1. All is Fair in Love and War
“Dearest reader”, Julie Andrews’ voice says from the off, while a digitally enhanced, early 19th Century Grosvenor Square comes into view and is then traversed by the camera eye: “[…] the time has come to place our bets for the upcoming social season”.1 The camera lingers on neat streets, beautiful horse-drawn carriages and elegant passers-by, then stops at a stately home and zooms in on its door until the polished doorknob fills the screen. By this time the audience – like the narrator’s fictitious ‘readers’ – know what to expect behind this door: “Consider the household of the Baron Featherington. Three misses foisted upon the marriage market like sorrowful sows by their tasteless, tactless mama” (B, 1, 0:50ff).
Another grand house, another door, and another doorknob come into view, while the narrator – soon to be revealed as the anonymous voice of a scandal sheet, titled Lady Whistledown, which circulates among the members of Regency-London’s high society – firmly establishes the relationship between the inhabitants of both mansions as one of competition and rivalry: “Far better odds”, the audience/“readers” learn, “might exist in the household of the widowed Viscountess Bridgerton. A shockingly prolific family, noted for its bounty of perfectly handsome sons and perfectly beautiful daughters” (B, 1, 1:15ff). Inside both houses, the members of both families are shown to be busy preparing to present their daughters at Court – one daughter the Bridgertons’ case, three in the Featheringtons’ – and it is this event which the voiceover introduction eloquently summarized as “foisting” them “upon the marriage market”. The young ladies will be introduced to the Queen and become full members of the English aristocratic society assembled in London (i.e., they will ‘be out’). Hence, they will also be considered as ‘marriageable’, and in search of husbands. It is this specific circumstance that the “bets” and the “odds” mentioned above refer to: By taking part in the presentation ceremony in front of a jaded, bored and yet intimidating Queen (B, 1, 4:16–7:29), it is understood that the “marriage minded misses” (B, 1, 4:26.) and their “ambitious mamas” (B, 1, 33:04) enter into a fierce competition which revolves around making “the coup of the season” (B, 1, 53:52), that is, securing an offer of marriage, ideally from a high ranking, rich, handsome and generally attractive gentleman, while the rest of the social elite observes and rates their success – or failure.
Thus starts the first episode of the season one of Netflix’s hit series Bridgerton, created by Chris van Dusen and produced by Shonda Rhimes (Shondaland) on the basis of Julia Quinn’s successful series of romance novels, and first made available for streaming on 25th of December 2020, aka the first Coronavirus Christmas.2 Contact restrictions in most western countries were firmly in place, and a considerable percentage of the world’s population had just spent the better part of a year socially distancing, working from home, anxious, lonely, stressed, and in sweatpants. Into this cultural-psychological hummus, Bridgerton brought sparkly ball gowns, extravagant flower arrangements, even more extravagant wigs and jewellery, pop songs played by string quartets, complicated dance routines, love, drama, steamy sex scenes (lots of them) and a playful gender reversal of the accustomed patterns of nudity and gaze3 in a fictional world where “the wisteria forever blooms”4 and global crises are conspicuously absent. Looking back, it seems almost logical that Bridgerton became the most viewed streaming series to that day, globally, almost overnight.5
Yet, the series did not just provide some welcome escapism at a time when the people really needed it, it also consciously engaged in current debates – first and foremost debates around cultural representation and the ‘white-washing’ of European history. It famously shows BAME actors in a “Regency romp”6 – not as the result of ‘colourblind casting’, but by imagining an “alternative history”7 where King George III’s marriage to the Prussian princess Sophia Charlotte von Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who in this version has black Portuguese ancestry, had turned the English aristocracy into a diverse and (more or less) tolerant society due to the Queen’s heritage.8 With this, the series radically questioned cultural expectations around what protagonists of romantic stories have to look like (young, white, and skinny) and which characters are allowed to develop feelings for each other in these stories (straight, cis, of opposite sex). This has not only cued in enthusiastic reviews, awards, fan merchandise, festivals, and reverberations through fashion – to this day, the series itself (even after its successful third season, which premiered in May 2024, and one spin-off), but most troublingly its actors, are the targets of racist, anti-LGBTQI+, and body-shaming abuse.9
Compared to these hot-headed debates, the series’ take on the main topic of historic romances – namely, its portrayal of the process searching and finding love –, caused much less offence. This is all the more astonishing, as the cultural practices presented in connection with this process can surely be seen as causes for concern: Characters explicitly discuss the “value” of young ladies (even the young ladies themselves) on the above mentioned, appropriately termed marriage market, and said young ladies are continuously paraded, objectified, and reduced to the function of being ‘marriageable’. The scandal sheet’s narrator voice could not be any clearer when she describes the season’s first ball: “[…] every darling debutante from Park Lane to Regent Street will be on display. Titled, chaste, and innocent, this is what they have been raised and trained for since birth” (B, 1, 17:11ff).
Equally obvious is the fact that in this fictional society the stakes for the young women could hardly be any higher, and that the whole process has a due date: “Tonight we might discover which young ladies might succeed at securing a match, thereby avoiding the dreadful, dismal condition known as ‘the spinster’”, goads the scandal-sheet-narrator’s voice from the off (B, 1, 17:58ff). The young ladies themselves, on the other hand, seem to have hardly any say in the matter, while their much-touted success on the marriage market remains strangely opaque: Whether wealth, rank, reputation, or the looks of a potential husband, or something like mutual understanding and emotional connection between the future spouses are considered as the criteria of a ‘good match’ is subject to the changing opinions of their wider social circle, consisting of the London high society, i.e. ‘the ton’.
It seems strange that these aspects of the show’s plot have, somehow, flown under the radar of its very excitable audience. It is possible that this representation of the early 19th Century aristocratic marriage market has been discounted as a spot of historical correctness or realism (in a series that cares precious little about such matters), or that this representation merely confirms our own imaginings of this historical period. But then it also has been suggested that the show reflects the troubled waters of our contemporary dating culture by means of a glamorous Verfremdung, and that its representation of the search for love comes with a certain recognition factor.10 In this case though, the fact that there was no outcry whatsoever over the depiction of the marriage market becomes all the more puzzling.
Over the following pages I would like start from this last hypothesis and elaborate it further – especially with respect to the show’s main plot twist, that is: the fact that while its protagonists do take part in the dealings of the ‘marriage market’ that are so eloquently explained during the show’s introductory minutes, they do not play by its rules. Instead, they see through the rules and mechanisms and use them to their own advantage, and do so consciously, and consensually. After her successful presentation to the Queen, the young debutante Daphne Bridgerton, who is eager to marry, quickly finds herself confronted first with a lack of ‘suitors’ (especially after her eldest brother Anthony has scared most of them away) and then with the unappealing prospect of having to marry the last one left – the creepy Baron Berbrooke. At the same time, the newly arrived young bachelor Simon Bassett, the Duke of Hastings, who decidedly does not want to marry, is beleaguered by flocks of young women and their mothers whenever he dares to show up for society events. Both Daphne’s and Simon’s predicaments are exacerbated by the fact that their respective standings on the marriage market are reported in the above-mentioned scandal sheet: Daphne’s eligibility is publicly questioned and thus further diminished, and Simon’s attractiveness enhanced when the scandal sheet challenges the ton’s “brazen match maker[s]” (B, 1, 33:35) to secure the unwilling young nobleman as a husband for their daughters. By the end of episode one, both are desperate: During an evening of amusements at Vauxhall gardens, Berbrooke feels emboldened enough to assault Daphne in a remote area of the garden, to which she reacts by knocking him unconscious; Simon, on the other hand, witnesses the scene as he tries yet again to escape the young women who had gathered around him. Especially since they both agree that there is no danger of serious attraction between them (given their previous, prickly encounters), their complementary problems lead them to work together in order to reaffirm the positions on this market that they each claim for themselves. Their plan – as laid out by Simon – is predicated on using the mechanisms at work on the marriage market:
“We could pretend to form an attachment! With you on my arm the world will believe I’ve finally found my duchess. Every presumptuous mother in town will leave me alone and every suitor will be looking at you. You must know that men are always interested in a woman when they believe another, particularly a duke, to be interested as well …” (B, 1, 51:46ff)
The ton, and even the scandal sheet’s anonymous author, known only under her nome de plume as Lady Whistledown, would eventually, he explains, “deem us to be precisely what we are: Me unavailable. You desirable” (B, 1, 52:19ff). Interlaced with their dialogue the camera shows their subsequent return to the party – and already their arrival on the dancefloor captures the attention of the ton to a much greater extent than the fireworks that go off at the same time. In episode 2, the scandal sheet duly reports on Miss Bridgerton’s “phoenix-like” reemergence “from the ashes of irrelevance” (B, 2, 3:47ff), Bridgerton house is full of suitors and Simon can enjoy his boxing lessons in peace. Yet, as the ruse of their pretend attachment requires them to spend a lot of time together, they end up falling in love.
It is precisely this plot device that requires the two main characters to reflect at length on the workings and techniques of the marriage market as they strive to make their play of pretence convincing, and to achieve the desired effects: Which action in the social context of the marriage market has which effect? What are the customary steps in the ‘negotiations’ between prospective partners, and what characterizes an effective strategy? Which kind of behaviour of men and women is ‘successful’ (and which is not)?
By explicitly foregrounding these questions, the series highlights all those characteristics of the marriage market that make it appear like a market. And when the two protagonists finally do fall in love, it investigates what these market-like mechanisms – and the kind of interactions they entail – do to the emotional relation between two people who were caught up in them. As I will show over the next pages, this narrative ploy therefore ultimately enables the show to explore how (supposedly objectifiable) economic ‘laws’ and rules relate to the emotional side of the process of finding a spouse: the search for love. It questions how the quantitative market-logic of comparability and valuation and the standardized procedures that allow for this logic to work intertwine with an ‘other-directed’ feeling – love – which is supposed to rise from the attraction, emotional connection and, eventually, intimacy between unique, individual partners. And, last but not least, it highlights the contradictions inherent in this process.
While this might seem a modern, even (relatively) contemporary problem, rooted on the one hand in a modern understanding of the ‘market’ as a law-governed, rational and egotistical sphere of interaction,11 and on the other in the romantic ideal of love as a unique feeling directed at another, individual and unique person,12 a quick look into the history of literature (and drama, in particular) reveals that Bridgerton is far from alone in using the plot motif of young men and women ‘playing’ the marriage market to their own advantage. In fact, this motif can be traced back through a long literary history, which has been highlighting the same questions, albeit with regard to a different understanding of how ‘markets’ work, what ‘love’ (in particular: the love between future spouses) is, and what happens when these two interrelate.
The earliest example I would like to refer to is Ludovico Ariosto’s I suppositi (The Pretenders), an early comedy of mistaken identities which draws heavily on motifs of Plautus’ and Terence’s Roman comedies.13 Its classically structured plot revolves around two young lovers, Erostrato and Polinesta, who have long been having a secret affair, rendered possible by the fact that Erostrato, a noble student from Sicily, has been working and living under a false name in the merchant household of Polinesta’s greedy father Damone. The play starts with the realization that this happy state of things cannot continue because Polinesta’s father wants to marry her off to the rich old lawyer Cleandro. While the play is in many respects a typical early example of the ‘learned’ Italian 16th Century comedy – the commedia erudita – in its use of space and perspective and its representation of the patriarchally structured household,14 its plot contains an interesting twist: Confronted with the prospect of Polinesta having to marry Cleandro, Erostrato and his savvy servant Dulippo have quickly hatched a plan to prevent this by interfering in the marriage market. They complicate the economic negotiations between Polinesta’s father and her would-be future husband by pretending to present a counteroffer.15
The second example is William Shakespeare’s vastly more famous The Merchant of Venice. Though rightly notorious for its antisemitic representation of the play’s most prominent character, the Jewish money-lender Shylock, and his cruel deal with the merchant Antonio, the play – which is, after all, nominally a romantic comedy16 – is also known for its complicated intertwining of the topics of love and money.17 It should come as no surprise that is contains a significant amount of meddling with the Venetian marriage market: The reason as to why the deal between Shylock and Antonio is struck in the first place is that Antonio’s young and penniless friend Bassanio wishes to convince a rich heiress named Portia to marry him by pretending to be rich, too. When Antonio (with the help of the money he borrowed from Shylock) has equipped Bassanio with the necessary financial means, though, the latter enters into a fierce competition on a moral testing ground that has been established and expertly manipulated by Portia’s deceased father. And, last but not least, it is the young bride herself who tricks Bassanio into a gift exchange in order to make sure that the young man she is going marry knows what is expected of him. So, instead of the cruel default clause in Antonio’s and Shylock’s contract that promises a pound of human flesh if the debt is not paid back on time, I will focus on the part of the play’s plot that is located on the fictitious, fairy tale island Belmont where the rich young lady Portia resides and is visited by a string of suitors who arrive from all the corners of the wide world to woo her. This follows a ritual that in the play’s fictional world was invented by Portia’s father (though obviously drawing on well-known literary precursors18 ) and involves taking part in a wager, which – at a closer look – is almost as cruel as the deal between Antonio and Shylock: In an elaborate set-up designed to weed out those suitors who are only after Portia’s fortune and to deprive her of the possibility to choose for herself, each potential future husband is presented with a choice of three different caskets (boxes) and has to try and pick the one that contains Portia’s portrait (M, II,7, v. 11–12, p. 38). Each participant in this competition, however, is required to take an oath that obliges them to foreswear women in general and forever should he pick the wrong one (M, II,1, v. 38–42, p. 23). The wager’s interlacing of sexual and economic symbolism is unmissable: Portia, the young bride, here literally becomes a ‘treasure’ in a chest that her future husband has to ‘unlock’.
It turns out that the plot motif of ‘playing’ the marriage market has not only a long, but also a rather fascinating literary history. Looking at this history allows us to dissect historically divergent situations of marriage markets through the lens of their manipulability, and gauge how various historical periods shape a specific triangular relation: a relation of these markets’ economic rules and laws to the feelings of the people who are ‘traded’ on them on the one hand, and to the relationship that is supposed to result from this type of trade on the other. I will investigate these two strands of relations – market to feelings, and market to relationships – in the following two sections of this paper. As already the first foray into the various narrative examples has shown that gender plays a decisive role in every aspect of this love-market-triangle I will come back to the question how these interrelations shape and negotiate gender roles at various points.
Ultimately, though, analysing Bridgerton’s first season as a part of this motif’s long history, will enable us to understand what the specific shape that the series gives to this triangular relation tells us about emotions and calculations in the cultural situation for which it was made, and where it succeeded: our own. To put it bluntly: If Bridgerton says something about our own understanding of the process of match making and the relation of emotion and calculation it entails, the question I would like to pursue in these pages is: What, exactly, does it say?
2. “Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear” (M, III,2, v. 313, p. 60): Prices, Profits, and Feelings (I)
If there is one thing the main characters throughout the aforementioned narratives have in common, it is the fact that they start from a position of entrapment: While Bridgerton’s Simon and Daphne, as we have seen above, feel trapped by the respective positions on the marriage market that the scandal sheet – and, by extension, its audience – have assigned them to, Erostrato and Polinesta in The Pretenders are caught in her father’s plans to marry her to a rich old neighbor. The artful design of the wager in The Merchant implies that Portia’s father wanted to do something about being unable to direct his daughter’s choice of a husband on account of being dead – thus leaving his daughter entrapped, too. In each case, the decision to ‘play’ the marriage market appears as a way for the characters to (re-)claim agency in a situation where they would otherwise have very little or none, with the female characters (at least initially) being relegated to the social positions with the least possibilities to shape their own situation. In the very first scene of Ariosto’s play, the young bride Polinesta complains about her problems to her nurse – and thus provides the play’s exposition –, but then disappears from the stage for the entire duration of the play, while her fate lies in the hands of her lover, his servant, and her father. Portia’s fate in The Merchant has been firmly placed in her suitors’ (and eventually Bassanio’s) hands by her deceased father. Even though some critics have highlighted instances where Portia seems to be nudging Bassanio to the right choice with verbal clues and thus exercising some influence over the wager’s outcome,19 the fact that the wager prevents her from simply choosing a husband for herself is undeniable – not least because Portia herself is so very explicit about it: “I may neither choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike, so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father” (M, I,2, v. 22–24, p. 12). At first sight, Bridgerton seems to deviate from this pattern by assigning Daphne a very active role in her and Simon’s ruse – she is as much engaged in their role-play as he is, and gives as much, if not more, instructions as to what needs to be done to keep up appearances.20 Yet, it also becomes clear that for her (and for the young women on the marriage market in general), there is more at stake: They are constantly threatened with social scandal and “ruin” (not only of themselves, but of their entire families),21 and constantly reminded of imminent spinsterhood if they should not find a husband quickly enough,22 while they have to wait for a proposal in order to be able to have any say at all – and even then it is not guaranteed that they will be heard.23 The men, on the other hand, are at least in a position of being able to make proposals should they wish to do so. So, even in this very modernized, pseudo-historical setting, the social expectations placed on women give the ruse an outright existential dimension in Daphne’s eyes (B, 2, 54:00ff) – while Simon can still regard it as a convenient amusement (B, 3, 34:24ff).
In all three cases, however, the respective tricks and illusions that are meant to achieve the desired outcome are based on the characters’ understanding of the marriage market’s economic mechanisms – and these, in turn, are predicated on the other participants’ calculating, self-interested, as well as ritualized and therefore utterly predictable behaviour.
In The Pretenders, Erostrato’s and Dulippo’s efforts to prevent Polinesta’s marriage to the elderly Cleandro revolve around basic economic calculations: They simply assume that Polinesta’s father Damone will choose the highest bidder for his daughter’s hand, and so, Dulippo (that is: the servant, who has taken on his master’s identity) makes a fake, competing offer (IS, II,1, v. 32–42, p. 210). In the Merchant of Venice, the wager Portia’s father has set up is based on the assumption that her suitors’ financial interest will guide their choice of casket, that is, that those who have their eyes on her ‘treasures’ will go for the ones made of precious metals, while only a suitor who is not interested in her inheritance will choose the one made of the cheap metal lead. The play’s first and second acts present this as an efficient means of selection insofar as one group of unwelcome suitors decides to refrain from taking part in the wager altogether, while others are shown to fall into the wager’s trap as they choose the gold and silver casket and promptly find them containing items and poems that denounce their greed and superficiality, such as the now proverbial “All that glisters is not gold […]” (M, II, 7, v. 65, p. 39).
As opposed to these examples, Bridgerton’s Simon and Daphne appear to be manipulating the emotional side of the marriage market when they pretend to be falling in love with each other. But even in their case, the effects they are trying to achieve with this are shown to be entirely calculable according to the economic ‘laws’ of supply and demand – which, however, work differently for men and women: If Daphne’s lack of suitors had rendered her ineligible, the fact alone that Simon seems to be interested in her will make her appear ‘in demand’ and increase the interest of others. As one of the ton’s many ladies remarks: “Where one suitor goes, the rest will surely follow” (B, 1, 22:07ff.). For Simon, on the other hand, the very same situation will have the opposite effect: He will appear as ‘off the market’, and therefore interest in him will decrease.
The different attitudes to the process of ‘acquiring’ a spouse in the first two examples evidently reflect historically changing attitudes towards the economic aspects of marriage: seen first and foremost as a status-driven family business in Early Modern Italy,24 Shakespeare’s play seems to point to the fact that even though marriage in Elizabethan England was considered an institution with strong economic objectives, it was, as Anne Enderwitz’s chapter in this volume highlights, ideally also based on “nuptiall love”, “friendshippe” or “amitie”25 – that is, the ideal form of a “companionate marriage” was supposed to be governed neither by economic interests nor by passionate desire alone,26 resulting a heightened preoccupation with regard to prospective partners’ motives and emotional states.27 In the latest example, Bridgerton, the question if financial interests play a role in the choice of partner completely vanishes from the narrative. It is set in a social circle where (nearly) everyone has money – since being rich is a prerequisite for belonging to the ton, nobody is suspected of wanting to marry to become rich. They are, however, suspected of wanting to climb the social ladder in terms of rank, title, attractiveness and status, as the members of the ton compare and rate each other according to a complicated economy of status and habitus, where being wealthy, good-looking, and knowing how to behave are all factored in.28 Here, the preoccupations with direct financial interests are replaced by a different, decidedly neoliberal economic mechanism which is shown to be at work in the process of finding a partner: Young men and women are presented as goods from the moment they enter the social circle of the ton during ‘the season’ and are rated according to the high society’s complicated quantifying logic.
All three examples establish a different relation between these market mechanisms and the emotions that exist and/or grow between their young protagonists: In Ariosto’s play, the strong love and attraction between Erostrato and Polinesta appears as the disruptive factor in the marriage market. They have fallen in love in spite of Polinesta’s reclusion in her family home, and this thwarts her father’s intention to strengthen the family’s finances and alliances through her marriage.
In Shakespeare’s play, love and attraction have to be proved – they are not a ‘given’ in the intention to marry. On the contrary: they represent what is at stake during the wager, and later, when Portia tests her new fiancé’s loyalty, especially because Portia is rich, and therefore men are presumed to have other, strictly financial reasons for marrying her. The relation between the economic transaction (that is still undoubtedly part of a marriage) on the one hand, and the feelings between the soon-to-be bride and groom on the other, is – compared to Ariosto’s The Pretenders – almost turned on its head: It is both Portia’s wealth and the presumed economic logic of her suitors which are seen as a potential ‘disturbance’ in the process of her marriage, as they make it harder to know which of the many men who woo her are actually interested in her – that is, which one of them is not driven only by self-interest.
Bridgerton, in turn, takes yet another stance on this relation: Here, it is the economic logic itself that is supposed to enable love to emerge by providing a mechanism of selection and choice. The marriage market’s dynamic of ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ facilitates meetings – it gives young people a pretext for showing an interest – but at the same time it is supposed to function as a process of preselection, as it establishes who belongs to the group of people considered to be eligible (and who does not). The feelings, in this case, are assumed to develop after (and even as a consequence of) this economically organized process, between young people whose meeting and interactions have been catalyzed by its rules.29
Due to these differences, the attempts at manipulating the market strive for different goals in all three narratives: They strive to save a love relationship from the threat of a financially advantageous marriage arrangement in Ariosto, to confirm love against the suspicion of mere financial interest in Shakespeare – and, in the last case, to make sure that the market mechanisms actually work. Bridgerton’s protagonists resort to manipulation not in order to suspend or bracket the economic functioning of the marriage market, but, instead, to ‘correct’ its mechanisms, convinced as they are that with a bit of tweaking, the market will deliver the desired outcomes – that is, that Daphne will find love on the market, and Simon will be left outside of it.
3. How Things Go Right When They Go Wrong: Prices, Profits and Feelings (II)
However, in all three examples the initial stratagems do not work out, or not in the way they were supposed to. Ariosto’s Pretenders have to contend with further disruptions from ‘economic’ factors: Instead of chasing the annoying rival to Polinesta’s hand away, Erostrato’s and Dulippo’s fake offer – in an Early Modern take on the ‘law’ of supply and demand – only increases the bride price. The rich aspiring husband Cleandro spells out the intricate financial details of his own renewed offer: In addition to the of 2000 ducats of “sopradote” he had promised before (and which had been countered by Dulippo) (IS, I,1, v. 83–88, p. 204), he now offers 1500 more and forsakes the original dowry, which Polinesta’s father was supposed to pay (IS, I,2, v. 94–99, p. 204–205). On top of this, Dulippo’s own economic credentials don’t hold up to scrutiny. As a young student (especially a pretend one), he is not in possession of that kind of sum, nor can he promise it without any security – in this case: without someone who will countersign and guarantee his (fake) promise of payment (IS, I,2, v. 89–90, p. 204, and II,1, v. 47–49, p. 210).
The elaborate wager in Shakespeare’s Merchant does not, in fact, rule out Bassanio’s financial interest in the marriage to Portia – an interest which has been highlighted from scene one, where he explicitly states that he wants to (or rather has to) marry Portia for her wealth: “In Belmont is a lady richly left …” (M, I,1, v. 161, p. 10), he explains to Antonio, when asking him for the amount of money he needs to woo her. This economic logic is quite firmly placed in the background when he arrives at Portia’s court and picks the right casket (M, II, 2, p. 49–60), when he reflects extensively on the difference between the fleeting attraction of riches and outward appearance and enduring value of inner virtue and humility (M, III,2, v. 73–107, p. 52–53), or when both Portia and Bassanio declare their love and devotion after he has passed this test (M, III,2, v. 149–185, p. 54–55). Yet, at the same time, the famous casket-scene dwells extensively on the fact that Bassanio has not only gained a wife, but also a fortune: The poem he finds inside the casket informs him first and foremost of the fact that “this fortune falls to you” before even mentioning his “lady” (M, III, 2, v. 133 and 137). Celebrating Bassanio’s win, Portia wishes she were “trebled twenty times myself / A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times / More rich” in order to “stand high in your account” (M, II,2, v. 153–155, p. 54) – and, hence, not only explicitly acknowledges her wealth to be an important factor in her attractiveness, but does so at the very same moment as she explains the instant legal transfer of her wealth and power to Bassanio:
In this way, the suspicion that Bassanio’s financial interest is a driving force of his marrying Portia is very much present and even accepted – despite of what the wager was supposed to prove.
In the Netflix series things don’t go according to plan, either, but again in a tellingly different way: As the ruse starts to work, Daphne finds herself emerged in the London high society marriage market, where balls, picknicks and promenades provide ample, ritualized opportunities to survey possible partners. Even though it is initially the young women who feature as ‘goods’, to be valued and rated by the young men who are shown in the role of ‘buyers’, this picture is turned on its head as soon as Daphne’s position on the market has changed and she has a host of suitors who vie for her attention. Yet, despite this success, the challenge of finding a love match does not seem to get any easier. Nobody really stands out in the ballrooms stuffed full of handsome, polite and well-educated young people, where dance partners become exchangeable, and the conversation revolves around generic, stereotypical questions (B, 3, 6:30ff). Individual differences become marginal – so much so that Simon and Daphne start to talk about their match-making project in outright military terms (“the grand battle of the season”, B, 3, 2:32f), and to lump the young men of the ton together in collective designations (e.g. as “recruits”, B, 3, 31:35). The effect of this is that Daphne has great difficulties in deciding on a candidate. Even the advances of a Prussian Prince seem stereotypical, predictable and cannot be taken seriously (B, 3, 8:18ff). So, while the market does indeed function in the way they both expected, the feelings they also expected to arise as a result of this do not – while other feelings they did not expect to arise actually do. It turns out that their calculation works for the numerical side of the marriage market, but not for the emotional one.
Since all three examples eventually do end ‘happily’, they also, by definition, eventually present solutions to these various marriage-market related problems – and it is by means of these different solutions that the three narratives ultimately disabuse those who have tried to ‘play’ the markets of their illusions as to their functioning. And so, finally they seem to present the young lovers (as well as the respective audiences) with a way in which the relation between market and feeling ‘really’ plays out:
In Ariosto’s play, things initially only seem to go from bad to worse: As Erostrato and Dulippo scramble to find solutions for the obstacles to their first plan, the obstacles seem to multiply. Shortly after they have found an unsuspecting Sienese merchant and have instructed him to impersonate Erostrato’s father Filogono and guarantee the promised payment (IS, II,1, v. 74–220, p. 213–215, and II,2, p. 215–216), the real father arrives in Ferrara (IS, IV,1, p. 230, and IV,3, p. 232). And as soon as they have managed to chase the competitor Cleandro away with some brazen lies, Polinesta’s father discovers his daughter’s affair and promptly locks the young lover (and pretend servant) up in a storage room inside his house (IS, IV,2-IV, 4, p. 225–229). Even if it would take too long to recount every single plot twist that is necessary to disentangle this mess and turn it into a happy ending, it is worth noting that in the end, contrary to Erostrato’s and Dulippo’s first attempts at manipulation, the solution to their mushrooming problems is very much not based on a mere price war, but on the recognition of social identity and the enforcement or re-establishment of family ties, as well as on considerations of social honour.
Central factors in the dissolution of their conundrum are firstly the recognition of the servant’s and the master’s true identities – and therefore the final confirmation that Polinesta did not (as feared by her father) have an affair with a mere servant, but with the son of a rich merchant who only pretended to be a servant (M, V,7, p. 253–254), and the discovery that the actual servant Dulippo (who had taken on the identity of his master) is not a servant at all, but the long-lost son of the old dottore Cleandro (IS, V,5, v. 54–141, p. 249–251) – who, now that he is provided with an heir, doesn’t see any reason to marry anymore and is happy to relinquish the young bride (IS, V,9, v. 32–41, p. 256–257). Secondly, this allows both fathers to give their approval to their children’s choice of partner – which is all the more fortunate as they also acknowledge that a failure to convert the affair into a legitimate marriage would entail the loss of both their families’ honour (IS, V,9, v. 27–52, p. 256–257). In this process, money loses its central position as a means to solve the young lovers’ problems and all but disappears from the characters’ dialogue.
The emotional side of this complicated, if ultimately successful, transaction on the marriage market remains rather blurred: Little do the audience learn about why the young lovers fell for each other, about their hopes and expectations, nor do they dwell on their feelings much. Polinesta, in particular, disappears into her father’s house after the first scene, never to be seen on stage again. The only definition of “love” the play offers is given by Erostrato, and it is not a reassuring one: his love for Polinesta, he claims, is like a physical need – like hunger or thirst –, only insatiable: the more nights he spends with Polinesta, the more he desires her (IS, I,2, v. 184–200, p. 207). This is exactly the kind of sensual love akin to illness, the amor hereos, that Early Modern marriage treatises, sermons, and literally the whole genre of household literature will never stop warning their readers about – and it is deemed a wholly unsuitable as a basis for marriage.30 Yet, it turns out that this is also the kind of love that remains completely untouched by everything that is going on around it: The fact that the happy union is brought about by cheating, and the fact that the groom and his servant are proven to be most willing to play fast and loose with the rules of the marriage market (not to mention social norms), does not bother anyone as soon as their marriage has been approved of by both their fathers. In fact, one might even say that the willingness to play the market and risk the social consequences functions as a proof of Erostrato’s love for Polinesta. And so, one might assume that theirs is a happy ending, indeed.
Yet, this happy ending also implies that their love is completely irrelevant for the eventual approval of their marriage. Once the comic “inganno” (deceit) is replaced by “disinganno” (revelation) and their marriage becomes a socially desirable outcome, not a single character is interested in the young peoples’ feelings. The comedy, one could summarize, paints a very complicated picture of the marriage market – it appears as a market where money does count, but needs to be balanced against other factors and aspects of the involved individuals’ and families’ social situation, such as the families’ histories, the number and gender of offspring, and their relative positions of prestige and honour within the urban community. This picture of the marriage market as a market confirms recent research in the field of Early Modern economic history, namely the observation that economic enterprises in general were considered as ancillary to the wellbeing and social standing of the family, and that economic decisions, therefore, were often rooted in family-centred policy, rather than in mere profit-maximizing calculation.31 According to this comedy, the market mechanisms do work and eventually provide a solution for the comedy’s intrigue and confusion – just not in the way the young men (Erostrato and Dulippo) expected. When it comes to the relation between economics and emotions, though, this picture is far less complicated: Feelings, it turns out, are not connected to these mechanisms in any meaningful way. Either they are a disruption, or they are irrelevant.
In Shakespeare’s play, too, things get more complicated from where we left them, as Portia finds her own way of further manipulating the situation: When she acknowledges that her wealth is now Bassanio’s and that this is not an unimportant fact in their union, she gives him an additional gift – a ring –, which comes with an exclusivity clause: “this ring, / Which when you part from, lose, or give away, / Let it presage the ruin of your love / And be my vantage to exclaim on you” (M, III,2, v. 171–174, p. 55).
With this, she uses a valuable item, a piece of jewelry, decidedly not with its monetary value in mind (i.e. as a good), but as a symbol and token which establishes a special relationship between her and Bassanio that is not based on self-interest and calculation, but on love and mutual trust – in other words: She tries to transmigrate the effects the wager was supposed to have regarding her choice of a partner into the relationship with the partner who ‘won’ the wager.
Shortly afterwards, though, this is questioned, as the heterotopic space of her court is brought in touch with the outer world and its economics: A messenger brings news from Venice that Antonio’s economic ventures have all failed, and therefore he cannot repay Shylock the money he owes. Shylock insists on fulfilling their contract, which entitles him to cut out a pound of Antonio’s flesh. This would of course kill the latter. At this point, Bassanio has to come clean: He tells his fiancée that he is heavily in debt and thereby admits that he married Portia for her wealth. Nevertheless, Portia gives him leave to pay as much money as needed to save Antonio, and Bassanio leaves for Venice immediately.
As is well-known, Portia then dresses up as a “young doctor”, travels to Venice herself and, equipped with only some notes from a notary she is acquainted with, saves Antonio’s skin (literally and figuratively) by finding a legal loophole in the loan contract: the ‘bond’ allows Shylock to cut out Antonio’s flesh, but not to shed his blood, and as the one is not possible without the other, the contract is forfeit. This has equally well-known, catastrophic legal and economic consequences for Shylock. After the dramatic show-down in the courtroom, Portia (still dressed as the young doctor) accepts no payment or compensation from neither Antonio nor Bassanio other than the ring on Bassanio’s finger in order to test Bassanio’s loyalty to her and the exclusivity of their own emotional ‘bond’. Bassanio may have passed the wager’s test, but he spectacularly fails this one: After the tiniest bit of persuasion and pressure he is, in fact, willing to part with the ring Portia had given him (and so is his sidekick Graziano with the one Portia’s maid Narissa had given him with the same prerequisite). Tellingly, Antonio convinces Bassanio to give the ring away with an intricate, and problematic calculation: “My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring. / Let his deservings, and my love withal / Be valued ’gainst your wife’s commandèment” (M, IV,1, v. 447–448, p. 85). The assumed doctor’s “deservings” in saving Antonio’s life, as well as Antonio’s own love for Bassanio are worth more than the ring’s symbolic meaning in Bassanio’s and Portia’s relationship. With this, the ring is not only transformed into a ‘good’ again – one that can be used to calculate and pay someone’s service –, but with its re-entry into the world of value and calculation, it also changes it’s symbolic meaning: from being a symbol of Portia’s and Bassanio’s love, it becomes a symbol of Antonio’s and Bassanio’s, insofar as Bassanio decides that paying the person who saved Antonio’s life is more important than fulfilling the promise to his wife.32
Bassanio is lucky insofar as he gets the chance to learn his lesson upon his return to Belmond: Portia and Nerissa reproach their respective husbands severely and threaten to revenge their husbands’ betrayal of their trust with infidelity before they reveal that it is them who, in disguise, had received the rings by giving the very same rings back to the men, connected with a renewal of their proviso to not sell them, give them away, or lose them. The men first try to justify the fact that they had given away the rings but soon realize that they have been outplayed – and vehemently swear that they will keep the rings safe from now on.
In this case, the fact that the play does end well for all three couples (Bassanio and Portia, Gratiano and Nerissa, as well as another one of Bassanio’s friends, Lorenzo, who had eloped with Shylock’s daughter Jessica), and even for Antonio (who learns that three of his ships arrived at port and his fortune is restored), is ultimately dependent on the recognition of legal, contractual truth as well as economic advantage – and, again, not the recognition of ‘true’ feelings: the fact that Shylock has complied with the commandments of the law and that Lorenzo and Jessica will inherit his fortune after his death, and that Antonio, once again, is wealthy, but most importantly for this context: The fact that the doctor and his clerk were, in fact, Portia and Nerissa, that their demanding the rings as recompensation for their services was, in fact, a test, and that the gift of the rings was part of a ‘contract’ that has been broken, but is now, after its renewal, valid again. All of these economic and legal facts are documented and proven, the first ones by letters, witnesses and written “deeds of gift” (M, V.1, v. 292, p. 98) that are passed back and forth between the characters until everyone is assured of their credibility,33 and the latter one by Portia’s ring, which in this case is passed to Bassanio through Antonio, who again functions as “surety” (M, V,1 v. 254, p. 96) – just like in the case of the credit contract with Shylock. Only this time it is his friend’s faithfulness that needs verification: “I once did lend my body for his wealth / […] I dare be bound again, / My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord / Will never more break faith advisedly” (M, V,1, v. 249–253, p. 96).
The establishment of feelings in the face of the strong economic undercurrent of this marriage remains open for suspicion, interference and manipulation. Feelings, it seems, may exist between the partners, but since one can never be quite sure about them, the respective relationships need to be ‘hedged’ and secured by the transactional, calculating logic of the market. While this economic logic seemed to be the problem that made the wager necessary in the first place, it ultimately, and very tellingly, also provides the solution the characters turn to: Since they cannot be sure of feelings, they establish a ‘quid pro quo’ – a transactional contract – with “surety”.
In the case of Bridgerton, the ‘solution’ that compensates for the conspicuous lack of feelings on the marriage market presents itself in the very foreseeable plot twist that the two protagonists fall in love with each other while hovering on its margins. From the minute that they decide to ‘play’ the market, they share a particular point of view on the others’ interactions that sets them apart from everyone else. And while the others’ interactions seem evermore standardized and calculated, their own relationship becomes special and intimate. However, in their case, it is their opposite positions vis-a-vis the marriage market – their explicitly stated contrary ‘goals’ as to their involvement in it – that make acting on these feelings impossible. The result is an almost comically absurd conundrum, which the series develops with the utmost earnestness: At some point they pretend to be in love, and they are in love – yet, they cannot be sincere about it, because the goals they so rationally tried to pursue do not align: Simon has always stated that he does not want to marry, and Daphne has repeatedly stated that she wants to marry for love, and have a family (e.g., B, 3, 55:36.). And as their entire, elaborate intervention in the market is calculated to achieve these goals, they both cannot assume that the other’s position with regard to them could possibly have changed, or that their priorities could be different from what they used to be. So, even when they eventually tie the knot – after the intervention of the above-mentioned Prince, and a forbidden snog in a dark garden – they are far from sure about each other’s feelings: After their kiss in the garden, Daphne’s brother promptly challenges Simon to a duel, but Daphne interrupts them and decides to marry Simon even though he just told her that he cannot “give [her] children” (B, 4, 56:49ff). Simon, however, believes that she does so not because she loves him, but only because she wants to avoid a scandal – and therefore feels that he has ‘trapped’ her (cf. B, 5, 21:38ff). He also believes that a family with children is her highest priority and does not wish to deprive her of this because he loves her – and thus has decided that he cannot marry her (B, 4, 56:49ff). But when Daphne realises that he would rather die in a duel with her brother or risk her social ruin than to marry her, she, too, is obviously convinced that he does not love her (B, 4, 56:33ff). Hence, she also does not believe his – sincere! – declaration of love in front of the Queen (B, 5, 30:45ff).
That means the series pictures the relation between the market and the protagonists’ feelings as problematic not just because feelings that were supposed to arise by means of the market’s mechanisms in fact arise outside of it, but also because the egotistic, calculating attitude that characterizes the market logic, and that is exacerbated by its manipulation, oozes into the relationship: Both partners keep assuming reciprocal calculation and, hence, overlook the reciprocal emotions.
In the end, this means that in two out of three narratives, namely in the Merchant of Venice and Bridgerton, the young men and women who were ‘playing’ with the calculating mechanisms of the respective marriage markets ended up ‘playing’ with their emotions as well; their attempts at manipulation were based on preconceptions as to how the market’s economy was connected to the feelings of those involved – and as these preconceptions were proven wrong, it turned out that the tweaking and ‘hacking’ of the market mechanisms (though well-meaning) caused mostly unwanted effects and complications regarding those feelings.
4. Tricked Markets and True Marriages, or: When Does the Playing Stop?
Even though all three of the examples I have been looking at end ‘happily’ in the sense that at least two young people – and in the case of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice no less than six – get married with their consent, two of those examples, namely The Merchant of Venice and Bridgerton, highlight how the manipulation of the marriage market that had enabled those marriages impacts them in return. Seen in the context of the long history of the comic genre, this quite exceptional. Since Roman antiquity, comic plays centring on the characters’ “feverish pursuit of sex and money”34 typically end with a wedding; modern romcoms have changed little with regard to this ending, even if they substitute the wedding with a successful ‘coupling up’ – and neither show little of what comes next. In my view, it is no coincidence that particularly the ones that work with the plot motif of a manipulation of the marriage market dwell a little more on the question of what the proverbial “happily ever after” looks like when it is the outcome of a complicated relation between markets and feelings, and their manipulation.35
In fact, both examples show the relationship to be a direct result of the specific way in which the manipulations have taken place, that is, the relationship of the married couple appears as directly shaped by the economic and/or emotional dynamics that have – intentionally and unintentionally – been manipulated. Because in each case, the urgent question that the newlyweds need to answer for themselves is, which aspect of their interactions and their relationship, exactly, is not in some way subjected to manipulation or trickery.
While the answer Ariosto’s play gives to this question – i.e. the incontrollable, and totally uneconomic passion between Erostrato and Polinesta mentioned above – is so simple that the play does not have to concern itself with this problem anymore, The Merchant of Venice and Bridgerton go to some lengths to have their young couples negotiate a possible baseline of ‘non-manipulable’ connection.
In Shakespeare’s Merchant, the manipulations of the market were supposed to establish trust and an emotional bond. Yet, the fact alone that they were deemed necessary – that the trust and the emotional bond between the spouses was not considered a ‘given’ – results in continuous suspicion and distrust, more manipulation, and then to more mistrust. After Bassanio has first revealed that he is much poorer than he gave out to be, and then failed the test Portia put him to by giving away her ring, Portia – not unlike Shylock in his dealings with Antonio – establishes a ‘collateral’ in case Bassanio should break his promise again: In that case, she as well as Narissa stipulate that they will sleep with other men to repay their husbands for their unfaithfulness.36 In fact, even before letting them know that they were the young doctor and the clerk to whom the men had given the rings, they had roused their new husbands’ jealousy by telling them they had already done so. They had gotten the rings, they state, from the doctor and his clerk, who had ‘lain’ with them37 – a statement that is easily decoded from the point of view of the audience, who know of the ladies’ trick, as a typically Shakespearean double-entendre. Even after this has been explained by the revelation that Portia in fact was the young doctor, and Nerissa the clerk, the fear of the women’s sexual retribution appears as the ultimate motive for the men’s renewed seriousness regarding their promises.38 And so sex emerges not only as the last, and only, guarantee that there will be no further unfaithfulness from the men’s part, but it also emerges as the only area where an exclusive bond between the spouses exists. The rings, once again put on the husbands’ fingers, now become symbols of nothing more than their own and their wives’ reciprocal fidelity, or, more crudely, of their control over their wives’ vaginas.39
Sex is also, one might add, the only real difference in the relationships between Bassanio or Gratiano with their wives, and the one they entertain among each other, or the one Bassanio shares with Antonio. All of these relationships are indiscriminately described as “love”, and they all entail mutual economic and legal help and loyalty, risk-taking, as well as contractual ‘bonds’.40 However much this may be in accordance with the various conceptions of love circulating in Early Modernity, it leaves little room for a “companionate marriage” to be a special relationship. Ultimately, it may come down to nothing more than the safeguarding and control of sexual relations.
Bridgerton, and with it, its protagonists, have a different problem: Daphne’s and Simon’s strategy to fool the London high society is based on making its members (most of all the mysterious Lady Whistledown) believe that they are in love. From the very beginning of their ruse, therefore, Daphne and Simon play to the galleries and stage-manage their pretend relationship for others’ eyes – so much so that Simon literally directs Daphne in her new role during their very first dance: “Stare into my eyes. Here, closer. If this is to work, we must appear madly in love” (B, 1, 52:56ff.). It is not long before she returns the favour when she demands her make-believe suitor to be present in the very least at “six balls, no less. And you must send flowers. Today. Expensive ones. If you were truly courting me, you’d buy out every florist in town” (B, 2, 5:13).
With this come not only a new-found solidarity and closeness between them as they share a ‘look from the outside’ on the high society’s marriage market, dissect the calculated mechanisms of self-promotion they observe among their peers (e.g. “the feigned swoon” of Daphne’s fellow debutante and rival Cressida Cowper, cf. Bridgerton, B, 3, 24:10ff.), and even manage to predict their behaviour.41 It also means that they employ the culturally established signs of ‘being in love’ fraudulently and without meaning – depriving them of their referent (the feeling of “love”) in the process.42 This is not without consequence: Since Daphne and Simon consciously decide to ‘play’ being in love with each other, they do not notice, or in fact believe it, when they really are.
During the initial stage of their ruse, the theatrical techniques they employ resemble a ‘play within a play’, as both convincingly act a part for the show’s other characters (though easily deciphered as such by the show’s viewers). This not only highlights the fact that everyone on this marriage market is, to some extent, ‘performing’, and is ‘actor’ and ‘audience’ at the same time, but also that the process of a search for a partner follows a certain theatrical poetics and rituality, so that the number of dances, the promenading, or even the use of given names (instead of titles) are assigned a precise order and significance within this process – which, again, is publicly observed and commented on (e.g. B, 2, 4:26ff or 3, 7:45ff). At this stage, their deceit not only conceales the fact that their ‘true’ positions on the market are different from the ones they purportedly occupy, but at the same time also reveals the ‘reality’ of the market as a space of pretense and play-acting. Later on, though, when they are falling in love, their prior pretense does not so much reveal reality but becomes reality – it is performative insofar as their acting becomes true, and the difference between pretense and truth disappears.
Because of this, the classic comedic dynamic of “inganno” (deceit) and “disinganno” (revelation) does not work anymore: They cannot reveal a truth ‘behind’ their fiction – but have to reveal that the truth is actually identical with their fiction. But since they have already fraudulently used the culturally established signs for this particular ‘truth’ in their fiction, this becomes much harder to do: The customary indicators of an increasing chemistry between them (oh so easily detected by the show’s viewers!), like physical contact, attention, laughter, flirting, jealousy, and long, yearning looks, have lost their meaning to them as they can always be suspected to be part of their ruse – especially following the aforementioned duel, when they each believe they have ‘trapped’ the other in an unwanted marriage, and each assume that the other one is still acting to keep up appearances.43
Of course, since we’re speaking about a romantic comedy, they do overcome this obstacle once they are married, and then it only takes one hilariously kitsch declaration of love to put paid to their emotional doubts. To finally quote the line the Internet went most crazy about: “I burn for you!” (B, 5, 52:45f.). Yet, the lurking question as to where the disingenuousness stops has not quite been answered. And in this case, it turns out that even their sexual relations are subject to manipulation – subject, that is, to actions that result in presenting something as something else, and in presenting a person (in this case: Simon) as different from who he really is. In the case of the first season of Bridgerton, sex appears as another sphere of not-quite-honest interactions and ‘playing’: Simon had previously failed to disclose that while he is in fact physically able to father children, he does not want them due to his own problematic childhood and broken relationship with his own father, as well as the latter’s obsession with the continuation of his lineage.44 After the wedding he uses one of the few (unreliable) contraceptive methods known in the 19th Century – whereas Daphne (unbeknownst to her husband) cannot understand it for what it is, as no one has ever explained the technicalities of human reproduction to her.45 When she eventually finds out, she feels betrayed and tricked, but rather than talking to her husband, she retaliates by preventing him from using this method (B, 6, 48:50ff). This, understandably, has not only become another of the many elements of the show’s plot that has been subject to intense online debates, this time centring on consent, abuse, and objectification46 – as well as, equally understandably, the reason for a serious argument and ensuing estrangement between the young couple (B, 6, 49:52ff). It is also the final answer the show gives to the question of what remains unmanipulable in a relationship based on manipulation, and it is, in this instant, a very resounding “nothing”.
Naturally, even this rather profound problem is eventually solved: Daphne understands the reasons as to why Simon does not want children, Simon resolves these reasons just in time for the last episode, and the season ends with them having their first child and finally embarking on their ‘happily ever after’-future, so that the second season can shift its focus to the next Bridgerton sibling entering the marriage market. Yet, what is necessary in order to achieve this is that they get to know each other beyond the image they projected on to the marriage market – and this is solely their own private problem, their own responsibility, and the ‘solution’ lies entirely in their own private interactions. Seen in the context of the other examples it becomes clear that while the problem of ‘authenticating’ feelings in a market-like setting is not new (cf. The Merchant of Venice), and neither is the question of where the market’s influence and the manipulation stops, this ‘solution’ is radically different from what the earlier examples suggested.
5. Conclusion: Accounting and Accountability
To finally come back to my initial question: What does Bridgerton tell us about the relation of emotion and calculation in the process of finding a partner – with regard to our own culture? By setting it against the counterfoil of both Ariosto’s I suppositi and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice it has become possible to gauge the specific modern variant of its main motif. Hence, those aspects in particular where it departs from its predecessors can be read as the neuralgic points of its negotiations of contemporary marriage markets, and their specific absurdities – and these points of departure are, it turns out, three: firstly, the understanding of the market as something that provides a rule-based dynamic for the process of choosing a partner, even though financial interest plays no part in this choice – and the dysfunctionality of this dynamic; secondly, the role of women as equal co-conspirators and savvy strategic players on the market on the one hand – but for whom the risks are disproportionally higher than for men on the other; thirdly, the role of social and economic frameworks in the relationship between the couple, once they are married.
With respect to the first and second points, the parallels to today’s ever-shifting dating culture are obvious: It is not difficult to decipher the series’ portrayal of the ton’s marriage market with it ups and downs of ‘demand’ and ‘supply’, with its inscrutable methods of ‘ranking’ individuals, as well as its endless rotation of possible candidates on dance-floors and soirées – in addition to the public amplification of individuals’ standing through Lady Whistledown – as a quite apt allegory of the functioning of dating apps and their use of (allegedly objective) economic laws and market mechanisms to help people in their choice of a partner. Here, the show provides a concise comment on the workings of this market-setting – it shows how this setting facilitates encounters between those who are in search of a partner, how it enables the comparison of the attractiveness and compatibility of a host of available candidates, and how it provides some kind of guidance as to who might be the most suitable ‘match’. But it also exhibits the market-setting’s obvious failures: the brutal objectification and commodification of those human beings who are caught up in them, the sense of entrapment and loss of agency this can create, and the performative nature of the interactions and the ubiquitous, transparent culture of self-promotion in front of a generalized audience, as well as the ensuing insincerity (or at least the suspicion thereof).47 The series gives room to the difficulty (if not impossibility) to get rid of this insincerity in a relationship. And last but least, it is centered on the premise that real intimacy and love only grow outside of the mechanical and ritualized situations the market creates. Hence, it firmly subscribes to the believe that ‘true love’ cannot be calculated – while also showing that people look for it by calculating all the time. With this, it exposes one of the most basic contradictions between the contemporary, culturally dominant concept of love on the one hand, and the practices involved in searching for it on the other.48
It is equally easy to read its representation of women as a reflection on our own (more or less pronounced) double-standards and the unequal distribution of social risks on the ‘dating market’ caused by gender-based social judgements and expectations – from the perception of stricter biographical time-lines for women than for men to the higher risks of social exposure, blackmail, exploitation, or even assault.49
The third aspect in which the series differs from the older theatrical examples is a little less obvious, yet no less significant as a testimony to today’s perceptions of emotion and calculation. It is bound up with the culturally specific ‘conditions of possibility’ of its happy ending: Let’s recall that the happy endings of Ariosto’s and Shakespeare’s plays have both been enabled by social and economic frameworks that functioned ‘outside’ of the young couples’ relationships and served to bolster them. In Ariosto’s Pretenders the couple’s embeddedness in (economic) family structures and the (economic) urban social fabric ‘saves’ their marriage – that is: the very structure that was subject to manipulation ultimately provides the marriage’s legitimation. In the absence of the social structures of family and city at the court of Belmont The Merchant’s happy ending (insofar as it can be called thus) is ultimately saved by the legal and economic logic of the contract – and hence the very realm of economic bargaining and negotiation that the manipulations were supposed to exclude from the marriage. What is more, the economic and contractual logic is called upon to redress the mutual suspicions and distrust that have arisen partly as a result of those very manipulations.
In Bridgerton, though, neither family structure and social surroundings nor the economic framework that guided the young couple’s actions on the ‘market’ provide any further safeguarding of their relationship. As the young couple leave for their honeymoon – Simon’s country estate – after the wedding, the society- and family-centred perspective is removed, together with the market dynamic of supply and demand. Their relationship turns from a public event to a private process: Away from the rest of society, Simon and Daphne are left alone to make sense of the situation they find themselves in without any kind of external security or guardrails – apart from the fact that they are, and will remain, married, since divorce does not exist in this fictional historical setting. As inconsistent as it may appear within the context of a ‘historical romance’, this is the only kind of (admittedly rather downbeat) solution to the problem of manipulation and deception the series seems to offer. They have to figure out how to develop the intimacy and honesty they desire, because there is no way out. And only because they are bound to each other, come what may, they eventually do figure it out. Even if this is staged as the spontaneous and enthusiastic revelation that their love is more important than everything else (past trauma and serious breaches of trust included, cf. B, 8, 52:18ff), it is obvious that only the fact that they cannot leave each other has kept them together for long enough to make this moment possible. So, rather than their embeddedness in a common social or economic network, it is, paradoxically, the indissolubility of marriage itself that safes their marriage.
Hence, what the series seems to stress is that even though ‘dating’ and finding a partner as a practice is very much bound up with social and economic market-like structures and the institutions that uphold them, in modernity, the consequences of these practices are a couple’s private problem – that is: while there is a lot of ‘accounting’ going on that is embedded in economic and social institutions and networks during the phase of the search for a partner, there is a distinct lack of ‘accountability’ to these institutions and networks once a relationship has been established. And so, nothing outside of their relationship ensures that the partners are (and remain) accountable to each other.
Dearest reader, is it possible that the first season of Bridgerton is not what we thought it to be? It seems indeed not only to be a frothy and sparkly escapist phantasy that people really needed during the pandemic, but also – and at the same time! – a succinct and even brutal (if aesthetically pleasing) comment on today’s complicated and contradictory interrelation of emotion and calculation in the process of match making and the “darker turns”50 this entails for the ensuing relationships. After all, it expertly walks the line between the romantic ideal of unconditional and everlasting love between two people as a sole, sufficient basis for a marriage – and the dystopian realization that under the conditions of a ‘playable’ and unaccountable economic logic, the social and legal impossibility of divorce might by the only guarantee for a lasting marriage. Maybe back in 2020 there was no outcry over this because it did seem quite familiar after all.
Bibliography
Primary Source Material
Beers, Betsy (Executive Producer), Rhimes, Shonda (Executive Producer), Robinson, Julie Anne (Executive Producer) and Dusen, Chris van (Creator, Executive Producer, Showrunner): Bridgerton, season 1, Shondaland / Netflix, 2020.
Shakespeare, Willliam: The Merchant of Venice [1596–1598], London: Penguin Books, 2015 (= Penguin Classics).
Ariosto, Ludovico: I suppositi, in: Ariosto, Ludovico Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto, vol. IV, Commedie, ed. by Angela Casella, Gabriella Ronchi and Elena Varasi, Milan: Mondadori, 1974, pp. 195–257.
Secondary Texts
Alfieri, Fernanda: Nella camera degli sposi: Tomás Sánchez, il matrimonio, la sessualità (secoli XVI–XVII), Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010.
Amiel, Gautier, Adeline Lionetto and Dimitri Mézière (eds.): Les remèdes à l’amour de l’Antiquité au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2023.
Andreeva, Nellie: “Bridgerton Smashes Netflix Viewership Records to Become Streamer’s Biggest Series Ever”, in: Deadline, 27th Jan 2021, online: https://deadline.com/2021/01/bridgerton-netflix-viewership-record-biggest-series-ever-1234681242/ (last seen 24/3/25).
Arikha, Noga: Passions and Tempers. A History of the Humours, New York / London et al.: Harper, 2007.
Armitstead, Claire: “Phoebe Dyvenor: ‘Bridgerton’s come at a moment when people need it’ (Interview)”, in: The Guardian, 17th Jan 2021, online: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/17/bridgerton-phoebe-dynevor-interview (last seen 24/3/25).
Bacon, Francis: “Of Love”, in: Bacon, Francis: The Essays and Counsels, Civill and Morall, ed. by Michael Kiernan, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.
Baettie, Cordelia: “Economy”, in: A Cultural History of Childhood and the Family, Vol. 3: in the Modern Age, London et al.: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 349–368.
Behrens, Rudolf and Esther Schomacher: “Semantische Subversionen städtischen und häuslichen Raums in der Komödie des Cinquecento”, in: Raumerkundungen. Einblicke und Ausblicke, ed. by Elisabeth Tiller and Christoph Oliver Mayer, Heidelberg: Winter, 2011, pp. 89–124.
Berger, Harry Jr.: “Marriage and Mercifixion in The Merchant of Venice. The Casket Scene Revisited”, in: Shakespeare Quarterly 32.2 (1981), pp. 155–162.
“Bridgerton”, in: Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgerton (last seen 24/3/25).
Coke, Hope: “Bridgerton streamed by 82 million households in its first month alone”, in: Tatler, 28th Jan 2021, online: https://www.tatler.com/article/bridgerton-63-million-streams-viewing-figures-fifth-highest-netflix-originals-series (last seen 24/3/25).
Davie, Hannah J.: “Two-dimensional when it comes to race, more concerned with visibility than reality”, in: Lanre Bakare, Hannah J Davies, Poppy Noor and Jenny Stevens: “Pomp and romps: how Bridgerton became the most talked about show on TV”, in: The Guardian, 6th Jan 2021, online: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/06/pomp-and-romps-how-bridgerton-became-the-most-talked-about-show-on-tv (last seen 24/3/25).
Digdale, Emily Elena and Hanisha Harjani: “Dating App Cover-Up. How Tinder, Hinge, and their Corporate Owner Keep Rape under Wraps”, in: The Markup, 13th Feb 2025, online: online: https://themarkup.org/investigations/2025/02/13/dating-app-tinder-hinge-cover-up (last seen 15/5/2025).
Ford, Tamasin, Szu Ping Chan, Nisha Patel and Meredith Turits: “The Darkest Side of Online Dating”, in: bbc online, 23rd Jun 2021, online: https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20210623-the-darkest-side-of-online-dating (last seen 15/5/2025).
Freud, Sigmund: “Das Motiv der Kästchenwahl”, in: Freud, Sigmund: Gesammelte Werke chronologisch geordnet, ed. by Anna Freud, E. Bibring, W. Hoffer et. al., London: Imago Publishing, 1946, vol. 10, pp. 23–37.
Frigo, Daniela: Il padre di famiglia. Governo della casa e governo civile nella tradizione dell’”economia” tra Cinque e Seicento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1985
Gagiano, A.H.: “Relationships in The Merchant of Venice”, in: Theoria, 71, May (1988), pp. 61–77.
Greenblatt, Stephen: Will in the World. How Shakespeare became Shakespeare, New York / London: Norton & Company, 2005.
Harris, Tina M. and Meghan S. Sanders: “Bridgerton: A Case Study in Critical Cultural Approaches in Popular Culture”, in: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, ed. by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani London: John Wiley, 2024, pp. 465–472.
Hirschman, Alfred: The Passions and the Interests. Political Arguments for Capitalism bevor its Triumph, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.
Hogan, Michael: “Actor Luke Thompson: ‘It turned out the coughing was someone vomiting in the Dress Circle – over other people’ (Interview)”, in: The Guardian, 7th Apr 2024, online: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/apr/07/actor-luke-thompson-loves-labours-lost-bridgerton-series-three-a-little-life (last seen 1/5/2025).
Hyman, Lawrence W.: “The Rival Lovers in The Merchant of Venice”, in: Shakespeare Quarterly, 21.2 (1970), pp. 109–116.
Illouz, Eva: Cold Intimacies. The Making of Emotional Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.
Jones, Ellen E: “‘I didn’t think about Meghan Markle when writing’: Bridgerton’s Shonda Rhimes on race, royals and romps (Interview)”, in: The Guardian, 21st Apr 2023, online: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/apr/21/bridgerton-shonda-rhimes-on-race-royals-and-romps-meghan-markle-netflix (last seen 24/3/25).
Kirshner, Julius: Marriage, Dowry, and Citizenship in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, Toronto / Buffalo / London: University of Toronto Press, 2015.
Klinkert, Thomas: Literarische Selbstreflexion im Medium der Liebe. Untersuchungen zur Liebessemantik bei Rousseau und in der europäischen Romantik (Hölderlin, Foscolo, Madame de Staël und Leopardi), Freiburg i. Br.: Rombach Wissenschaft, 2002.
Küpper, Joachim: “(H)ER(E)OS. Petrarcas Canzoniere und der medizinische Diskurs seiner Zeit”, in: Romanische Forschungen 111.2 (1999), pp. 178–224.
Makusha, Michaela: “‘Sorry, we don’t want lesbians’: Bridgerton’s Problem with Racism, Homophobia and Body-Shaming”, in: The Guardian, 11th Jul 2024, online: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/jul/11/sorry-we-dont-want-lesbians-bridgertons-problem-with-racism-homophobia-and-body-shaming (last seen 1/5/2025).
Mirowski, Philip: More Heat than Light. Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature’s Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Nickenig, Annika: “The Market of Love. Dating Economies from Early Modern Matchmaking to Tinder”, in: The Culture of Money. Implications for Contemporary Economics, ed. by Esther Schomacher and Jan Söffner, London / New York: Routledge, 2024, pp. 117–135.
Robinson, Joanna: “How Bridgerton Handles the Book’s Wildly Controversial Scene”, in: Vanity Fair, 25th Dec 2020, online: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/12/bridgerton-sexual-assault-scene-how-does-it-happen-in-the-book (last seen 1/5/2025).
Russin, Robin: “The Triumph of the Golden Fleece. Women, Money, Religion, and Power in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice”, in: Shofar 31.3 (2013), pp. 115–130.
Schomacher, Esther: “Haus-Ordnung. Der häusliche Raum in der Ökonomik und in der Komödie des 16. Jahrhunderts”, in: Horizonte (Sonderheft: Renaissancetheater. Italien und die europäische Rezeption), 10 (2007), pp. 165–191.
Schuldt, Christian: Romantik 2.0: Vom Suchen und Finden der Liebe im Internet, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2013.
Shakespeare, William: Much Ado about Nothing, in: Shakespeare, William: The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988 (Compact Edition), pp. 541–565.
Steigerwald, Jörn; Valeska von Rosen (eds.): Amor sacro e profano. Modelle und Modellierungen der Liebe in Literatur und Malerei der italienischen Renaissance, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012.
Stevens, Jenny: “A Regency Rollick that felt Eerily Prescient to Pandemic Britain”, in: Lanre Bakare, Hannah J Davies, Poppy Noor and Jenny Stevens: “Pomp and romps: how Bridgerton became the most talked about show on TV”, in: The Guardian, 6th Jan. 2021, online: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/06/pomp-and-romps-how-bridgerton-became-the-most-talked-about-show-on-tv (last seen 24/3/25).
Tilney, Edward: A Briefe and Pleasant Discourse of Duties in Mariage, Called the Flower of Friendshippe, imprinted at London: By Henrie Deham, Anno 1571, Early English Books Online / EEBO, ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/books/briefe-pleasant-discourse-duties-mariage-called/docview/2240875875/se-2.
Van Arendonk, Kathryn: “Bridgerton Needs to Decide Whose World it’s Living In”, in: Vulture, 8th Apr 2022, online: https://www.vulture.com/article/bridgerton-colonialism-storytelling-logic-season-2.html (last seen 24/3/25).
Weigel, Sigrid: “‘Shylock’ und ‘Das Motiv der Kästchenwahl’: Die Differenz von Gabe, Tausch und Konversion im Kaufmann von Venedig”, in: Literatur und Kulturwissenschaften. Positionen, Theorien, Modelle, ed. by Hartmut Böhe and Klaus R. Scherpe, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1996.
Betsy Beers (Executive Producer), Shonda Rhimes (Executive Producer), Julie Anne Robinson (Executive Producer) and Chris van Dusen (Creator, Executive Producer, Showrunner): Bridgerton, Shondaland / Netflix, 2020, s. 1, e. 1, 0:41–0:47; I will henceforth reference the series as “B”, indicating the episode and minute within the main body of the text.
“Bridgerton”, in: Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgerton (last seen 24/3/25).
As one reviewer succinctly remarked: “ […] there are more male tops off than [during] the 1994 Take That European tour; […].” Jenny Stevens: “A Regency Rollick that felt Eerily Prescient to Pandemic Britain”, in: Lanre Bakare, Hannah J Davies, Poppy Noor and Jenny Stevens: “Pomp and romps: how Bridgerton became the most talked about show on TV”, in: The Guardian, 6th Jan 2021, online: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/06/pomp-and-romps-how-bridgerton-became-the-most-talked-about-show-on-tv (last seen 24/3/25).
Claire Armitstead: “Phoebe Dyvenor: ‘Bridgerton’s come at a moment when people need it’ (Interview)”, in: The Guardian, 17th Jan 2021, online: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/17/bridgerton-phoebe-dynevor-interview (last seen 24/3/25).
Hope Coke: “Bridgerton streamed by 82 million households in its first month alone”, in: Tatler, 28th Jan 2021, online: https://www.tatler.com/article/bridgerton-63-million-streams-viewing-figures-fifth-highest-netflix-originals-series (last seen 24/3/25); see also: Nellie Andreeva: “Bridgerton Smashes Netflix Viewership Records to Become Streamer’s Biggest Series Ever”, in: Deadline, 27th Jan 2021, online: https://deadline.com/2021/01/bridgerton-netflix-viewership-record-biggest-series-ever-1234681242/ (last seen 24/3/25)
Armitstead: “Phoebe Dyvenor, Interview”.
Armitstead: “Phoebe Dyvenor, Interview”.
Ellen E Jones: “‘I didn’t think about Meghan Markle when writing’: Bridgerton’s Shonda Rhimes on race, royals and romps (Interview)”, in: The Guardian, 21st Apr 2023, online: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/apr/21/bridgerton-shonda-rhimes-on-race-royals-and-romps-meghan-markle-netflix (last seen 24/3/25).
Cf. Michaela Makusha: “‘Sorry, we don’t want lesbians’: Bridgerton’s Problem with Racism, Homophobia and Body-Shaming”, in: The Guardian, 11th Jul 2024, online: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/jul/11/sorry-we-dont-want-lesbians-bridgertons-problem-with-racism-homophobia-and-body-shaming (last seen 1/5/2025).
Unacceptable and damaging, as well as often criminal, as the described ‘reactions’ are, they also attest to the fact that the series did (and still does) push some buttons that obviously need pushing – although it has to be noted that it also has been criticized in other quarters for not pushing them hard enough or very inconsistently, cf. the critical analysis of the issue of representation in Bridgerton in Tina M. Harris and Meghan S. Sanders: “Bridgerton: A Case Study in Critical Cultural Approaches in Popular Culture”, in: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, ed. by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani, London: John Wiley, 2024, pp. 465–472, and its extensive bibliography of media articles on this subject; see also: Kathryn Van Arendonk: “Bridgerton Needs to Decide Whose World it’s Living In”, in: Vulture, 8th Apr 2022, online: https://www.vulture.com/article/bridgerton-colonialism-storytelling-logic-season-2.html (last seen 24/3/25), and Hannah J. Davie: “Two-dimensional when it comes to race, more concerned with visibility than reality”, in: Lanre Bakare, Hannah J Davies, Poppy Noor, Jenny Stevens: “Pomp and romps: how Bridgerton became the most talked about show on TV”, in: The Guardian, 6th Jan 2021, online: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/06/pomp-and-romps-how-bridgerton-became-the-most-talked-about-show-on-tv (last seen 24/3/25).
Cf. e.g. Michael Hogan: “Actor Luke Thompson: ‘It turned out the coughing was someone vomiting in the Dress Circle – over Other People’ (Interview)”, in: The Guardian, 7th Apr 2024, online: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/apr/07/actor-luke-thompson-loves-labours-lost-bridgerton-series-three-a-little-life (last seen 1/5/2025); and Stevens: “Regency Rollick”.
Regarding the development of this understanding of economic relations and their theoretical framing e.g. Alfred Hirschman: The Passions and the Interests. Political Arguments for Capitalism bevor its Triumph, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977; and Philip Mirowski: More Heat than Light. Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature’s Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
On the discursive and literary shaping of this concept of love in romanticism – and its interrelation with literary self-reflection – see Thomas Klinkert: Literarische Selbstreflexion im Medium der Liebe. Untersuchungen zur Liebessemantik bei Rousseau und in der europäischen Romantik (Hölderlin, Foscolo, Madame de Staël und Leopardi), Freiburg i. Br.: Rombach Wissenschaft, 2002.
The use of the motif of mistaken identities is explicitly attributed to the influence of the newly ‘rediscovered’ Roman playwrights, in particular Plautus’ Captivi and Terenz’s Eunuchus, in the play’s prologue. I quote here from the earlier prose version I suppositi (in prosa), from the edition Ludovico Ariosto: I suppositi, in: id.: Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto, vol. IV, Commedie, ed. by Angela Casella, Gabriella Ronchi and Elena Varasi, Milan: Mondadori, 1974, pp. 195–257, “Prologo”, v. 17–21, p. 197. I will henceforth reference the play as “IS”, indicating the scene, verse numbers and pages in the text.
Cf. Rudolf Behrens and Esther Schomacher: “Semantische Subversionen städtischen und häuslichen Raums in der Komödie des Cinquecento”, in: Raumerkundungen. Einblicke und Ausblicke, ed. by Elisabeth Tiller and Christoph Oliver Mayer, Heidelberg: Winter, 2011, pp. 89–124; Esther Schomacher: “Haus-Ordnung. Der häusliche Raum in der Ökonomik und in der Komödie des 16. Jahrhunderts”, in: Horizonte (Sonderheft: Renaissancetheater. Italien und die europäische Rezeption), 10 (2007), pp. 165–191.
Ariosto: I suppositi I,1, v. 103–111, p. 201–202; I,2, v. 83–90, as well as v. 200–215, p. 207–208; and II, 1, v. 1–40, p. 209–210.
The play’s full title in the first edition, published in 1600, reads The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice or Otherwise Called the Jew of Venice, cf. Peter Holland: “Introduction”, in: Willliam Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice [1596–1598], London: Penguin Books, 2015 (= Penguin Classics), pp. xxi–lxiii, p. xxii, see also the title given on p. 1 in the same edition. I will reference the play as “M”, indicating scene, verse numbers, and pages in the main text.
Robin Russin: “The Triumph of the Golden Fleece. Women, Money, Religion, and Power in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice”, in: Shofar 31.3 (2013), pp. 115–130, p. 115; cf. also Holland: “Introduction”, p. xxvff.
Especially following Sigmund Freud’s interpretation of the choice between the three caskets as a choice of death, the casket-scene has been read with an eye to its cultural-symbolical and psychological meaning. Freud had already drawn on older research into the literary origins of this scene, where it had been deciphered as a reference to an episode of the Gesta Romanorum, in which a girl wins an emperor’s son by choosing the right chest (also made of lead); cf. Sigmund Freud: “Das Motiv der Kästchenwahl”, in: id.: Gesammelte Werke chronologisch geordnet, ed. by Anna Freud, E. Bibring, W. Hoffer et. al., London: Imago Publishing, 1946, vol. 10, pp. 23–37, p. 25; see also: Sigrid Weigel: “‘Shylock’ und ‘Das Motiv der Kästchenwahl’: Die Differenz von Gabe, Tausch und Konversion im Kaufmann von Venedig”, in: Literatur und Kulturwissenschaften. Positionen, Theorien, Modelle, ed. by Hartmut Böhe and Klaus R. Scherpe, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1996, pp. 112–133.
However, I will see the wager as something much more pragmatic: a way for Portia’s father to keep his patriarchal privilege of choosing her husband and of making sure the latter has the right priorities.
Cf. Harry Berger, Jr.: “Marriage and Mercifixion in The Merchant of Venice. The Casket Scene Revisited”, in: Shakespeare Quarterly 32.2 (1981), pp. 155–162, p. 156–157.
See e.g. “[…] you will be glued to my side all evening. And we must look like we are enjoying ourselves, as difficult as that may be” (B, 2, 24:09ff), or her straightforward order: “My cuff – button it” (B, 2, 35:43).
Daphne herself is threatened with “ruin” first when Baron Berbrooke tries to blackmail her into marrying him by suggesting he might divulge the fact that she was alone with him in a notorious corner of Vauxhall Gardens (where he actually assaulted her, as mentioned above, cf. B, 2, 37:14ff.), and in a second instance when her kiss with Simon has been observed by a rival who might talk (B, 4, 55:55ff.). Especially in the first instance, Daphne fears not only for her own future, but also for that of her family (B, 2, 38:25ff.).
As Daphne states rather melodramatically in an argument with her controlling eldest brother, her social status, her family, and even her wealth become unimportant if she is not attractive to men: “This is all I am, I have no other value. If I am unable to find a husband, I shall be worthless” (B, 1, 32:25f.).
This is amply demonstrated by the intrigue surrounding Baron Berbrooke, who wants to marry Daphne despite her explicit refusal and is (at least at first) supported in his suit by her eldest brother, until her mother and her maid come up with a way to get rid of him by embroiling him in scandal (B, episodes 1–2).
Cf. Julius Kirshner: Marriage, Dowry, and Citizenship in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, Toronto / Buffalo / London: University of Toronto Press, 2015, see especially p. 22, where Kirshner highlights that the Early Modern Italian expression “fermare il parentado” (verbatim: “to form the relation”, that is “to form a marriage”) constitutes a “social equivalent” of “fermare una compagnia” (“to form a business company”) – and that this similarity was already mocked in literary texts of the 15th Century.
See for these concepts e.g. Francis Bacon: “Of Love”, in: id.: The Essays and Counsels, Civill and Morall, ed. by Michael Kiernan, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000, p. 33; and Edward Tilney: A Briefe and Pleasant Discourse of Duties in Mariage, Called the Flower of Friendshippe, imprinted at London: By Henrie Deham, Anno 1571, B4r and B5r, quoted here from Early English Books Online / EEBO, ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/books/briefe-pleasant-discourse-duties-mariage-called/docview/2240875875/se-2; see Anne Enderwitz’s chapter “Deferral and Dilation. The Temporal Economies of Desire and Marriage in Early Modern England” in this volume.
Cf. again Anne Enderwitz: “Deferral and Dilation”; Enderwitz duly points out that sexuality was conceptualized in economic terms in this context, thus disjointed from passionate love and consolidated under a “rational conceptual framework” (cf. section two).
See e.g. the scene V.4 of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, where Benedick’s and Beatrice’s love has to be ‘proved’ by poems written about each other in their own hands before they each believe that the other is truly in love with them, cf. William Shakespeare: Much Ado about Nothing, in: id: The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988 (Compact Edition), pp. 541–565, p. 564–565.
Cf. the conversation between the two matriarchs Lady Cowper and Lady Featherington about Daphne’s prospects on the marriage market compared to those of the Featheringtons’ daughters: “Daphne has bloomed exquisitely”, they observe, while one of Lady Feathrington’s daughters has shown that she is “prone to hysterics in front of the Queen” (which obviously damages her reputation, B, 1, 11:22ff).
On the dynamic between economically organized and mediated processes of selection and the expectations of ‘calculable’ feelings cf. Annika Nickenig: “The Market of Love. Dating Economies from Early Modern Matchmaking to Tinder”, in: The Culture of Money. Implications for Contemporary Economics, ed. by Esther Schomacher and Jan Söffner, London / New York: Routledge, 2024, pp. 117–135.
On the galenic, humoral understanding of the human body at the basis of this notion of love and its literary elaboration in Petrarchism see, among others, Noga Arikha: Passions and Tempers. A History of the Humours, New York / London et al.: Harper, 2007, especially chapter IV.12, “Love-Maladies”, pp. 159–162; and Joachim Küpper: “(H)ER(E)OS. Petrarcas Canzoniere und der medizinische Diskurs seiner Zeit”, in: Romanische Forschungen 111. 2 (1999), pp. 178–224. For a focus on the Early Modern context see Fernanda Alfieri: Nella camera degli sposi: Tomás Sánchez, il matrimonio, la sessualità (secoli XVI–XVII), Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010, Daniela Frigo: Il padre di famiglia. Governo della casa e governo civile nella tradizione dell’”economia” tra Cinque e Seicento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1985, and Jörn Steigerwald and Valeska von Rosen (eds.): Amor sacro e profano. Modelle und Modellierungen der Liebe in Literatur und Malerei der italienischen Renaissance, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012. The fact that this understanding of the feeling of violent, sudden and unsatiable desire as an illness was common in European culture even across the boundaries of religious denominations is amply evidenced by Anne Enderwitz’ chapter in this volume and her references to marriage treatises by e.g. Bacon, Burton, Tilney and others.
Cf. Cordelia Baettie: “Economy”, in: A Cultural History of Childhood and the Family, Vol. 3: in the Modern Age, London et al.: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 349–368.
For an interpretation of the play focussing on Portia and Antonio as rivals for Bassanio’s love, see Lawrence W. Hyman: “The Rival Lovers in The Merchant of Venice”, in: Shakespeare Quarterly 21. 2 (1970), pp. 109–116, with regard to the motif of the ring in particular p. 113.
Other letters and witnesses are called upon from M, V.1, v. 266 onwards, cf. p. 97–98.
Stephen Greenblatt: Will in the World. How Shakespeare became Shakespeare, New York / London: Norton & Company, 2005, p. 27.
This aspect shows the strong connections between the topic of this chapter and Annika Nickenig’s chapter in this volume: Not only does the motif of the ‘mediator’ on the marriage and dating market provoke the same question – namely, how the ‘mediation’ affects the resulting relationship. Soliciting the help of a third person could also, per se, be seen as another way of ‘tricking’ the market. Cf. Annika Nickenig: “From the Alcahueta to the Algorithm”.
cf. M, V, 1, v. 223–235.
cf. M, V, 1, v. 258–262, p. 96.
cf. M, V, 1, v. 240ff, p. 96.
The play ends with Gratiano’s declaration: “Well, while I live I’ll fear no other thing / So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring.” (M, V, 1, v. 306–307, p. 98), which – seeing that ‘ring’ was an established metaphor for vagina in Early Modern England – has been interpreted as a rather obvious play with the double reference of the word; cf. Holland’s comment: “The language of love has become the language of male fear of uncontrollable female sexual activity.” (Holland: “Introduction”, p. liv).
All of the relationships, therefore, demonstrate the same overlaying of emotional and financial characteristics, cf. A.H. Gagiano: “Relationships in The Merchant of Venice”, in: Theoria 71, May (1988), pp. 61–77, p. 64.
This is especially obvious when the abovementioned Prince arrives at one of the high society’s gatherings, and the two protagonists correctly predict what he will be saying to the assembled ladies, as well as their reactions, down to their very last details, cf. B, 3, 8:28ff.
The notion that love is a physical affliction that comes with (and can hence be diagnosed through) a variety of symptoms goes back to the humoral theory of Greek Antiquity; the theoretical medical framework remained valid through the Middle Ages and Early Modernity and so the typical “signs” of love (paleness, sighs, general melancholy, languor, ‘fixation’ etc.) were popularized as outward signs of love through love poetry (first and foremost Petrarchism, cf. Küpper: (H)ERE(O)S,) and further elaborated on in literary texts throughout European cultural history (cf. Gautier Amiel, Adeline Lionetto, and Dimitri Mézière (eds.): Les remèdes à l’amour de l’Antiquité au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2023). A prominent case of the fraudulent use of these signs of love – that is, their use as ‘arbitrary signs’ – in a literary text is Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ libertine novel of letters Les liaisons dangereuses (1782), and although I do not have the space here to do it justice, I would like to point to the similar effects this has in the earlier text: an erosion of trust in any kind of signs tout court (especially the ones of the literary discourse), to the extend that signs grow more suspicious the more ‘authentic’ they seem to be.
This becomes most obvious when they finally have the chance to speak to each other after their wedding, cf. B, 5, 50:05ff.
This is explained extensively in various flash-back scenes showing his childhood in B, episode 2.
The series makes sure that the viewers are informed about Daphne’s lack of insight in that regard by showing her mother’s very embarrassed and fragmentary attempt at enlightening her (B, 4, 42:44ff), as well as Daphne’s own initiative to learn more by questioning her lady’s maid after she suspects something is amiss in her relations with Simon (B, 6, 44:53ff).
Cf. Joanna Robinson: “How Bridgerton Handles the Book’s Wildly Controversial Scene”, in: Vanity Fair, 25th Dec 2020, online: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/12/bridgerton-sexual-assault-scene-how-does-it-happen-in-the-book (last seen 1/5/2025).
Cf. Nickenig: “Market of Love”, as well as Annika Nickenig’s chapter in this volume “From the Alcahueta to the Algorithm”; see also, with a focus on the sociological and psychological (rather than economic) aspects, Eva Illouz: “Romantic Webs”, in: id: Cold Intimacies. The Making of Emotional Capitalism, Cambridige: Polity Press, 2007, pp. 74–114, esp. p. 79ff. Illouz summarizes this dynamic in a way that make the parallels to the marriage market in Bridgerton even more visible: “The Internet structures the search for a partner as a market or, more exactly, formalizes the search for a partner in the form of an economic transaction: it transforms the self into a packaged product competing with others on an open-ended market regulated by the law of supply and demand; it makes the encounter the outcome of a more or less stable set of preferences; it makes the process of searching constrained by the problem of efficiency; it structures encounters as market niches; it attaches a (more or less) fixed economic value to profiles (that is, persons) and makes people anxious about their value in such a structured market and eager to improve their position in that market” (p. 88). Cf. also Christian Schuldt: Romantik 2.0: Vom Suchen und Finden der Liebe im Internet, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2013.
Cf. Illouz, “Romantic Webs”, p. 89f.
Cf. Emily Elena Digdale and Hanisha Harjani: “Dating App Cover-Up. How Tinder, Hinge, and their Corporate Owner Keep Rape und Wraps”, in: The Markup, 13th Feb. 2025, online: https://themarkup.org/investigations/2025/02/13/dating-app-tinder-hinge-cover-up (last seen 15/5/2025). See also: Tamasin Ford, Szu Ping Chan, Nisha Patel, and Meredith Turits: “The Darkest Side of Online Dating”, in: bbc online, 23rd Jun 2021, online: https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20210623-the-darkest-side-of-online-dating (last seen 15/5/2025).
Cf. the conversation between Daphne and her sister Eloise in B, 2, 51:30ff.