By: Nmerichukwu Igweamaka
For many people, proposals are supposed to be the kind of romantic whirlwind you’ve only ever previously experienced while reading fairytales.
The love of your life gets down on one knee, triggering you to plummet into some kind of alternate universe where you’re surrounded by rose petals, dimly-lit candles, heart-shaped balloons and general happy, warm feelings.
But if you think about it, it’s actually kind of odd; the getting down on one knee bit. We get that it’s tradition and stuff – but if you really think about it, what on earth has a man got to gain by hobbling down onto one knee? Aside from the fact it puts him at roughly the right height to literally reach for your hand in marriage, obviously.
The idea of kneeling on one knee as essential to the standard proposal is not enshrined in history; it appears to be a largely modern invention, but it’s not clear how it originated.
The engagements we know most about in history are the ones between nobles and the wealthy, and those were often in the manner of business arrangements, with none of this “kneeling before your beloved” stuff. In fact, paintings of noble betrothals in history invariably depict both parties as standing or seated; no kneeling shows up at all.
One possible origin of the modern kneeling ideal is in the Middle Ages tradition of courtly love, in which a man of good birth essentially devoted himself (complete with poems, odes, deeds of honor, and general vassalage) to a noblewoman he perceived as superior.
The entire principle of this popular attitude was that the man was a kind of servant to the woman, whom he idealized beyond all reality; and he performed his servitude by kneeling, spiritually and figuratively. (Whether they ever actually got together is a matter of historical debate.
Probably not, in a lot of cases; many of the women in question were married.) Kneeling represented feudal surrender and admiration. Historians have actually had arguments about whether certain medieval images show men kneeling to their courtly loves, or to their male masters.
But kneeling in general in European history which was imitated by Africa has been a sign of supplication, humility, and servitude.
A lot of Christian iconography of prayer, for instance, involves kneeling, expressing your service to and debasement before God; and it’s also been pointed out that kneeling between men was a big sign of status.
Knights kneeled before their lords to receive honors, and surrendering armies kneeled before their conquerors. Kneeling to the woman you’re going to marry may be part of the same thing: a request for her favor and a physical demonstration of loyalty and surrender.
It seems to have first shown up in the 19th century, but as to why, your guess is as good as mine.
The Ring
The first reliable records of engagement rings for women, declaring that they would in the future be married to a specific man, dates to the Roman period, where betrothed women were given a gold ring to wear in public and an iron one to wear at home while doing household tasks.
But rings themselves as engagement symbols were likely around for many centuries, but they turn up in law at several points.
The Visigothic Code, a set of Spanish laws from the 7th century, declared that betrothal rings, like pledges in business, could not be revoked once they were given; you had to get married. Pope Nicholas I in 860 attempted to make an expensive, gold engagement ring legally necessary, so that men would make a significant monetary sacrifice and take the marriage seriously.
And the idea of a “betrothal” as a legal period of time (a gap between the intention to get married and actually performing the ceremony) was enshrined in Christian church law in 1215. Pope Innocent III declared that there had to be a waiting period between wanting to get married and being able to do it legally “so that if legitimate impediments exist, they may be made known”. (Impediments, as we all know from Jane Eyre, usually consisted of there being previous wives and husbands still living.)
The first recorded engagement ring with diamonds dates back to 1477, but it didn’t involve a solitaire; the ring in question was a gift from Archduke Maximilian of Austria to the noblewoman he was courting, 20-year-old Mary of Burgundy.
The famous jewelers Harry Winston describe the ring as “a delicate band adorned with diamonds in the shape of her first initial”.
Mary of Burgundy was a hugely powerful woman, and had her choice of eminent suitors, so this first diamond “engagement” ring probably wasn’t the thing that won her affection; it’s likely she’d selected Maximilian for her hand and he gave her the ring to cement the arrangement. (Tragically, Mary died after a horse riding accident at the age of 25.)
After Mary of Burgundy, the real beginnings of the diamond engagement ring tradition only emerge in the late 1800s, when a mining company struck rich seams of diamonds in Africa and formed a jewelry department, De Beers, to deal with it.
De Beers’ master stroke came in the 1930s and ’40s, when it employed a hugely successful “Diamonds Are Forever” advertising campaign to insist to the American population that diamonds were scarce, expensive, and the only viable way in which to propose marriage.
De Beers consciously created the status of the diamond engagement ring, and it still goes down as one of the most successful advertising ideas of all time: diamond engagement rings are, in most Western countries, now seen as the only acceptable option when a man declares his intention to marry you.
Credits: dailyadvent