Courtship is a modern rehearsal that arranged marriage never needed
Courtship is the getting-acquainted stretch before a possible marriage or commitment—sometimes post-betrothal, sometimes informal. Anthropologists note it emerged only in recent centuries as marriages shifted from parental alliance deals toward love matches. Animal courtship, by contrast, simply names pre-copulatory behavior.
For much of history, and in Europe into the Middle Ages, marriage was a business deal between families and romance happened discreetly outside it; the twelfth-century Art of Courtly Love declared that true love could not exist between spouses. From around 1700 a broad movement toward individual empowerment gradually loosened parental control, helped along by women's suffrage, which among sovereign nations began with Norway in 1913. Nineteenth-century suitors leaned on letters, and the 1849 Whole Art of Polite Courtship offered 31 sample love letters.
In the twentieth century courtship could be an end in itself, and with divorce more common it was no longer confined to youth. Telephones, the internet and texting made meetings easier to arrange, and mid-century birth control and safer abortion eased the pressure to marry. A UK poll of 3,000 couples put the average gap from first meeting to accepted proposal at 2 years 11 months, followed by about 2 years 3 months until the wedding.
Customs differ sharply. Japanese omiai and Chinese xiangqin use matchmakers who circulate photographs and résumés before formal meetings attended by parents, while Filipino courtship unfolds indirectly over a year or more, with love letters, serenades and gifts, and parental approval is often required. Research since the 1980s finds that women usually initiate and steer courtship through non-verbal signals, though some feminist scholars see it as a male-led process. Robert Sapolsky places humans midway between tournament species and lifelong pair-bonders.
Source: Courtship
