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Nov 25, 2019 · November 25, 2019 3:10 PM EST. T he debutante ritual flourished roughly from 1780 to 1914—beginning with the first debutante ball in London and ending with the outbreak of World War I. During ...
- Kristen Richardson
- A Tale as Old as Time
- What to Do with ‘All These Girls?’
- Who Could Become A Debutante?
- The Decline of Debutantes
- What Does The Practice of Debutante Balls Tell Us About Women’s History?
The tradition of the “social season” lasted nearly 180 years- from the reign of George III to Queen Elizabeth II. During this time period, young upper-class women made their formal debut into society by curtseying to the monarch. After their presentation at court, these young women would participate in a variety of social events, where they would m...
Debutantes were essentially the answer to a problem. After the Protestant Reformation and the dissolution of convents in 16th-century-England, families didn’t know what to do with their daughters. The Protestant Reformation ended the practice of cloistering girls in convents. However, unlike the Catholics, Protestants didn’t have convents to put th...
The purpose of debutante balls was to ensure that a woman married well. This meant that debutante balls were not open to everyone in English society. By 1859, in addition to members of the aristocracy, the daughters of the clergy, military, naval officers, physicians and barristers could be presented. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the ...
Of course, debutante balls and coming-out parties are held today, although they no longer hold the same prominence that they once did. By the twentieth century, the presentation of debutantes at court increasingly became outdated as the times changed. In 1921, the tradition was put on hold because of the Coal Strike. British monarchs were increasin...
Debutante balls provide historians with an interesting way to look at women’s history. The original focus of debutante balls was money and status, rather than the concern for the well-being of women who had no rights. In this way, young women were seen as commodities that could be bartered over, rather than as real people. Their societal value was ...
Dec 22, 2020 · Among the wealthy, today’s version of debutante culture seeks to uphold the tenants of its tradition in the sense that gowns are worn, dances are learned, and young women of certain status are introduced to society. “These sort of lynchpin things, like the curtsy, the white dress most of the time, and certain dances are all part of ...
- Vivian Manning-Schaffel
Nov 25, 2019 · The debutante ritual was so effective a social-climbing tool that parents jockeyed over presentation venues; it was so costly that it created new industries for its supporting staff.
Dec 22, 2019 · The debutante ritual “is long dead but will never die,” Richardson writes, yet her book struggles to explain the source of its longevity. Readers are left instead with vague truisms about ...
Mar 13, 2020 · The Season: A Social History of the Debutante, by Kristen Richardson, WW Norton, RRP£18.99, 288 pages. Cordelia Jenkins is the FT’s assistant opinion editor. Join our online book group on ...
"The world of debutantes opens into a revealing story of women across six centuries, their limited options, and their desires. Digging into the roots of the debutante ritual, with its ballrooms and white dresses, Kristen Richardson- herself descended from a line of debutantes- was fascinated to discover that the debutante ritual places our contemporary ideas about women and marriage in a new ...
