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If a débutante went through the “coming out” process, including a presentation to the Queen and attending all the social functions, she was expected to be married within two or three years or considered a failure. A single woman at thirty was a hopeless spinster. (Life expectancy in England during the 1850s was about forty years.
The “coming out” of a young woman represented a change in her status from child to adult and her “introduction” to society. This became formalized in English aristocratic society in the first half of the nineteenth century through the Victorian period. Up to the point of their coming of age of seventeen or eighteen, girls did not have ...
Although a coming out was expected for daughters of peers, women of nobility or daughters of knights and baronets, it wasn’t until late in the 19th century that the extremely wealthy were becoming more and more accepted. Even daughters of prestigious professions (law, medicine, higher education, religion, bankers and politics) were included.
Debutante in Victorian era. Presentation of debutantes at court during early years of the Victorian era was called “coming out”. The girls used to come to St. James palace, which was later called Buckingham palace. They were dressed in a gown much like a wedding dress and carried a bouquet.
- What Was The Season?
- What A Debutante Could Expect
- Attending Balls
- Making A Match
- Entering and Enduring Society
- Bibliography and Further Reading
And understanding the season is probably a very good place to start. The season corresponded with the sessions of government in the Houses of Parliament, which would run from November to June each year. The elite would descend upon the capital, bringing with them their families, building fashionable townhouses or taking lodgings and contributing no...
Like Daphne, elite young women, usually when they were around sixteen years old, would come out to society with a presentation to the monarch at court. George III founded Queen Charlotte’s ball in 1780, which was where this might happen. Eligible bachelors and their families would be watching the presentation of women, and mothers of debutantes wou...
Some of the most mesmerising scenes in Bridgerton (and indeed, for me, in any Austen period drama) are those of the balls and parties. Being seen at events was important, and there were plenty to attend, with many eligible bachelors present. These could be private balls, or those held in public spaces. There were also exclusive members’ clubs. For ...
It’s a common misconception that love and freedom of choice seldom came into question when choosing a match during the early nineteenth century, but the elite did have other things to contend with when finding a spouse: namely, wealth. Young women brought dowries to a marriage, which could very much help their position in the marriage market: hence...
So, as we have seen, a young woman coming out into society during the Regency period was governed by many societal rules and expectations. The primary goal was often making a good match for a husband – and guarding the best possible reputation the whole way through navigating the season and the marriage market. Though rumour couldget the better of ...
Roy & Lesley Adkins, Eavesdropping on Jane Austen’s England. (Abacus, 2014) Venetia Murray, High Society in the Regency Period: 1788-1830.(Penguin Books, 1999) Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (Yale University Press, 1998) Hannah Greig, The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian England (Oxford Univer...
In the Victorian era, debutantes would be accepted only with a recommendation from a former debutante. As eligibility expanded beyond British nobles, wealthy American families would sometimes pay British noblewomen to allow their daughters to become debutantes in the UK.
The Victorian Debut The process of achieving a societal debut in the late nineteenth century was one in which eighteen-year-olds got their first taste of all the splendour that money could buy. Yet at the same time, the coming out process was one that was as constricting as it was exhilarating.
