Many decry the decline of courtship and the rise of the “hookup culture,” while others celebrate a supposedly new era of liberated love. What would a regime of courtship look like that was both civilized and equitable, that took gender differences seriously but still gave both parties a position of freedom and agency? One suggestion comes from Drs. Amy and Leon Kass, married scholars at University of Chicago, who propose a return to courtship as a path that lays the foundation for marital bliss. According to the Kasses, courtship is the practice of "finding and winning the right one, for marriage." The term "courting," they report, goes back to the 16th century: "to pay amorous attention to, to woo, with a view to marriage." The meaning of the term "to woo" can easily be lost in a culture whose members may care little for love and even less for marriage. Yet wooing, understood fully, is highly distinct from "pursuit," our more commonly used term to describe romantic engagements.
In order to recognize the contrareity between wooing and pursuing one must first recognize that the notion of pursuit as we practice today arose concurrently with the practice of dating and is in fact a constitutive aspect of the current dating culture. Dating etiquette from the 1950's (approximately 20 years after the shift from courtship to dating) noted that it was a function of a man's nature to take the initiative in romantic engagements:
Fair or not, it is the way of life. From the Stone Age, when men chased and captured their women, comes the yen of a boy to do the pursuing. You will control your impatience, therefore, and respect the time-honored custom of boys to take the first step.
Consider how different in character and initiative were the thoughts from the Ladies' Home Journal from 1909, where a young man asked if he would be considered improper to set aside conventions and call upon a woman even though he had not received permission to do so. Their adviser, Mrs. Kingston, replied, "I think that you would risk her just displeasure and frustrate your object of finding favor with her."
The notion of pursuit was considered by th ose who practiced courtship to be as barbaric as its supposed Stone-Age origins would suggest. Men who attempted to pursue the object of their desire by chasing and capturing would not only find disfavor with a young lady, but also with her family who discerned his actions to display a character lacking all civility. Rather, any "respectable" suitor- or one who aspired to "respectability"- knew he ought to offer his affections only within the bounds of a certain pre-scripted context.
While the script became increasingly elaborate, particularly for the aristocratic class, it followed some general guidelines: the woman was to take the initiative by noting which days she would be "at home" and inviting those men to call on her whom she particularly favored. In this context, the man could respond to a call and attempt to prove his suitability. Since the process of courting occurred within the context of the woman's home, she was considered responsible for the "entertainment" and retained complete control of the social engagement. Thus, after their meeting, a man owed his hostess a formal letter of gratitude for the hospitality he received.
Consider the difference even from these rough outlines to the rough outlines of the contemporary dating culture. Dating itself follows an antithetical script to that of courting, wherein a man was capable of wooing. For dating, the initiative rests solely on the man, and it is up to him to choose the women he particularly favors. Moreover, dating occurs outside of the home and is typically dominated by the financial capacity of the man. In other words, men are the hosts or "entertainers" in the current script, where women are expected to return some form of gratitude. While undoubtedly, women still possess the power of veto (or rejection), they nonetheless often find themselves waiting for male initiative.
Wooing as it occurred in the context of courting was a matter of seeking the affection of another with an eye towards marriage, and this is courting's most striking contrast from contemporary dating. The essential telos or end of courting was marriage itself. Moreover, this end was what guided the intention of the suitor and the standard by which a young lady could measure a man's suitability. So far from dating is this integral relation to marrying, and marrying well.
Though this script may seem strange, this view offers a certain advantage to the current cultural script we are offered: namely, that the disposition of wooing is far nobler than that of pursuit. Within dating, pursuit mainly has the character of acquisition or conquest, where wooing demands "a heart full of an overflowing sentiment [that] likes to open itself," in words from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile. In proper courting, this sentiment was centered wholly upon one individual, the beloved. The man not only strove to win the affection of his beloved through a self-renouncing love, he worked to orient his affections to higher and nobler ends such as marital fidelity, reverence for the social good of family, and the unique value of interpersonal communion. By this, the disposition of the lover was one of constancy and his affections were transformed from passionate desire, to a lasting conviction of the beloved's value.
Ashley Crouch is the assistant program director of the Love and Fidelity Network, which recently hosted a conference at Harvard University entitled Rethinking Sex: Building Relationships in a Post-Hookup World. Kevin Kwasnik is a writer and the vice-president for research of ProLife ProPatria.
Copyright © 2010 ProLife ProPatria. All rights reserved.
Notes
1 Kass, Amy. A Case for Courtship http://www.americanvalues.org/html/2_kass_keynote.html
2 Bailey, Beth L. From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988, pp 13-24.
3 Rousseau, Jean- Jacques. Emile: or, On Education, introduction, translation, and notes by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1979.
Comments
I am a social person, and love hosting parties. Nevertheless, the thought of initiating the process of courtship by inviting specific men in whom I am interested is not a pleasant thought. It would place me in a much more vulnerable position - not to mention one which could be awkward and smacks of arrogance.
I would like to offer an alternate reading of Mrs. Kingston's friendly advice: the young man ought to ask for (and receive) the woman's permission before calling on her. I would argue that this is backed up by the terms used: he mentions that he needs permission, not an invitation.
In which case, the social script could begin with the man's initiative.
Thank you for your article. The issue of courtship in modern society is indeed important.
For all the merits of your article, I have a couple of comments/points of disagreement.
To begin, the idea that modern "pursuit" is something entirely bound up with the dating revolution of the 1950's seems poorly evidenced and, I think, incorrect. While there might be some correlation of this term to the dating etiquette guide you cite, any further, substantial evidence is certainly not present in the article.
More importantly, though, I think you've failed to provide a positive characterization of just what "pursuit" entails. The only real definition, as I see it, occurs in contrast to "wooing," and relies on words like "chasing and capturing." I think this is overly simplistic, and that it fails to account for the deeper, intentional implications of the term.
Ultimately, by "pursuit," I presume that you mean some motivation toward objectification and possession; but is that really all it amounts to? And is that really what it was considered to be prior to the 1950's? In other words, can you really justify naming "pursuit" as an action innately opposed to proper courting scripts? Or are you simply denying the value of objectification.
I think that fruitful courtship is not at all opposed to some degree of pursuit, so long as pursuit equals something more than simply "objectification." And, in fact, I think courtship depends on it, insofar as it amounts to the interaction of two human beings oriented toward the telos of marriage (as you pointed out). By what are they carried forth if not some degree of intentional pursuit?
Thank you very much for taking the time to read the article. I very much appreciate your comments and concerns. The next few posts will be a discussion that occurred on Facebook in response to similar concerns. Hopefully this discussion will further clarify what you bring up.
I thought you were too hard on pursuit- mostly in defining it. When most women say, "I want a guy to pursue me." I don't think they are saying they want some guy to ignore socially excepted steps of relationship- they just want a guy to be upfront about being interested in her...and acting accordingly. I do think the "pursuit" stage is fairly short in the whole scheme of things- moving through that initial break into the relationship. From there, the man still needs to utilize the skills and character of leadership- but not in such a "pursuing" way- but more within the context of the relationship.
My general outline was: 1. Meeting the Person/Deciding to Pursue 2. Asking on a Date. 3. Dating for a few dates and seeing if you want to "get more serious". 4. Seeking her consent to be a "couple". 5. Being in a relationship together seeking to know the person in a more intimate way and deciding whether you will marry them; and them you. 6. Propose or Break-Up.
I do AGREE WHOLEHEARTEDLY that our society would benefit tremendously from a more universally accepted/scripted form of the process I outlined above. The real benefit of the courtship process was that the individuals could know where the other person was at by their actions. Nowadays, guys and girls undergo so much more confusion, anxiety, and frustration because they do not know what "signals" to send when and how they will be interpreted. The guy doesn't want to appear desperate so he waits three days to call- the girl meanwhile has been checking her phone every three minutes since the end of the date wondering when he would call to say he had a nice time, etc...
My general advice for men and women now is to talk about what your own ideas about dating/courting are as you get to know them.
Thanks for the article
Great to hear from you! Thanks for reading the article, of course there are more to come.
I want to concede that we may have been hard on the notion of pursuit. Admittedly, there are some people who currently take pursuit to mean more than just chasing and capturing.
About the article, I'm not necessarily a proponent of the view that courting should be restored exactly as practiced in the past, only that there are some things to courtship that fill in some of the gaps we have. Courting is all about choosing and winning the right one for marriage: and this is an important difference than current dating- which doesn't entail of necessity the concept of marraige as the purpose or end of romantic interaction. Also, the practice necessarily entails modesty and manly ardor (unfortunately due to the size of the article we couldn't include these concepts).
I think your rough outline is a very natural way of going about things, I think it corresponds closely to what I believe as well.
One motivation for writing this article was to justify a woman's role in the nascent stages of relationships with guys. I've had some conversations with women that are concerned about taking any steps whatsoever in the beginning of interested friendships because they think this offends his capacity as Pursuer and Man.
The article was supposed to suggest that the link between these two concepts intensified concurrent with the rise of dating around the early 1900's.
But I think it's simple really: not that women should "pursue" men but that if they wish to get some friends together and invite a man over (even one whom she may be interested in) that is entirely natural. She would invite a friend over, why not a guy who she had already been introduced to, and had some interest in. He's just a friend at that point anyway, and maybe not even a friend at that. If she was uncomfortable, she could have a friend do the direct invitation. She's not pursuing, she's inviting.
With this, a man receives tacit permission to express his interest. Here's where "pursuing" or "wooing" can begin in an intentional way. We decided to bolster the concept of wooing because it implies a nobility of spirit, purpose, and a respect for the beloved. In ardor and strength he can begin to solicit and suggest his intentions to her, even when she's in the context of friends.
I think placing the beginnings of any romance, or at least suggestion of it, in the context of loved ones who support you would perhaps be the hardest part of the script to fulfill: what guy would do that? To pursue in the comfort of isolation is definitely easier. Yet, I think this is the part of the script that demands demands courage and nobility of spirit in a refreshing way. Also, it gives a girl an opportunity to have the support of her friends who have her best interest at heart.
During this time a women through modesty ensures that the man is "suitable," basically that he meets a certain standard (he respects her, has good intentions, respects her friends and/family, etc.) Then, as we've all experienced, the girl can accept or reject him.
Only when he passed that initial test would he be granted access to her in a more private way.
Yet, I admit this is idyllic and there are many variables that would make the aforementioned picture unlikely.
Ultimately, I think it is important for women to feel comfortable inviting men to spend time at at a friendship level (interested or not), for women to have support from loved ones, for women to be assured of a man's suitability, and for men to "woo" women (soliciting their affections with an eye to marriage) with ardor and strength.
I agree; I think your conviction that family and friends should be involved enough to give quality feedback (emotional protection). I will give you a great example from my own family: One of my friends back home had I brother that I met through her- we played football and basketball pick-up games together and enjoyed each other. At a mutual friends wedding my sister came with me and really enjoyed him. Knowing that unless the circumstances were "fixed" there was little chance of them meeting very often- she had me arrange a basketball game that she came to, and then a little later- a poker game with his family and our friends. They hit it off and we all thought it was a good match if they liked each other; they started seeing each other and are now married.
Women should be freed from feeling helpless in making things happen- sure it isn't setting things on a good path if they take over everything- my wife and I were talking about this today and I think the main areas at the beginning that a main needs to do is take the lead in those "vulnerable" moments of advancing the relationship. Inviting a guy over- or arranging a social get together isn't very vulnerable, introducing verbally attachment or asking for a date, marriage, etc...are- a man protects the woman emotionally by taking the lead at these times.
I think it would be very healthy for women to have a feeling of freedom to take those actions that would allow for them to be able to tell whether a guy likes them or not (if a guy likes you and is a man- he WILL come to your party, he will "woo" you and pay you particular interest, etc...) and then they can move on if he is not. It also is helpful for the man because then he can have a greater hope that she IS interested and his advances will meet with a greater likelihood of success. I know I was always pretty confident when asking girls out (even though normally didn't wait too before asking for a date) because of their interactions and "hints" toward me. I think another issue that is of concern here is when guys grow emotionally close to girls but never ask them out, or advance the relationship officially. Women have to be responsible for setting their boundaries- but men also need to have enough integrity to not "pseudo-date" and use vulnerable women in this manner to meet their emotional needs without having the responsibilities that a relationship would demand. This is a great problem today (that directionless relationships you speak of- even before the relationship. It is kind of a like the "cohabitation" of dating as true cohabitation is for marriage.
Enjoying the discussion...keep it coming!