With better education and a widening of employment options, women were becoming more independent and resourceful. Early marriages proved themselves particularly vulnerable to breakdown, especially as life expectancy was increasing. A tall order for a girl barely out of her teens, and a form of imaginative and narrative closure.īy the time the next decade came to an end, it was clear that the dream was not very realistic, as it turned out.

There was something predatory about this, on both sides.įinding the right man was imagined as a happy ending. Young men didn’t always see eye to eye with their female counterparts on the issue of early marriage, these titles told their readers, but might be baited with the promise of sex. It featured stories with titles such as “Rustic Cinderella” or “My Prince Charming,” and gave advice on finding and making sure of Mr. By the early 1950s there were some 150 similar titles on the newsstands. This was the message purveyed in a rash of new romance comics and magazines aimed specifically at young women, with titles such as Young Romance and Young Love. The age of marriage was falling in both the United States and Britain and it became common to think of oneself as “left on the shelf” if not married by 21. Most of all, the idea of a girl meeting her prince, marrying young and living happily ever after chimed with the dreams of many young women in the 1950s.

A tale for the time