ABSTRACT

Gender historians have long argued that the behaviors of men and women, who and how they are, are rooted not in biology or nature but in social and cultural practices and expectations. Constructed by the mores of a given time and place, understandings of masculinity and femininity are not static, but fluid, shaped by influences such as religion, economics, and politics. Beyond the behaviors of men and women, the relationships between and among them also have been shaped by diverse social, economic, and political forces, dictating which are the appropriate and accepted ways of living and loving, as well as those determined deviant or labeled subversive. Likewise subject to this social construction was romantic love. As noted by Ellen Rothman, “The vicissitudes of love, the selection of a mate, the decisions people make as they approach marriage are always somewhat mysterious to an outsider.”1 But for all the ways love may have seemed amorphous and unknowable, ethereal and individual, in reality, its social construction is evidenced by a range of cultural sources that have set a standard—albeit a standard subject to change based on time and place—for romantic love, among them fiction, prescriptive literature, music, advertising, and film.