6. Give Gifts
Gift-giving has been a part of courtship rituals for several centuries, if not longer in some cultures. Gifts started on a much more practical level, though, with the exchange of property in order to cement a marriage. In some cultures, a bride price was given in which a man had to give money, land, livestock or some other good of high value to marry a woman. In different cultures, a dowry was necessary for which the prospective bride’s family had to give similarly valuable gifts to the groom’s family as a thank you for taking a woman off their hands. The latter practice was more common in agricultural societies in which women were not able to do the physical work of growing food and were considered more burdensome than male children.
As bride prices and dowries fell out of fashion, personal gifts became more popular. Jewelry has long been a customary gift of courtship, with hair locks, portrait locks, and promise rings all being popular gifts at different points in history. In Renaissance Italy, symbols of fertility were often given as gifts including woven belts and girdles that featured romantic and sometimes even erotic imagery.
Interestingly, it was the early 20th century that put gift-giving to a brief halt as dating was seen, in its infancy, as a form of prostitution. The idea that men would take women out and treat them to meals, drinks or a gift was seen as tantamount to directly exchanging money for potential access to sex. The transition from Victorian ideas of strict, supervised courtship to modern 20th-century dating was not a smooth one.