Editing Breach of promise (section)

===Literature===
The social damage from receiving attention from a man is discussed in a passage from the 1801 novel ''Belinda'' by [[Maria Edgeworth]], where an older woman is urging Miss Belinda Portman to give a suitor more time to attach her affections, though Belinda is worried that even by just passively accepting his attentions for a certain time, she might find herself "entangled, so as not to be able to retract", even "if it should not be in my power to love him at last":

{{blockquote|...&nbsp;after a certain time—after the world suspects that two people are engaged to each other, it is scarcely possible for the woman to recede: when they come within a certain distance, they are pressed to unite, by the irresistible force of external circumstances.  A woman is too often reduced to this dilemma: either she must marry a man she does not love, or she must be blamed by the world—either she must sacrifice a portion of her reputation, or the whole of her happiness.&nbsp;... A young woman is not in this respect allowed sufficient time for freedom of deliberation.}}

Breach-of-promise actions were part of the standard stock-in-trade of comic writers of the 19th century (such as [[Charles Dickens]] in ''[[Pickwick Papers]]'', or [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] in ''[[Trial by Jury]]'') and in the 20th century as a frequent plot device by P. G. Wodehouse, but most middle- and upper-class families were reluctant to use them except in rather extreme circumstances (such as when a daughter became pregnant by a man who then refused to marry her), since they led to wide publicity being given to a scrutiny of personal concerns, something which was strongly repugnant to the family feeling of the period (especially where young women were concerned).{{cn|date=December 2022}}