forum ideas for writing friends to lovers late 19th century romance

Started April 11, 2022 by @FictionWriter09 group

tune

working on a love story set in late 1870s Maine. There's the secondary couple Elizabeth and J.T their relationship is more formal, J.T is mostly a playboy who sees marriage as an investment and a way to get ahead, Elizabeth meanwhile is actually in love with him and believes that everything will work about between them. But the main romance is between Elizabeth's younger sister Maggie and J.T's older brother Stephen, they get to know each other as the families grow closer

But I'm not sure how "dating/courting" worked then. any suggestions

also aside from their prospective partners, the characters don't really get along; Stephen and J.T borderline hate each other (Stephen is the family heir, J.t is a year younger) Maggie doesn't like J.T at all and thinks her sister could do better but in the end, just wants her happy. J.T is often passive-aggressive condescending to Maggie (he thinks most people are below him anyway) Part of what endures Maggie to Stephen is she takes no shit from his brother, though he pities her sister for falling in love with him

oooh that sounds like a really fun premise!!

I think one way to get direct info both on how courting worked and on how people felt about would be to find primary sources like letters (lots of courtship letters out there) or see what girls wrote about in diaries (this is an article about girlhood and diaries, not directly relevant, but the notes will probably help you find diarists if that's interesting to you). This is also a really interesting analysis of other sources and what they reveal about mid-19th century courtship practices. It might also be helpful to see how it's represented in fiction at the time (for example, here's a fun little book on short stories about courthship in Victorian England). Fiction is obviously not exactly how it worked, but seeing how people wrote about it can give insight into what they expected or idealised about it all.
Of course, this presumes a textual record, which may be more or less relevant to you depending on your character's social class, which I think would be particularly relevant to how courtship worked. But it might be a good starting point!