The Victorian Era

How Were Victorian Marriages Arranged

Article · Society & Daily Life · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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The Victorian marriage was arranged through a complex mixture of family negotiation, social calculation, property settlement, and personal preference that made the marriage market of the period a highly structured institution. The Marriage Act of 1753 (Lord Hardwicke’s Act) had required that the banns be published in the parish church on three successive Sundays before the marriage, or that a licence be obtained from a bishop or the Archbishop of Canterbury, and it had required the registration of all marriages in the parish register. The Marriage Act of 1836 extended the same regime to non-Anglicans, who could now be married in their own chapels (Congregational, Baptist, Unitarian, Methodist, Catholic, or other) or in the register office. The framework was uniform; the way in which the marriage was arranged varied enormously by class, by region, by the decade, and by the personality of the couple.

The Marriage Market of the Upper Class

The marriage market of the Who were the Victorian upper class? was a highly structured institution, in which the great families of the period married within a small, well-defined, and tightly bound circle of the aristocracy, the gentry, the senior professions, the great merchants, the great bankers, and the great industrialists. The marriages were arranged by the heads of the families, often at the seaside resorts of Brighton, Bournemouth, Eastbourne, Folkestone, and Cannes; at the great balls of the London Season; at the great country house parties of the autumn and the winter; at Ascot, at Henley, at Cowes; at the great theatres of the West End; and at the great houses of the parish.

The marriage settlement was a complex legal document, drawn up by the family solicitors and executed in trust. The settlement would set out the property of the bride (the “portion” or dowry), the property of the groom (the “settlement proper”), the jointure (the income settled on the widow for life), the pin money (the annual sum settled on the wife for her personal use), the allowance for the younger children, the trust funds for the sons and daughters, the use of the great houses, the use of the carriages, the use of the plate, the use of the wine, the use of the jewellery, the use of the library, and the use of the pictures, with all the attendant financial and property arrangements. The settlement was, in effect, a family compact, and it was the principal instrument of the marriage market of the upper class.

The age of marriage in the upper class was typically 21 to 25 for the bride and 25 to 30 for the groom. The bride was expected to bring a portion, a sum of money, or an equivalent in property, of £5,000 to £50,000 (the 1st Duke of Westminster’s daughter Lady Elizabeth Grosvenor brought a portion of £300,000 in 1877); the groom was expected to bring an estate, an income, a profession, a place, a regiment, or a public position. The matchmaker — the chaperone, the family friend, the introduction — was a particular institution of the upper class, and the formal “calling” system, in which the young woman of the upper class returned the visits of her prospective suitors, was the central institution of the upper-class marriage market.

The publication of the engagement was a matter of public record. The engagement was announced in the Morning Post, the journal of the aristocracy, in The Times, in the London Gazette, and in the parish magazine; the engagement was also the subject of the engagement ring, the engagement present, the engagement party, the “at home,” and the long list of formalities. The diamond solitaire, the ruby, the emerald, the sapphire, the pearl, the half-hoop of diamonds, the cluster, the marquise, and the eternity ring were the principal engagement rings of the period.

The engagement was followed by the marriage settlement, the publication of the banns, the special licence, the wedding dress, the bridesmaids, the ushers, the best man, the father of the bride, the speeches, the wedding cake, the wedding breakfast, and the honeymoon. The Honeymoon was a relatively new institution, introduced in the 1820s and 1830s and popularised in the 1840s; the fashionable destinations were the new seaside resorts of the south coast, the Lake District, Scotland, the Channel Islands, and the Continent.

The “runaway match” — the elopement to Gretna Green, on the Scottish border, where the legal age of marriage was lower and the formalities were simpler — was a particular institution of the period. The runaway match of 1826 between the 6th Duke of Hamilton and the 19-year-old Frances Ann Seymour was a particular sensation; the runaway match of the Hon. George Lamb and the actress Mary Robinson in 1796 was a particular scandal; and the long history of the elopement in the Victorian Novel of the period is a particular feature of the upper-class marriage market. The Gretna Green marriages were brought to an end by the Marriage (Scotland) Act of 1856, which required a residence of 21 days in Scotland before the marriage could take place.

The Marriage Market of the Middle Class

The marriage market of the How did the middle class grow in the Victorian era? was a less structured institution, in which the merchants, the manufacturers, the bankers, the lawyers, the doctors, the clergymen, the civil servants, the journalists, the teachers, the shopkeepers, the managers of the new industrial concerns, the officers of the army and the navy, and the lower ranks of the professions married within a wider circle of the middle class, the upper middle class, and the lower ranks of the upper class. The marriages were arranged by the heads of the families, often with the assistance of family solicitors, of matchmakers, of chaperones, and of social contacts, and the marriage was the central economic, social, and demographic event of the What was life like for a Victorian wife?.

The marriage settlement of the middle class was a less elaborate document, drawn up by the family solicitors, and it was the principal financial instrument of the marriage market. The marriage settlement would set out the property of the bride, the property of the groom, the pin money, the allowance for the children, the allowance for the widow, the trust funds, the use of the What is a Victorian parlor? of the family home, the use of the Victorian Furniture and Decorative Arts of the drawing room, the use of the What is a Victorian Chesterfield sofa?, the use of the What did Victorian women wear 1850s?, and the various attendant financial and property arrangements.

The age of marriage in the middle class was typically 25 to 28 for the bride and 27 to 30 for the groom, and the bride was expected to bring a portion of £500 to £5,000. The chaperone, the family friend, the introduction, and the formal “calling” system were the central institutions of the middle-class marriage market, and the marriage was the principal economic event of the family.

The Marriage Market of the Working Class

The marriage market of the working class was a different institution, in which the working men, the working women, and the working children married within a much wider circle of the working class, the lower middle class, the casual poor, and the pauper class. The marriages were arranged by the couple themselves, usually with the consent of the parents, and after the Marriage Act of 1836 the ceremony could take place before the civil registrar as well as in the parish church. The marriage was the central economic, social, and demographic event of the What was life like for a Victorian wife?, and the marriage market was a much less formal process.

The marriage of the working class was often marked by a simple ceremony in the parish church, with a plain ring, with a small wedding breakfast, with a small wedding cake, with a small wedding present, and with a long list of other modest arrangements. The working-class couple would often set up home in a rented room, in a rented tenement, in a rented house, in the Victorian Workhouses of the period, or in the back-to-back houses of the great industrial cities. The working-class wife would often be expected to work in the home, in the factory, in the workshop, in the field, in the mine, or in the What was life like for Victorian servants? of the great houses.

The age of marriage in the working class was much earlier than in the middle class — typically 22 to 24 for the bride and 24 to 26 for the groom — and the working-class couple often set up home in the first month of the marriage. The working-class marriage was the principal form of the working-class life, and the working-class marriage rate was high: in 1851, 56 per cent of women aged 20 to 24 were married, in 1901 the figure was 35 per cent, and the falling marriage age was one of the features of the late Victorian period.

The Companionate Marriage

The Victorian period saw the gradual development of a new ideal of the marriage, the companionate marriage, in which the husband and the wife were expected to be partners, friends, and lovers, as well as economic allies. The new ideal of the companionate marriage was promoted by the conduct books of the period, by the sermons of the established church, by the Victorian Novel of the period, by the Victorian Poetry of the period, and by the Children’s Literature in the Victorian Era of the period. The new ideal of the companionate marriage was the central theme of the great marriage plots of the Victorian Novel of the period, from the great marriages of Jane Austen to the great marriages of George Eliot, and from the great marriages of the Brontës to the great marriages of Thomas Hardy.

The new ideal of the companionate marriage was difficult to achieve in practice. The What was life like for a Victorian wife? was still constrained by the legal disabilities of the married woman, by the limited educational opportunities, by the limited economic opportunities, by the limited social opportunities, and by a long list of other restrictions of the period. The new ideal of the companionate marriage was the subject of the Victorian Morality and Social Reform of the period, and it was the central theme of the What was a Victorian wedding like? of the period.