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Primary Source Sets
Victorian Era
A print depicting a Victorian couple in love, 1850s.

A print depicting a Victorian couple in love, 1850s.

This print illustrates a courting couple standing or walking arm-in-arm in a garden. The woman wears a long pink dress with lace collar and cuffs and holds a lace handkerchief. She has one of the garden’s roses tucked in her fashionably arranged hair. The bearded man wears a formal, fitted double-breasted coat with a velvet collar, a vest, bow tie and striped trousers, and carries a small book. The print is typical of sentimental “genre prints” showing idealized Victorians performing their proper roles in society, serving both as moral instruction and as uplifting decoration for a home or business. The picture’s title, “Don’t Say Nay,” suggests that the man hopes his companion will accept him as a suitor or potential husband; their peaceful expressions (and the church in the background) hint that the courtship may be successful.

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Citation Information
“Don’t Say Nay,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/4bfa2555906d65e472d862ba7caec770.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
Courtesy of National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center via Smithsonian Institution.

Tips for Students

For this source, consider:

  • the author's point of view
  • the author's purpose
  • historical context
  • audience

Item 6 of 14 in the Primary Source Set Victorian Era

Previous ItemNext Item
A photograph of a Victorian home interior in Kenosha, Wisconsin, ca. 1890.
A tortoiseshell calling card case from the mid-nineteenth century.
A chromolithograph print called “Making the Scrap Book,” 1868.
An African American family record chart, 1880.
An excerpt from The Lady’s Guide to Perfect Gentility, 1859.
A print depicting a Victorian couple in love, 1850s.
A photographic portrait of Queen Victoria.
A commemorative hair and yarn wreath from Wisconsin, ca. 1879.
A post-mortem photograph of Samuel Charles Stowe, son of Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1849.
A photograph of Victoria Terminus Railway Station in Mumbai (Bombay), India.
An excerpt from the London Exhibition’s “New Crystal Palace Polka,” 1851.
A dedication and poem from Victoria Regia: a Volume of Original Contributions in Poetry and Prose, 1861.
A photograph of the University of Pennsylvania cricket team, 1887.
An advertisement for Dr. Scott’s Electric Corset, 1883.

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