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ABSTRACT: The connection between marriage and lotteries emerged along the first British state lotteries and persisted throughout the eighteenth century in British America, despite the well-documented rise of companionate marriage. Drawing extensively on newspapers, rather than fiction or prescriptive literature, Keiter reveals a deep current of skepticism about these changing ideals. Lottery analogies and satirical lottery schemes circulated widely, showing a shared set of expectations and concerns in the young nation. These tropes emphasized the continued centrality of wealth to marriage while suggesting that marital happiness remained a gamble with unfavorable odds.
Keywords: Marriage, gambling, lotteries, British America, British colonies, Early Republic, newspapers, satire, humor, gender, advertisements, coverture, risk, courtship
In early 1791, readers of the Virginia Gazette and Alexandria Advertiser may have chuckled at a darkly humorous "Anecdote" about marriage. A beleaguered clergyman, "who in the Matrimonial Lottery had drawn much worse than a blank" was enduring a "Curtain-Lecture" (scolding) from his wife when a couple interrupted to request a marriage service. "The poor Priest, actuated at the moment by his own feelings and particular experience," mistakenly began "repeating the burial Service." When the "astonished Bridegroom" pointed out the error, the clergyman replied, "I am obliged to marry you-but, believe me, my friend, you had better be buried? This "Anecdote" was printed over sixty times between 1791 and 1823. Moving northward from Virginia to Pennsylvania, New York, and New England in 1791, it circulated periodically in the northern states from 1795 to 1808, then reemerged in Virginia in 1818; a final flurry of publications appeared in New England in 1822 and 1823. Perhaps one generations readers of the Rutland Herald read the anecdote in 1796 and again alongside their children in 1818. Hostility toward insubordinate women and ambivalence about marriage were well-established British and British American traditions in the early modern period, but by 1791 ideals of companionate marriage based on mutual esteem had taken hold-so why did this cynical joke have such broad appeal?1
Comparisons of marriage to lotteries reveal persistent anxieties about achieving this emerging ideal. The "Anecdote" author's casual mention of the "Matrimonial Lottery" assumed a widely shared understanding that marriage was a gamble, both emotionally and materially. The trope of the matrimonial lottery reflects both the unchanged association between...