A very specific subset of engagements, you understand. There are so many ways of getting engaged and married in various times and places that it’d be impossible to describe them all.
This is specifically English history, because a) I know the more about English domestic history than any other country’s, and b) because of the popularity of historical and costume romances set in that country. And because I know a few people who read and write regencies, and the subject came up, in a discussion about Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, namely, why didn’t Edward Ferrars simply dump Lucy Steele once he realized she’d be a terrible wife (and that he was in love with Elinor)?
To a modern audience, accustomed to serial marriage and divorce- no matter how much or how little you disapprove, the concept exists in our society- Edward’s reluctance to free himself from a miserable engagement to a horrible woman makes him seem weak and lame. But at the time, it was the behavior of a gentleman.
For those of you who haven’t read the book, or don’t recall the details, Elinor’s love interest is a gentleman called Edward Ferrars. Over the course of the book, it’s revealed that Edward has almost no money of his own- he relies on his wealthy and capricious mother for his allowance- and that he contracted a secret engagement to a young woman called Lucy Steele when they were teenagers- he was living with his tutor, a lawyer amusingly named Mr. Pratt, who happens to be Lucy’s uncle. She visited her family, met Edward, and in the way of bored teenagers everywhere, they did something rash. Unfortunately for Edward, he grows up and realizes what he should have known all along, that Lucy is an unmannerly gold digger who doesn’t love him. She doesn’t even like him, really; she only cares that he might be rich someday.
This secret engagement wasn’t a huge problem for Edward until he fell in love with Elinor. But he can hardly propose marriage to Elinor when he’s already engaged to somebody else, so what’s the poor guy to do?
(No, the answer is not, ‘hire an assassin,’ though I may have just given myself the gist of my next book)
The rules of engagement and marriage in regency England were complex, and of course, there’s always the difference between what the rules said, and what people actually did.
A woman could break off an engagement without much censure- she might be called a jilt if she was particularly nasty about it, but it was generally accepted that she could admit she made a mistake and not suffer lasting consequences. Austen herself accepted then went back on at least one proposal, and it doesn’t seem to have harmed her social standing.
But the shoe was on the other foot for men. Because men were supposed to have more power and discernment, they were expected to choose their wife more carefully, and only the disclosure of something truly devastating could lead a man to break the engagement. In practice, a man breaking off an engagement would ruin the woman’s reputation- any observers would assume that she or her family had deviously hid a secret in order to trap a man into marriage- and she’d never get another offer. It was the regency equivalent of being canceled, and it could ruin the woman’s life.
But the engagement between Edward and Lucy was secret, you say. Surely, if no one knew about it, Edward shouldn’t have any trouble getting out of the entanglement? It’s not like Lucy’s reputation has to suffer; no one knew she was engaged in the first place.
There are two problems with that. First, Lucy and Edward have been writing to each other for four years. An unmarried man and an unmarried woman corresponding was seen as a sign of their engagement. Even business letters usually went through a male proxy like a lawyer or one of the woman’s family members. Personal letters, like the ones Edward wrote to Lucy and she carefully saved, would be brought forward as proof if he tried to claim the engagement didn’t exist.
Second, Lucy wouldn’t take Edward’s repudiation lying down. She’s loud; she’s obnoxious; she has a lawyer in her back pocket who would be delighted to sue Edward for breach of promise and cause a huge scandal. Suddenly the secret engagement isn’t so secret anymore, and there could be financial consequences for Edward, who has practically no money.
Breach of promise lawsuits were meant to compensate the jilted woman for any financial losses she suffered as a result of the broken engagement- the cost of a wedding dress or new furniture for her future house, for example. As with most civil lawsuits, the real punishment was the social consequences. Dickens makes fun of this in Little Dorrit, where a jilted woman’s father can’t talk of anything but his successful battle against his daughter’s ex-fiance, but as usual, he was merely exaggerating a real phenomenon.
A breach of promise lawsuit was a pretty big scandal, and for someone like Edward, who doesn’t have much money of his own, it could represent a real financial loss, plus the humiliation of having to ask his wealthy mother to bankroll his defense. Lucy’s got him over a barrel, and she knows it.
Fortunately, her gold-digging tendencies lead her to break off the engagement- which was allowed; see above- and dig her claws into a different rich man: Edward’s brother Robert. Everyone lives happily ever after; Edward doesn’t have to lower himself to jilting Lucy to get rid of her- in fact, he doesn’t have to do much of anything, which is probably why he’s one of Austen’s less likeable heroes; we like our heroes to do things, not sit around and wait for the situation to fix itself- and Elinor gets to marry the man she loves, secure in the knowledge that he’s behaved as a gentleman should throughout the whole mess- aside from having the bad judgment to choose Lucy in the first place.
All of this would have been understood by readers of the time, no explanation needed. Of course, Jane Austen didn’t know she was going to be famous two hundred years later, or that the rules would change. If she’d known, perhaps she would’ve added a sentence or two to explain the legal trouble Edward would get into, had he tried to publicly break off his engagement with Lucy.
There were a ton of other societal rules surrounding the process of engagement and marriage at the time, but this seems like a sensible place to stop. Sing out if I’ve missed anything regarding this little love triangle.
Mad Genius Club 
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