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The website that I chose is all about the Victorian Era, but I chose the section and dating and marriage. When a woman or young lady was interested in finding a potential mate they would go to balls or dances. Them being there would be called "coming out" which was them showing they want a love interest. The website is all about that.

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The Victorian period is also regarded as the era of Romanticism. In those days, courtship was considered to be a tradition and was very popular. Queen Victoria and her family were the idols of the Victorian society, even in the case of courtship. The society had laid down some stringent rules for courting and these had to be followed.

Social rules in the victorian era

The primary method of knowing prospective suitors were Balls and dances. Society would know young Victorian ladies through a ball or dance. This was called "coming out" and was an indication that a young woman was interested in finding potential suitors.

During Victorian era, a couple which dated would normally get married. After marriage, the property of the woman was automatically transferred to her husband. The Victorian girls, from the very beginning, were well trained and groomed to become the perfect wives and mothers.

A woman was never permitted to go out alone and meet a gentleman. She was always accompanied by some elderly person and it was necessary for the girl to take her mother's permission before going out. Thus, some or the other kind of supervision was ensured when the couples were meeting.

A woman was never allowed to go out at night with a gentleman. There were many rules in respect of dating which were to be complied with.

Some of the rules of victorian courting

1. A single woman never addressed a gentleman without an introduction.

2. No impure conversations were held in front of single women.

3. A woman could not receive a man at home if she was alone. Another family member had to be present in the room.

4. There was no physical contact between the woman and the gentleman until marriage.

5. Victorian etiquette for men courting dictated that a man could offer the girl his hand if the road was uneven. That was the only touch, which was accepted between a man and a woman, who was not engaged to him.

6. A woman was allowed some liberties, however. She could flirt with her fan, as this behavior was within the protocol of accepted behavior.

7. An unmarried girl would never date a man at the night. A man could not stay for long in a girl's home. This was considered extremely impolite.

8. Even if the girl entered the stage of courtship, she could never walk with the gentleman.

9. Women were restrained to ride alone in the closed carriage with a man, expect for a close relative.

10. The girl should not be invited by any gentleman at his place.

11. If engaged, the gentleman could not turn back to see any other girl.

12. Even after an engagement, the couple was not allowed to have sexual behavior.

13. In the relationship, intelligence was not at all required, neither any interest in the politics.

Victorian era marriage customs
Step 1 - courtship
The Victorian people were very cautious about courtships. The dating would firstly begin when the couple would speak to one another. The next step was to go out for a walk and then lastly by keeping company. The upper class socialized at social events while the lowers classes socialized at events like Sunday Service or Church suppers.
Step 2 - engagement
After the couple had developed mutual affection, the next step to strengthen their relation was marriage. The second stage of the courtship was engagement. After getting engaged, the couple could get hold hands in public, go for walks alone, and take unchaperoned rides.

The engaged couple was allowed to meet behind closed doors but had to be dutifully separated by nightfall. The men while dating a woman were discreet to never break an engagement as it tarnished the woman's reputation.
Step 3 - marriage
In Victorian courtships, marriage was the final stage. However, marriage between two persons was permitted so long the couple intending to marry belonged to the same class. After marriage, the woman played the role of a dutiful wife and mother. The dating during the Victorian period was thus very different from what it is today.

Victorian courtship gifts

As you might expect, there were many rules regarding courtship during the Victorian era.

A lady who maintained the rigid strictures of Victorian society wasn't allowed to accept lavish or expensive gifts at the hands of a gentleman not related or engaged to her.

According to one etiquette expert of the 1870s - 1890s, Professor Thomas E. Hill, there were four items she could accept from a gentleman while still maintaining propriety.
Books, confectionery, flowers, sheet music.
Usually, gentlemen were not supposed to give gifts to ladies unless that lady was their fiancée or a relative. Even then, as per Mrs. Houghton:

"A costly gift from a gentleman to a young lady would be indelicate, as having the appearance of a bribe upon her affections."

Instead, etiquette demanded that a gentleman gifts flowers, fruit, or candy. These gifts were perishable and therefore left no obligation upon the lady receiving them.

Christmas gifts

Extract from 1879 edition of Harper's Bazaar

"Gentlemen do not care for the pretty trifles and decorations that delight ladies; and as for real necessities, they are apt to go and buy anything that is a convenience just as soon as it is discovered."

However, as a general rule, smoking caps, sleeping caps, and house slippers were popular gifts for gentlemen relations, as were handkerchiefs and tobacco pouches.

Books about courtship etiquettes

Several books were published explaining the rules of etiquette to both genders. Here are names of some of those:

Godey's Lady Book, Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, Manners for Men by Mrs. C.E. Humphry, The Laws of Etiquette: or, short rules and reflections for conduct in society, by a gentleman, and Manners and Social Usages.

These books explained several rules for social behavior and those in the Victorian times closely practiced them.

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Victorian era courtship rules and marriage facts

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The Victorian period is also regarded as the era of Romanticism. In those days, courtship was considered to be a tradition and was very popular. Queen Victoria and her family were the idols of the Victorian society, even in the case of courtship.

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An epigram is a short poem that has a witty ending. Oscar Wilde wrote mostly epigrams and he was a famous author.

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Oscar Wilde was a very famous author of the Victorian times. The peak of his career was when he wrote about the Aesthetic movement. He was a very well known author of that time.

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The aesthetic movement started in the 1860's. It was basically people going against what the regular expectations were then. They wanted to break the outrageous standards of that time. Even if it meant going against something many other people believed in.

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What was the aesthetic movement? If we do not know now we certainly will within the next few weeks as the V&A's latest blockbuster exhibition gets into its stride and Londoners are overwhelmed with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers and blue and white chinoiserie, symbols of an art movement gorgeous in its detail, shimmering in surface and verging on the decadent. Even for its admirers the aesthetic movement comes to have a rather claustrophobic feel.

The movement started in a small way in the 1860s in the studios and houses of a radical group of artists and designers, including William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. These were angry young reformers who explored new ways of living in defiance of the horrendous design standards of the age as revealed in the 1851 Great Exhibition.

Over the next two decades aestheticism burgeoned, drawing in architects and craftworkers, poets, critics and philosophers to create a movement dedicated to pure beauty. The aesthetic movement stood in stark and sometimes shocking contrast to the crass materialism of Britain in the 19th century. "Art for art's sake" was its battle cry, a slogan that originated with the French poet Théophile Gautier.

Aestheticism spread with a speed of conspiratorial excitement that reminds one of the radical art movements of the 1960s. Emilia Barrington, biographer of Frederic Leighton, himself a leading aesthete, gives a wonderful definition of the "craze":

Burne-Jones painted it, Kate Vaughan danced it, Maeterlinck wrote it, the "Souls" (rather unsuccessfully) attempted to live it, the humorists caricatured it, the Philistines denounced it as morbid and unwholesome.

There was indeed a conscious gloom to a form of art that revelled in love-sick wistfulness and tormented reveries. It eschewed mid-Victorian heartiness and cheeriness. This was a counter culture. Pickwickian it was not.

First and foremost it was a painter's movement. Aestheticism combated the popular anecdotal, sentimental, morally sententious art of the Victorians. It had its own dedicated showplace, the Grosvenor Gallery in Bond Street, which opened in 1877. The Grosvenor was a sensuous experience in itself with its palatial décor of gilt and inlaid marble and the greenery-yallery silk walls which showed off to maximum advantage the work of its star artists GF Watts, JM Whistler, Albert Moore and especially Edward Burne-Jones.

One of the excitements of the V&A's Cult of Beauty show promises to be the reassembly of many of these then so controversial paintings. The Grosvenor held London's most must-see exhibitions and it became the fashionable talking shop. The gallery's proximity to the Royal Academy polarised opinion about the techniques and purposes of art. It was after the first exhibition at the Grosvenor that Ruskin launched his notorious attack on Whistler, accusing him of asking 200 guineas "for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face". Oscar Wilde chose the occasion of a Grosvenor opening party to make his first sensational appearance in London wearing a custom-designed suit following the contours and colour of a cello. Oh to see a photograph! The aesthetic movement frequently veered over into performance art.

The cult of beauty expanded way beyond the gallery. One of the main tenets of aestheticism was that art was not confined to painting and sculpture and the false values of the art market. Potential for art is everywhere around us, in our homes and public buildings, in the detail of the way we choose to live our lives. Art had to do with architecture. The new Queen Anne style is visible to anyone who walks around the areas of London that were the main enclaves of the aesthetic movement: Bedford Park, Holland Park, Cadogan Gardens and Queen's Gate. Red brick, demure and pleasing: this was the architecture of the children's story book.

The relatively plain Queen Anne houses of the period opened out into often breathtaking interiors. The aesthetic movement was lifestyle with a vengeance. It was Rossetti in his beautiful tenebrous house in Cheyne Walk, furnished with an eclectic mix of old and new and an ever-changing entourage of rather mangy animals, who invented the style later known as shabby chic. Following his lead, art became self-definition. Your choice of paintings, objects and interior decoration told people who you were and indeed who you were not.

The most marvellous example of aesthetic movement interior decoration was Whistler's Peacock Room designed for the wealthy (and famously unpleasant) shipping tycoon Frederick Leyland. The large scale frieze of stylised peacocks, gold on turquoise blue, wound around the walls of the dining room in Leyland's palatial house in Prince's Gate, giving his guests something sensational to look at while they ate. These days you have to travel to the States to see this masterpiece which, after Leyland's death, was sold to the American collector Charles Freer and is now installed in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington.

But there is an extant aesthetic-movement dining room much closer to home and indeed still in use. No visitor to the V&A exhibition should miss the chance of recreating the experience of having lunch or tea in the Green Dining Room, commissioned in 1865 from William Morris's decorating firm for what was then the South Kensington Museum as part of a new complex of public refreshment rooms.

The Green Dining Room was envisioned as a place of enchantment, giving its customers the feeling of entering a mysterious green bower or a hidden chamber in an enchanted palace, as described in one of Morris's own poems. With its green stained oak panelling, its layer upon layer of texture and pattern, Burne-Jones's painted panels and stained glass, this is a prime example of the style of decoration that would soon be filtered down to middle-class "artistic" homes, not just in sophisticated central London but throughout the suburbs of most large provincial towns.

As a style aestheticism was elaborate, allusive, extravagantly literary, infused with a love of the medieval, going overboard for the exotic and outlandish. But excess has many mansions. Another of its signs was an equally startling reticence and purity of whom the great exponent was EW Godwin, the architect-designer: Godwin's artist's house for Whistler, the White House in Tite Street, Chelsea, was an early example of fashionable minimalism, with its built in furniture and Japanese-style matting on the floor.

Seeing it today Godwin's pared-down furniture has a peculiar modernity. His famous black ebonized geometric sideboard could almost be the work of the Dutch De Stijl designer Gerrit Rietveld. Similarly Christopher Dresser's beautiful angular aesthetic movement teapots could have emanated from the Bauhaus metalworking school. Dresser's almost modernist designs were taken up by 19th-century Sheffield manufacturers and made in some quantity, though still mainly by hand.

Specialist shops opened to supply a movement which was all about individuality of choice. Here is art critic Julia Cartwright describing in her diary the delights of discriminating shopping at her favourite Morris & Co in Oxford Street: "There are lovely things at every turn, Persian potteries, hangings of every variety, cabinets and rugs and I fell in love with a sunflower paper at fourpence ha'penny a yard."

Much the largest aesthetic movement shop, more a spectacular department store, was Liberty's. The shop on Regent Street opened in 1875 by the enterprising Arthur Liberty introduced London consumers to a vast array of objects and textiles imported from the Middle East and from Japan. Liberty was aestheticism gone commercial. The store registered "Art Fabrics" as a trademark. It had its own artistic and historic costume studio, specialising in free-flowing quasi-medieval Pre-Raphaelite gowns in dusky colours. You too could look like Janey Morris in a Rossetti portrait wearing a deep blue dress.

In Liberty's wake a succession of smaller more experimental "art furniture" shops opened. Like the rush of little Scandinavian design shops that sprang up in Britain in the 1960s, a few of them flourished but most closed down fairly fast.

The movement had its own intellectual underpinning. If Wilde, "the first celebrity style guru", became the public face of aestheticism, as the V&A exhibition curator Stephen Calloway claims, then its resident philosopher was Walter Pater. The Oxford don, a nervy bachelor and specialist in Renaissance studies, was far from an outgoing aesthete in himself but he became the revered spokesman for aestheticism. The Conclusion to his book of Renaissance essays, published in 1873, was seized on for the ardour with which Pater propounds a philosophy of beauty. Life should be lived for the seizing of the moment. No chance of experiencing exquisite passion should be rejected or passed by. "To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life."

This was a heady doctrine. No wonder aestheticism had its wilder shores. It so easily transmuted into decadence. It was also prone to extraordinary silliness. As a movement it was wonderfully lampoonable. It gave WS Gilbert his material for Patience, the popular musical satire on the aesthetes which opened at the Opéra Comique in London in 1881.

Through his two central characters, Bunthorpe and Grosvenor, Gilbert gently pours scorn on aesthetic language and values and self-conscious languor, the floppiness and droopiness that characterised the craze. The costumes for Patience, which were custom-made by Liberty, derived from the flowing dresses of the maidens in Burne-Jones's defining aesthetic movement painting The Golden Stairs.

The potential for absurdity in Pater's definition of aestheticism was grist to the mill of George Du Maurier, whose cartoons for Punch developed a whole gallery of characters in thrall to the culture of sensibility in which "too-too-utterly" were operative words. The gaunt and gushing Mrs Cimabue Brown; the ingratiating poet Jellaby Postlethwaite; the pathetic painter Maudle; the aesthetically aspirational Jack Spratts . . . It was through this cast of characters that many people first got aestheticism's measure in terms of its follies and pretentiousness. In one of the most brilliant of his Punch cartoons Du Maurier reworks a quip of Wilde's about how to live up to the beauty of one's teapot. One can think of design aficionados for whom the dilemma still exists.

At the heart of aestheticism lay the unsolved problem of how to make beauty more generally affordable. This was much debated and became a source of agony to one of the founders of the movement - William Morris - as he realised his influence had actually reached little further than north Oxford. Morris & Co's main clients were the liberal aesthetic aristocrats and the forward thinking industrial tycoons. It was while working on the decoration of the mansion of the northern ironmaster Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell that Morris was driven to make his famous tactless outburst about "ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich". He had by then reached crisis point in his hopes for democratic beauty. What is beauty, after all, unless everyone can share it? Final disillusionment with the prospects of art drove Morris into revolutionary socialism.

Did aestheticism lead anywhere? Of course it did. Morris's total despair was premature. The cult of beauty was certainly destabilised by the Wilde trials of 1895 and his subsequent imprisonment, events which bore out the public's worst suspicions of the sexual transgressiveness inherent in the movement. But this was really just a temporary blip in the socially progressive British art and design movement that gathered strength in the Arts and Crafts workshops and the garden cities of the early 20th century.

In its essence aestheticism was a movement for reform and the project to infiltrate beauty into everyday life was still very much alive in the Festival of Britain of 1951, when Atlee's Labour government made a brave attempt to bring art to the people on a giant scale. The quest for beauty inherent in the young Terence Conran's bid to bring good design to the high street will be clear to those of us who remember Habitat in its earlier, purer incarnation. Now more than ever we have the power and knowledge to make informed choices of the things we want to live with, on aesthetic as well as ethical grounds.

The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement is at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London SW7 from 2 April to 17 July. www.vam.ac.uk

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The Victoria & Albert Museum's exhibition of the 'Cult of Beauty' reflects how art spread into everyday life in the Victorian period

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The victorian society was divided into Upper Class, Middle Class, and the working Class. Victorian Upper class was mostly Aristocrats, Nobles, Dukes, and wealthy families working in the upper class.

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What was the change in the Victorian society in England after the Industrial Revolution? Read on..

How was the Victorian society structure?

The Victorian society was divided into nobility Upper Class, Middle Class, and the Working Class. The Victorian Upper Class consisted of the Aristocrats, Nobles, Dukes, other wealthy families working in the Victorian courts.

The Upper Class was in a powerful position giving them authority, better living conditions, and other facilities. Read more about the nobility titles in Victorian Britain.

The hereditary aristocratic families by the early 19th century had taken a keen interest in the industrial sector. Due to the changing nature of the basic standard of living of the people, the traditional families were now slowing disappearing and instead, a new combination of nobles and the steadily growing wealthy class comprised of the Upper Section of the society.

Life of Victorian Upper Class

The Upper Class was by inheritance a Royal Class. Many Aristocrats did not work as for centuries together their families had been gathering enough money for each generation to live a luxurious life. However, there were a number of aristocrats who managed large industries like mining or shipping, etc.

In terms of education also those belonging to the rich families got the best tutors to provide education. The fact that they represented the royal class gave these people an advantage at everything.

They could buy expensive clothes imported from Europe, or afford other riches of life that was beyond the scope of others.

Victorians Middle-class life

The Middle class was the next in social ranking. The Victorian period was very prosperous for the middle class. Middle-class people also owned and managed vast business empires. The middle-class population at the very start of the Victorian era was limited to a few.

The Industrial Revolution in the mid-century of the era brought about drastic changes in the standard of living of the Victorian Middle-Class people. These revolutions opened the doors for more job opportunities and earn a decent living. This, in turn, had a positive impact on the education of children.

Victorian Working class

The lowest among the social hierarchy were the working class. This class remained aloof to the political progress of the country and was hostile to the other two classes. This working class was further categorised as the skilled workers and the unskilled workers.

Due to the revolution, the industrial workers got jobs thus improving their living conditions. However, the unskilled workers who were placed below the skilled one remained unemployed and were vulnerable to the exploitation.

The working class was the worst affected class in the Victorian times. Lack of money resulted in a negligible food supply. For some working families, the living conditions were so pathetic that they required their children to work in order to bring home some extra income to survive.

The death of their father meant that there is no income to the family and they eventually were forced to live on streets or some public housing. There were some families which would reside in a single room just to have a shelter over their head. The conditions were so brutal for the working class that at times children were forced to work away from their parents.

Status of the Women in Victorian society

Industrial Revolution attributed to the change in the status of women. According to the traditional family pattern, the women were supposed to look after the household chores and take care of children while the men would earn money. There was a strong presence of male dominance in the society. Women were to obey what men told them to do.

The revolution gave women an opportunity to work and earn money, thus changing the old beliefs. Working women not only shared the burden of earning money but it also gave them a sense of security.

Their lives were no longer restricted to the house and children. The segregation of large families into nuclear ones also added to the change in the women's lives.

Child Labor in Victorian society

Child labor was rampant throughout the Victorian period. A major reason attributing to it was the fact that the families did not earn much and the food prices had increased for certain duration. This made it difficult for the earning members to earn enough to buy food and satisfy the requirements of the family.

Also, the family structure comprised of grandparents, parents, children, aunts, uncles etc. The number of family members living together was burdensome. Thus, parents were forced to send their children to work and bring some more money. However, despite working for long hours, the children were underpaid and as such their living conditions hardly improved.

Victorian era society: Politics

The English government under the rule of Queen Victoria was a monarchy which also comprised of a Parliament. The Parliament was a Bicameral legislature which consisted of The House of Lords and The House of Commons. The said houses would meet separately and passed a bill as law by majority votes.

However, for the bill to passed, it was necessary that both the houses accent to it. The members of the House of Lords not elected by public voting and Lord Chancellor was appointed to supervise its activities. On the other hand, the members of the House of Commons were elected by public voting.

In the initial years of the Victorian period, there were two strong political parties, The Whigs and the Tories (Conservatives). These were the first political parties in England who dominated the political field throughout the Victorian reign.

The Whigs were in favor of growth of the Parliament and wanted to restrict the royal power. Towards the end of 1850, the Whigs became Liberals. They were of the opinion that Parliament should all the decisions and all men should have a right to vote and elect members.

In 1858, Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister of England resigned from his post after the Orsini plot against Napolean III, the French emperor fell out. Tories, the other dominant party was in favor of monarchy.

Many rich officials belonging to high posts were members of this party. Their view about voting was exactly opposite to that of the Whigs. Tories believed that only those men who were rich and owned large plots of land should have the right to vote.

How do we know about Victorian society?

Victorian era was not too long ago and the printing press was already invented. As a result of that, we have several authors and their popular books that describe life in Victorian society accurately.

Works of popular authors like Charles Dickens and Bronte sisters has already produced several popular plays and have been turned into movies and TV series.

Besides that, several Victorian painters and artists have their work carefully preserved in museums. These also depict the landscapes, battles and life in general in Victorian society.

Several buildings constructed during Victorian era are still standing tall and are masterpieces of beauty and elegance. London still has several of Victorian structures intact.

Museums in London like V&A museum, Tate modern have several artifacts that show the art and fashion in Victorian England.

Many railway tracks, train stations are from the Victorian era.

All these aspects make research about Victorian society much easier.

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Victorian society social structure. Various classes and their lives

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The Victorian era Society Facts: Upper Class, Middle Class, Working Class, Child Labour, Women's Role. Evidences from Victorian times

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Victorian fashion was very different than fashion today. The dresses were big and poofy. They also wore their hair in very strange ways, but it was never down. They wore a lot of veils and big earrings because it made you seem wealthy.

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Victorian Clothing | Victorian Fashion (PHOTOS) Victoriana Magazine

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Featuring Victorian clothing, Victorian dresses and Victorian fashion - corsets, hats, purses, parasols, shoes. Learn how to dress Victorian.

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Victorian mourning rituals were very different compared to what is practiced today. They would keep the dead in their house until they were going to be put in the ground. The families wore nothing but black for a very long time. If the family was poor they might have even had to share a bed with the dead.

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Victorian conversation and manners are completely- different than they are now. Walking down the street then it would almost be completely silent because it was considered rude to speak loud and draw attention to yourself.

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Throughout the Victorian era, merely walking down the street would be a very different situation than what you would see in today's times. There was a lot of value placed on having proper etiquette regardless of whether you were lower or upper class. All people were held to a very high standard of requiring classy etiquette in their day to day lives.

Victorian conversation etiquettes

One of the biggest differences you may notice while walking down the street during the Victorian era would be how quiet it is. During this time, it was considered rude to speak loudly or in any way that might draw attention to yourself. Therefore, all conversation was relatively low in volume.

Victorian dining etiquettes

The dining experience held the same standard of having quiet conversation. But one rare thing you may observe in the Victorian era is that all of the ladies would be seated before the men. It was very rude for any man to sit down before all of the ladies had been seated. Therefore, you may see them standing for a brief period of time.

The men who wore gloves were required to remove them before being seated. However, the women would not remove theirs until after they had been seated. Therefore, the picture you might see would be a group of men standing and removing their gloves while ladies were already seated and removing theirs at that time.

Victorian manners for women

The ladies were also taught to be very respectful to men, as men were taught to treat women with extreme care. It would have been considered rude to use a man's Christian name in the everyday regular speech.

This name is what we consider to be referred to as the first name. Therefore, they would always refer to them with a salutation such as Mr. and then their Last Name. It was a sign of respect and gratitude and was not meant as a way of being degrading or trying to show the inferiority of women.

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Victorian Etiquettes and Manners for Men and Women

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Throughout the Victorian era, merely walking down the street would be a very different situation than what you would see in today's times. There was a lot of value placed on having proper etiquette regardless of whether you were lower or upper class.

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I chose this photo of Queen Victoria because I wanted to show what she looks like and a little bit about her. She was the queen of the United KIngdom from 1837- 1901. She made a very good queen helping expansion in the United Kingdom a lot. When she was queen they only experienced a few small wars. Overall, she made a great queen.