ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 examines the coexistence of liberal ideals and statuses in the promise of marriage. Unlike previous chapters, my discussion turns not only on contract as a liberal ideal but also on romantic love. To discuss the role of love I return to Bleak House and Middlemarch. In discussing contract, however, I turn back to law, and explore findings of historians concerning broad processes in the law of promise of marriage. The patterns of entanglement that the chapter recovers allow us to read Victorian liberalism as, ultimately, a new interpretation of statuses, rather than either their attempted elimination or covert preservation. With these patterns there was no single trajectory to be expected, as present-day debates about identity politics, noted at the close of the chapter, clarify.
