The three-person honeymoon in the letters of Katherine Philips and Sarah Scott

ABSTRACT

This article explores two instances of the three-person honeymoon as a popular custom among the pre-nineteenth-century English gentry and aristocracy. It argues that the presence of the bride's sister or closest companion on the holiday allowed female friendships to survive the marriage of one or both parties, albeit in a drastically changed form. The comparison of a successful and a failed marriage demonstrates that the third wheel could intervene on the bride's behalf in cases of marital incompatibility or abuse.

KEYWORDS:

• Honeymoons
• weddings
• marriage
• female friendships
• letters
• Wales
• Ireland

Notes

1. Here, Bauer unpacks Valerie Traub's contention in Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns that, rather than forgoing chronology completely, scholars should “use the significant period-based studies in the past twenty years in order to piece together the questions, conceptions, and propositions that have emerged from them into a multilayered genealogy of sexuality” (98).

2. The twentieth-century collection of Philips's letters, edited by Patrick Thomas, excludes some of the passages relevant to the poet's attitude toward Trevor and Rostrevor. Because the Thomas volume contains excellent notes, I have quoted from its version of “Letter XI.” Excerpts from “Letter XII,” which is truncated in the modern edition, are from the original 1705 edition of Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus.

3. The correspondence from this period was duly burned, so any negative comments that Scott wrote about her husband may have gone up in smoke.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ann A. Huse

Notes on contributor

Ann A. Huse is an Assistant Professor of English literature and gender studies at John Jay College, CUNY. She has published articles on Dryden, Rochester, and Waller, and she has a forthcoming essay on Lucy Terry Prince, the first known African American writer.