[LMB] Age at first marriage

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dorian E. Gray" <israfel at eircom.net>


> Pete said...
>>
>> 200 years ago, Jane Austen seems not to have believed that wide
>> differences in age were all that bad, at all.  In _Sense and 
>> Sensibility_,
>> Marianne is 17 and Col. brandon is 35 when they meet, and they marry when
>> she is 19 (and he must, thereby, be 37?).
>
> True, and this kind of age difference is preserved in many of Georgette
> Heyer's romances.  I think the biggest age gap is between Avon and Leonie
> (20 years), but frequently the heroes are in their early 30s while the
> heroines are 20-ish.  Off-hand, I can't think of a main-characters couple
> who are around the same age in her books, though often the minor-character

Not The Foundling--I don't think... the novel I'm trying to remember the 
name of, there's a young Duke who at the start of the story, gets told by 
his uncle that it time that he made an official offer for the young woman 
that there was an ex-officio betrothal made for between him and her when 
they were both babies.

The largest age differences are in The Convenient Marriage, These Old 
Shades. and one or two others.   Many of the heroines are under 20 -- the 
one in The Convenient Marriage, the one in the story where the male lead 
proposes to someone and getting blown off, announces he is going to marry 
the first woman he sees, maybe cotillion.... several books involve women who 
are or are close to being on the shelf, and in their mid-twenties --  
Venetia, The Quiet Gentleman, perhaps The Toll Gate,  Regency Buck is headed 
there and so is Devil's Cub, there's the Lady Serena in I-forget-which book 
whose stepmother is younger than she is, not sure of how old Frederica 
is....

> romances are between couples closer in age - and often those are depicted 
> as
> being "too young to know their own minds".

Peregrine in Regency Buck, the secondary couple in The Talisman Ring (or 
perhaps they're primary ,it's hard to tell in that one...), Frederica's 
sister and "that blockhead Endymion,"
>
> Until the sky falls on our heads...