ate topics of conversation; how leave should be taken” (Bailey 29-30).
The call was designed as a measure of the gentleman’s suitability, breeding and background. Anyone respectable or desiring respectability followed proper calling etiquette. Women had the power in this form of courtship but even a man who did not have a quarter in his pocket could have access to respectable females without embarrassment unlike the dating era of courtship. The calling process was the response of the upper-classes who by keeping the courtship process within the private sphere and closely supervised were reacting against the changes being wrought in society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries “Th
...