Rituals and Drama in Victorian-era (1800s) Courtship -- An academic take on the development of early Shit Tests similar to their contemporary counterpart

Thought you all would appreciate a more academic approach to the history of shit tests as we understand them in contemporary society.

Drama and Rituals in dating Victorian era

It's a pretty easy skim through, none of the concepts are complex for anyone looking with RP goggles on.

Some easy background before reading:

The Victorian era is during the tail-end Romanticism and post-sentimentalism. Romanticism and Sentimentalism incited citizens to embrace emotions during decision making and to determine morality of actions. If it felt right to do, it was morally good.

Brief Summary of the paper

Parents were no longer as involved in the courting rituals of their children. Men and women were going out and trying to figure out what they wanted the most. As it turns out, this isn't as effective as the old way of courtship. Women developed partner fitness tests to weed out the men who actually loved them or were just playing coy. This eventually led to a very heavy usage of jealousy as a shit test. Women particularly would try to make their primary suitors jealous by telling him that there were other men chasing after her and that she had options. While many of the men would cave and just profess undying love and their concerns over losing her, feeding into the broads attention, some of them used dreadgame (this is at the end of the chapter) to great effect.

For those of you are inclined to try to read this but don't have the time for so many pages, I recommend 166 - 170 and the last sentence of 185 to - 191

What I'm trying to get at by showing this piece, is that very little has changed in the dating game once we get back down to fundamentals. Women are emotional and believe in a love that is impractical because of their pursuit of emotional bliss. Men just want to fuck and plenty of them fall in love during the pursuit of lust. Parents used to keep this shit in check, but now shit-tests are used by people courting one another. Parents were the shit test experts because they knew what would make their child happy longterm.

tldr

Victorian-era relationships and two centuries of embracing emotions as a moral compass paved the way for the modern day shit-test.