Be elegant with girls. Offer a more expensive diamond brooch than a cheap engagement ring, advised a New Decameron columnist in 1924. In theory, it was just a joke. In practice:a principle followed by the entire young generation.
In the nineteenth century, there was no joke with courtship. This institution was no less important than the marriage itself - and was often not much shorter. In the intelligentsia and gentry circles, the obligatory preparatory period was marked by dozens of principles.
The groom had to prove that he was unquestionably ready to sacrifice. It was required that he had an education, a profession, money, that he had military service behind him, and that he put a piano in the apartment for his future wife. Nobody was surprised by engagements lasting several or even several years . All this time with only one entertainment:talking.
Rigid corset of morals
The progressive journalist Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński remembered these customs very well from the years of his own youth, spent in Krakow during the times of Franz Józef. At sixty, he wrote about them without a hint of nostalgia.
The bride and groom could count on a moment of privacy only in the rare moments when the guardians of the virtue of the young lost their vigilance. William Holman Hunt, "Conscience Awakened", 1853 (source:public domain).
“Today, young people go to the cinema, dancing and cafes together. At that time, all this was not there, they could only suppress themselves at home, while the mother was taking a nap in the other room "- we read in the collection of columns entitled Senses ... senses ...
Importantly, it was always the same house and the same room. Even in the most liberated environments, it was unthinkable for an unmarried woman to go out alone. What about - she went to visit the bachelor.
"Ah, the others were your sisters (or rather aunts) from half a century ago" - Boy-Żeleński recalled in the book Drunken Child in the Fog. - “Having a tryst with such a woman is like going on a hearse to Wilanów. Where to see her, where to talk to her? Museum? A woman who went to the National Museum in Krakow (not to mention Matejko's house) would be lost in the opinion of [the public], it would be too unambiguous. "
Only croissants could afford the invitation of the young lady, and this - under a proper cover. Everyone who could afford it was a collector in this era. “A woman could not have come to a man so directly. She had to come to see something, old porcelain, Japanese, in a word, some Raphael "- explained Boy.
Premarital chastity for girls only
Even then, however, the matter ended with the conversation and admiring the exhibits. Any caresses, not to mention sex, were out of the question. Too much fear permeated every nineteenth-century engagement. First, the young were afraid of pregnancy. The Victorian era did not know of any effective methods of contraception. Strange condoms made of fish bladders, folk spells or… prayers were available.
Visiting brothels was the duty of the young fiancé. The young man in brothels was to gain experience, which he then passed on to his wife (source:public domain).
And the girls knew perfectly well that none of these measures could be called effective. The fear of syphilis was almost as great. In the 19th century, more than half of men suffered from syphilis - and there was no cure for it. Finally, there was also fear of… breaking the rules. And that was not a trivial matter either.
The courtship was strictly chastity. According to generally accepted norms, a man was not allowed to "defile" the chosen one of his heart. The moment she gave herself to him, she would cease to be "worthy" of him. The consequences of such an act were borne only by women.
"There is no doubt that a woman who had a lover has no right to marry an honest man," wrote the feminist Iza Moszczeńska in 1904. In fact, she had no right to even marry… this man who was her lover.
Sex reduced her to the role of a prostitute. For a man, however, it was an everyday and trivial matter. Women were expected to be kept clean until their wedding night, but gentlemen were even required to visit brothels and gain experience "for handing it over to a future spouse."
The great and forgotten sexual revolution
The rules of nineteenth-century courtship were disgusting and archaic. They were the first to fall when around 1918 the great and now completely forgotten sexual revolution broke out . Latex condoms, spermicides and pessaries, also called "female condoms", have come into use. Pharmacies began to sell salvarsan - the first effective drug for syphilis. The Great World War shattered old customs, and the young, liberated women directly demanded equal rights. At the urn, at work, but also… in bed.
The end of World War I brought a great sexual revolution to Europe (source:public domain).
“Marriage has become an infinitely lighter apparatus. There are no longer such pairs waiting for years. And if they are, then - what can I hide here - they live with each other. If they diverge, the virgin is neither disgraced nor broken life. He will find another fiancé, that is, he "walks" with someone else, until he finally meets his man and marries and lives happily and has beautiful children "- wrote Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński in 1932.
Sex before marriage has become a feature of a new era. Above all, however, it began to accept an open, unpunished life without marriage. At the beginning of the 1930s, the famous Warsaw businessman, Brunon Boy, was able to invite his fiancée, Zyta, daughter of the princely family of the Woroniecki family of the Korybut coat of arms, to their apartment without hesitation.
All his associates knew that the young aristocrat lived in an apartment above the Warsaw company Boya, even though they had not married. But as long as no criminal case emerged from it, nobody was upset.
Scientists are not keeping up
There was no doubt that the world had changed. Scientists tried to understand what followed, but with no particular success. Definition of Living on faith posted in the Polish Encyclopedia of Sexual Knowledge from 1937 sounds clumsy, even comical in places. The author of the slogan was trying hard to find the other bottom. He couldn't accept that "wild marriage" could just be a form of a relationship between two people. He looked for an explanation in "declining morality", in "bad economic conditions."
Before World War I, "dating" was not accepted (source:public domain).
And if cohabitation had any good points in his opinion, it was only because ... he allowed men to save money from visiting brothels. He reluctantly admitted that "wild marriage" is "something more than prostitution, because it habituates a man to the one woman he has affection and trust, which gives sexual experiences a nobler hue." The views and needs of the other sex did not matter to him.
Most Poles at that time had a much simpler approach to modern engagement. The most common assumption was that "dating" is simply a new, less restrictive step on the way to marriage, not a replacement form of relationship.
Controversial journalist and promoter of "sexual reform" Irena Krzywicka argued in this spirit that "people unaware of life and gender issues" should not join together permanently. a mature way to decide to start a family.
Propagator of the "sexual reform" - Irena Krzywicka in the portrait of Witkacy, 1928. A woman like a hot volcano? (source:public domain).
These words were uttered in 1931 and were not considered radical at all. The true progressives proposed a much broader change - not only in morals but also in law. In 1932, the famous book by the American judge Ben Lindsey entitled Friends marriages .
The author postulated that:"young people could be married temporarily without children, easily divorced and, in the event of divorce, no obligations and no rights to maintenance. If you have a happy life, such a marriage could turn into a permanent marriage, with children and all the legal consequences. "
In a sense, the Lindsey idea was realized, among others, in the form of "solidarity pacts" currently in force in France and "partner unions" known from other countries. The political climate in interwar Poland precluded the adoption of a similar act. The progressive segment of society, however, was increasingly ready to replace marriage with cohabitation. Formal or not.
In 1932, Maria Lewandowska, a rentier from Poznań, was free to write in a diary published in print:"I am not flying like other maids of my age to get married". She could also admit that she lives with her fiancé in a suit, where "charming" one-on-one "take place - our" marriage dinners ""
As early as 1932, Maria Lewandowska was free to write about the delightful "alone" with her former cohabitant Henryk Bogdański (source:public domain).
The diary appeared in the course of a larger criminal case, and its purpose was to oppress the former partner. But the mere fact of maintaining a premarital relationship and avoiding marriage was not the basis of a scandal. Not many people were surprised either. The case of Lewandowska sheds light on the conventionality of pre-war engagements.
Her cohabitant, lawyer Henryk Bogdański, claimed that he had never proposed to the girl and that he was not her fiancé. Maybe he lied about the intimacy of the relationship. But it is just as likely that Lewandowska just understood courtship in a new way. She had no engagement ring, nor was she able to name any witnesses to the marriage promise. Probably because this ritual never happened. The bride of the interwar period could be any permanent sexual partner. And the fiancée - every long-term partner.
Sources:
The article was based on the literature and materials collected by the author during the work on the book The age of hypocrisy. Sex and erotica in pre-war Poland .