Debutante: Rites and Regalia of American Debdom (review)

What makes a debutante a debutante? Karal Ann Marling asks in her engaging history of debdom as both ritual and rite that took shape over two centuries of change. Marling chronicles the various iterations of the American debutante, its shifting form, and the transforming social and economic landscape responsible for such changes. Debutante: Rites and Regalia of American Debdom reveals much about the entanglements of gender, wealth and status, and race as it explores this ever-evolving institution. Coming out, that is a "bud's" presentation to good society, as Marling shows, is a practice that more than anything else, is shaped by currents of the day. The tail-end of the nineteenth century Marling characterizes as "the heyday of the deb" (p. 4), for instance. As Marling explains, this period was one of rapid wealth accumulation in America, marked by upward economic movement of an expanding class of industrialists, who also jockeyed for position on a social ladder. The presentation of daughters now eligible for marriage to respectable society served an important symbolic function in its demonstration of legitimacy for the aspiring, would-be American upper class, whose fascination with the pomp and circumstance of royalty ran deep. Hence, the focused attention to the elaborate, highly ritualized, and well rehearsed first dance and presentation bow and resplendent finery.

In the 1880s, aspiring families of significant means who were unable to gain the social recognition conferred by a debut in the right kind of society on this side of the Atlantic arranged for the presentation of their daughters at English court. For the American nouveau riche, Marling shows, presentation at St. James court in the 1880s confirmed debutante status. This period stands in sharp contrast to the 1930s when "debbing" was recast in the collective mindset of the public as mere decadent spending, both reckless and callous given the plight of the downtrodden. In the 1940s and 1950s, Marling explains, charity balls flourished in response to an outpouring of condemnation for conspicuous displays of wealth in the midst of the Great Depression.

With regard to debdom, change, Marling argues, is the one and only constant. In the postwar period, extravagance was reserved for a small subset of debs, and by the late 1950s, groups of debs, "bouquets of buds" as Marling calls them, were presented at the same event. She identifies the 1970s as "the deb drought" owing to the emergence of the counter-cultural movements of the late 60s. By the 1990s, coronation balls and debutante cotillions replete with white-gowned belles had returned in full force, but were met with increasing pressure to recognize the multicultural nation America had become and to confront the history of racial exclusion that had plagued the debut since its beginning.

With rich detail that reflects a careful assembling of archival materials, Marling reveals a series of connections and collisions. Debuts express the ongoing subordination of women, while remaining an occasion for the display of power by women of privilege. Coming out teas and cotillions, with their elaborate set of rules for appropriate behavior, were occasions for the demonstration of feminine virtue. Yet Marling shows how debdom both reflected and spurred changes to women's position in society. With the expansion of print media, a deb's presentation to society meant a place in public life. Whereas presentation to society for much of the 1800s occurred in a parlor setting with afternoon tea shared among women, announcements telegraphed across society pages for all to view thrust young women into a public spotlight.

A significant portion of the work lends support to the characterization of the debut as an event to reproduce an upper class distinct from the mass of American society. Marling consistently shows that coming out was bound up in the contradictory place of society women. The tea table of the nineteenth century was a locus of power for older women (the mothers of debs) who had significant social resources but were without political recourse...