Romanticism and Flirtation

Abstract

The word “flirtation” first appeared in the early Romantic period and, with its connotations of imaginative playfulness, it was very much a product of so-called Romantic ideology. This article looks at early attitudes towards flirtation and the female flirt, as portrayed in Lady Charlotte Bury's novel Flirtation (1828). While flirting was sometimes depicted as fun and light-hearted, Bury's novel demonstrates that, for a woman, flirtation was much more dangerous. Flirtation is concerned with the deferral of the sexual act and takes place largely in the imagination; yet often this playing with marital and sexual conventions was considered even more sinister and deplorable than the adulterous carnal act itself.