could see them, or she had to have someone to sit with her as a chaperone. This lasted through the early 1900s, when automobiles took over from carriages.

Private theater and opera boxes were also arranged for the purpose of monitoring the courtship. A chaperone (typically a mother or a married relative) would sit next to or behind the couple for the duration of the performance, just as would happen in the front parlor of a family home.

Touching the bare hand of a gentleman outside a woman’s family, even in a dance, was prohibited by the etiquette of the day. Women were expected to keep their gloves on to shake hands or dance, since bare skin contact was deemed overly intimate.

In her 1897 book Manners for Men, the etiquette writer Mrs. Humphry warns that dancing with the same man more than two or three times in one evening meant you could consider yourself as good as engaged. Dances were managed by dance cards, little booklets in which a woman recorded her partners song by song. A potential suitor asked for a time slot on her dance card, and his initials were penciled in. He couldn’t have them all, though.

According to 19th-century etiquette writer Thomas E. Hill, author of the Manual of Social and Business Forms, gifts presented before a proposal could be flowers, candy, sheet music, or a book. No jewelry or clothing was appropriate because wearing a gift from a suitor meant owing a debt to him, and neither party wanted that.

The 1856 etiquette book by American educator and writer Emily Thornwell prescribed that unmarried ladies of respectability should always be accompanied by a companion or maid when they entered the streets. The Beadle’s Dime Book of Etiquette, published in 1861, specifies further that the escorting gentleman must walk on the curb side to shield his companion from the spray of water and wheels of carriages. It would be impolite to take a stroll without this strict protocol.

In general, the rule was that no public holding of hands or of waists was permitted, except for the three exceptions laid down in the etiquette books: 1) a gentleman might lend his forearm to a lady for a day’s walk; 2) he might take her gloved hand for the dance; and 3) he might support her in walking over mud or rough ground. Instead of being awkward loopholes, these were the obligatory courtesies spelled out in the manuals, which proscribed all other casual touching.

A chaperone didn’t have to be sandwiched between the couple, though: according to etiquette guides such as Collier’s Cyclopedia, published in 1882, she merely had to remain within uninterrupted “sight and hearing” of the pair. Couples were free to whisper to each other across the length of a room, provided no solid partition stood between them and the chaperone.

Most Victorian romances took place in just one room, the family’s drawing room (or parlor). A mother or female relative needed to remain in the room during the entire visit, listening to the music and even helping to steer the conversation. This monitored call was the usual and accepted venue for courtship among middle- and upper-class families, according to books such as Decorum (1879).

From the 1910s through the late 1960s, women living in university-owned housing could be subject to rules enforced by a “housemother,” a woman who supervised a residence hall. The system grew out of the principle of in loco parentis. The curfew was usually 10 p.m. on weeknights, and midnight on weekends. If a girl wanted to go out after these hours, she had to sign her name in a book along with the name of the man she was going out with and where they were going. Men were not subject to these rules. University archives hold numerous records detailing the history of the system.

Folklore suggests that women in the Victorian era communicated flirtatious signals with fans by moving them in particular motions while a chaperone looked on. But this famous courtship “rule” probably never existed. The Victoria and Albert Museum, a British design museum, points to the earliest reference for this story as marketing pamphlets that French fan-maker Duvelleroy began distributing in 1827; the whole thing was just a sales pitch. While people may well have been using fans for lighthearted courtship, no secret code ever existed.

This content was created with the help of AI.