Marriage and Courtship

This analysis looks at letters written during the courtship and early marriage of Sarah Hicks Williams, from 1845-1855.

Figure 2.a: This Mandala tool shows the relationship between terms in Williams's letters. Rolling over a date, shows how each term relates. As we can see marriage and affection relate to each other quite a bit in her letters. She is not always referring to her own courtship letters however, as she often talks about the "girls" she knows and their impending marriages.

Figure 2.b: The Context tool looks at a particular work and it's variations the documents and see the phrases that come before and after the chosen term. In the example above, Williams frequently shared her opinions about her friends who married, their marriages, and subsequent husbands. Here are some additional terms to search in relation: girls, visit, invitation, affection, offer, fidelity, couple, love, compliments, and attended.

Figure 2.c: The Knots visualization looks at one letter at a time and charts how particular word or phrase is connected to another and how often the term occurs. The straighter the line, the less the term occurs. The knot represents the top terms in the letter but we can add additional terms. Scrolling over a line, a bubble appears showing the term in it's context and phrase. The closer the lines, the more connected the terms are to one another. Williams mentioned home, how she will miss it, and how many years Benjamin has carried romantic feelings for her. Suggested terms for this letter include: respect, affection, and fidelity.

Analyzing Sarah Hicks Williams's views on courtship and marriage

Sarah Hicks Williams veiled much of her own feelings and affections for her future husband with her parents. She wrote to her parents that "Dr. Williams, which if I answer will probably bring a renewal of an offer made nearly three years since…. Eight-years is long enough to test friendship, and such fidelity is seldom met with in this world" (March 24, 1853). It is as if Williams is saying yes to Benjamin's proposal to avoid becoming an old maid. Her sisters and the majority of her friends had moved away at this point and babies were being born, and though Williams loves her home, she also knows she cannot stay there forever. At the same time, she is tired of being a nanny to her sister's children. Women in the 1800s did not necessarily marry for love but out of convenience. Given Williams's place in the Northern middle-class, aware of the expectations put upon women once they married, she may have also tested Benjamin's affection. "Expressions of courtship, such as letters suggested how men and women experimented with their image of themselves as lovers" (Stowe, 93). Courtship allowed Williams to test the boundaries of Benjamin's affection and waiting as long as she did for an answer, she may have been testing his sincerity. Williams gave few details about her relationship with Benjamin in letters to her parents.

Marriage at this point was about economy over love. Nancy Cott describes marriage as women legally acknowledging subordination, choosing to voluntarily be dependent on their husbands (Cott, 77-78). Northern women had more choice in the matter over whether to marry but were either bound to their family or their husband; a woman's work and worth was not in monetary form. Though laws were passed in 1837 that granted women control over separate property from their husband, their legal status remained unaltered (Isenberg, 172). This did little to change or influence a woman's decision to marry. William's wanted to know her parents opinion and asked for any concerns in her accepting the proposal. She included her own concerns: "There are but things that thought of now dislike in the man his owning slaves. I cannot make it seem right yet perhaps there may be my sphere and there is his not being a Christian" (March 7, 1853). However, in the letter she crossed these opinions out and decides to wait for her parents' response before accepting or declining the offer.

Williams's mother-in-law, referred to as Mother Williams by Williams, resented Sarah because she did not have any slaves. Had Benjamin married a Southern woman from his class, his family would have received a dowry of slaves. Still though, Sarah remains content in the marriage. When Sarah and Benjamin first marry they live in North Carolina, but eventually move farther south, to Georgia. Sarah, already felt isolated because she missed family, friends, and material goods. Women in similar situations, who moved from the eastern seaboard to the west, followed their husbands for new ventures without much discussion, moving farther South, and away from the coast, left much to be desired by woman who valued kin and material possessions and this move left them with little of either (Cashin, 65). Williams showed less concern about the absence of kin than the absence of material goods. She mentioned throughout her marriage how she misses such items, in particularly having working stove in the house, having friends, she is a "stranger in a strange land" (October 22, 1853). Despite what Williams found lacking, she was clearly happy and focused on Benjamin in the beginning of her marriage. But as she begins to have children and settle into her role as mistress, her priorities shift. Sarah Hicks Williams remained a dutiful wife, but now has her own sphere to operate in.

Prior to marriage, Sarah and Benjamin enjoyed a frequent correspondence, which she did not mention to her parents. Stowe notes in Intimacy and Power, that there was a unique style to courtship letters, and that the planter class kept these letters but Northern class began to cast them aside (Stowe, 89). Keeping propriety was less of a concern for the North. In Northern states, for the majority of women the choice between marriage and staying single was not even between "dissipation and housewifery but between relative drudgery and isolation that marriage involved" and the loneliness and potential poverty of "spinsterhood" (Epstein, 75). Historians of courtship argue over the role of family in selecting a companion, Southern historians push the role of the family, while scholars of Northern courtship find that starting in the 1840's marriage was a more personal choice. For Williams, her family still played an important role in the marriage proposal. Williams asked her parents to review the offer from Benjamin before she accepted. The southern family decided who joined and this caused stress for the courters (Stowe, 99). Williams clearly had her own reservations regarding the courtship, but with few other options, she accepted. There does not appear to be much strife regarding the decision, as she writes very little of the proposal in letters following the offer.