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#Post#: 32190--------------------------------------------------
Getting down on one knee?
By: peony Date: June 3, 2019, 7:15 am
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This isn't a wedding question, but it is an engagement question:
I was wondering when did it become the custom to get down on one
knee to propose. Does anyone know? Is this a recent custom or an
old one? Has Miss Manners ever addressed this? This inquiring
mind would like to know!
#Post#: 32204--------------------------------------------------
Re: Getting down on one knee?
By: Pattycake Date: June 3, 2019, 9:42 am
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When I googled that, one says it goes back to times of knights
who would get down on one knee in front of their lord as a
display of respect, obedience, and loyalty. ... "So when a
courteous gentlemen was proposing to his lady, pledging his
allegiance to her and declaring his undying love for her,
getting down on one knee was the natural thing to do." But that
is, if I am reading it right, attributed to Cosmopolitan
magazine.
Another one says it's a modern invention, and yet another says
"What we view as "tradition" might well have been cooked up by
advertisers in the 1930s, and what might seem cool and modern
might in fact date back centuries."
So... who knows?! :-\ ::)
#Post#: 32207--------------------------------------------------
Re: Getting down on one knee?
By: Hmmm Date: June 3, 2019, 10:12 am
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I don't think anyone knows the origin. This site says it
probably started showing up in the 19th century. There are wood
carvings and illustrations from the 1800's that depict a man
proposing on one knee proposing. Since that was the time of
romanticism, it would make since that the courtly act would
become popular then. And it was also the time that there was
more freedom of women to accept a marriage proposal rather than
having a marriage arranged for them.
#Post#: 32231--------------------------------------------------
Re: Getting down on one knee?
By: peony Date: June 3, 2019, 4:58 pm
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[quote author=Pattycake link=topic=1172.msg32204#msg32204
date=1559572939]
When I googled that, one says it goes back to times of knights
who would get down on one knee in front of their lord as a
display of respect, obedience, and loyalty. ... "So when a
courteous gentlemen was proposing to his lady, pledging his
allegiance to her and declaring his undying love for her,
getting down on one knee was the natural thing to do." But that
is, if I am reading it right, attributed to Cosmopolitan
magazine.
Another one says it's a modern invention, and yet another says
"What we view as "tradition" might well have been cooked up by
advertisers in the 1930s, and what might seem cool and modern
might in fact date back centuries."
So... who knows?! :-\ ::)
[/quote]
Any one of those might be true...I hate it when advertisers
rewrite culture for marketing purposes.
#Post#: 32232--------------------------------------------------
Re: Getting down on one knee?
By: peony Date: June 3, 2019, 5:00 pm
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[quote author=Hmmm link=topic=1172.msg32207#msg32207
date=1559574758]
I don't think anyone knows the origin. This site says it
probably started showing up in the 19th century. There are wood
carvings and illustrations from the 1800's that depict a man
proposing on one knee proposing. Since that was the time of
romanticism, it would make since that the courtly act would
become popular then. And it was also the time that there was
more freedom of women to accept a marriage proposal rather than
having a marriage arranged for them.
[/quote]
Visual evidence would at least date the practice, thanks! And
romanticism seems to fit.
#Post#: 32600--------------------------------------------------
Re: Getting down on one knee?
By: Aleko Date: June 10, 2019, 11:34 am
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Proposing on bended knee is neither a genuine medieval custom
nor cooked up in the 1930's; it's an early-19th-century
adaptation or outright bowdlerisation of a genuine medieval
gesture.
When 'courtly' or 'chivalric' love was invented in southern
France in at the end of the eleventh century, the convention was
that the lover was so devoted and submissive to his lady that he
wanted to be her vassal. So he would go through the standard
ceremony of swearing feudal loyalty: he knelt before her with
joined hands and swore to obey her as his lord and serve her
faithfully. If she wished to accept his fealty, she would do
just the same as any other lord - viz.. put her hands over his,
raise him to his feet, and kiss him*. (You can see how that part
would appeal.)
However, medieval knights only performed this ritual with ladies
they couldn't marry, and wouldn't have wanted to marry if they
could. Courtly love was by definition an extra-marital
relationship, between a man (who might or might not be married
himself) and a married lady of higher status; medieval people
thought it quite impossible for it to exist in marriage, which
was an economic/political arrangement between families. And no
medieval man proposing marriage could possibly have knelt before
his intended, because he wasn't asking her to become his lord -
just the opposite; he was offering to become her lord and
master! Indeed, when the teenage Philippa of Hainault arrived in
London to be married to the Prince of Wales (later Edward III),
at their first meeting she knelt at his feet, which was
considered proper.
As Hmmm says, the end of the 18th and the early 19th century saw
the rise of Romanticism, and enthusiasm for the Middle Ages was
a huge part of that sensibility (to the extent of actually
holding tournaments and jousting:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eglinton_Tournament_of_1839).<br
/>Since, as Hmmm also correctly says, by that time marrying for
love was now normal and desirable rather than shocking,
medieval-style declarations of love began to be made to ladies
one hoped to marry, rather than ladies one wanted to have an
adulterous affair with! Wikipedia has a German woodcut dated
1805 showing a bended-knee proposal, which shows that it was
already a thing among fashionable youth, in Germany at least, by
that date. As Germany was the seed-bed of Romanticism, it may of
course have been ahead of the English-speaking nations in this
respect. Certainly any of Jane Austen's heroes would sooner have
been shot than done anything so OTT. (Then again, pretty much
the whole of Austen's oeuvre is an attack on Romanticism and the
cult of sensibility, so even if dropping on one's knee in a
medieval way was a thing in her time, she wouldn't have had any
truck with it. We can imagine Captain Wickham going on one knee
to convince a naive teenager to elope with him, but definitely
not Darcy, Edward Ferrars or Henry Tilney.)
*If you watch TV footage of the Queen's coronation in 1953,
you'll see that when the royal dukes pledged allegiance to her
in turn, they each kissed her cheek; this might look to us like
a cosy bit of family intimacy but actually was the normal
medieval procedure. However, since the Middle Ages monarchs have
got less keen on kissing or being kissed by all and sundry, so
in the modern period all the non-royal peers only get to kiss
the sovereign's hand.
#Post#: 32805--------------------------------------------------
Re: Getting down on one knee?
By: Gellchom Date: June 13, 2019, 12:37 pm
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Aleko, that was so interesting! Thank you for sharing your
knowledge and research with us.
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