Debutante Balls are often dismissed, but their history might help us understand women’s lives.

The debutante ritual flourished roughly between 1780 and 1914, beginning with the first debutante ball in London and ended with the outbreak of World War I. During these years, Great Britain established itself as the dominating force in the West, and its culture expanded from the fashionable metropolis of London to British provincial cities and, eventually, to its far-flung colonies. His Majesty’s British subjects, and later Americans, waited on coral atolls and in bustling port cities for ships carrying newspapers loaded with news of popular music, dance, and conversation.

Daughters had their seamstresses replicate dresses they saw, tailoring them to climates with Spanish moss and pink sand, or frigid winters and salty air. Even the daughters of an innkeeper at a Shenandoah ferry walked seven miles three times a week to take lessons from a French dancing master who taught them how to trace the same quadrilles danced by aristocracy in faraway, foreign courts. These young women, who were presented to monarchs, betrothed to fading aristocrats, or whose fathers scrounged for money so they could walk across a stage and curtsy to a small-town mayor or rodeo clown, were united by an unsolvable dilemma: marriage was the only respectable career for women, and debutantes made the best marriages.

The debutantes we know today, bowing profoundly in frigid dresses, began and evolved in England and America simply because they were required to solve a problem. The Protestant Reformation, which occurred in 16th-century England and northern Europe, put an end to the exceedingly convenient practice of cloistering unmarried girls in convents. While the Catholic aristocracy in Europe maintained this tradition, the English aristocracy now faced a daughter dilemma. Protestants, you see, do not have convents. In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, an exasperated Mr. Bennett asks of his five daughters, “What’s to be done with all these girls?” He was referring to a marital problem that had been unresolved for many hundred years.

The Reformation left wealthy or titled Englishmen with an abundance of daughters, whose weddings had to be carefully planned because, by law, they could not inherit their fathers’ estates. The debutante ritual provided a safe marriage—the girls were introduced to screened company—and prevented a terrible marriage from bringing down the status of the entire family, as Lydia’s did in Austen’s novel.

To understand how and why the ritual arose specifically in England and its colonies, we must first analyze how much of a market the marriage market was, which emerged not coincidentally throughout England’s lengthy, sluggish industrialization. England experienced commercialization earlier than other countries, owing in large part to the social upheaval that accompanied the Reformation. Free market experimentation was destabilizing and altered people’s thinking and behavior, replacing assured income from inherited property with the limitless potential of new speculative endeavors.

Greater economic mobility and independence fostered social insecurity, which wreaked havoc on society’s most desirable commodity, young ladies, who documented their mixed views about their debutante experiences in innumerable diaries and letters. Some took part, but were resentful of newcomers and competitors. Some crouched in corners, hiding from the crowds. Sometimes a young lady flowered and performed admirably under scrutiny, possibly thinking herself that she had some say in a process that could shape her salvation or destruction, all of which begs the question: if we are actually stuck, should we attempt to enjoy it?

What’s it like to be a debutante? Numerous diaries and letters reveal conclusions that are significantly less diverse than  expected, possibly because the dissatisfied are more eager to write about their experiences. There was less opposition during the early years of debutante presentations. However, as women’s options expanded, they became more uncomfortable about what a debutante presentation entailed and more cognizant of their place as objects or pieces in a wider schematic process.

Some women felt like Edith Wharton, who described her season as a “long, cold agony of shyness.” Eleanor Roosevelt despised her White House debut, which she made alongside her more attractive cousin, Alice, the daughter of then-President Theodore Roosevelt. Those that appreciated the process were pleased to see their names mentioned in gossip columns and fashion magazines. Some kept notebooks detailing their conquests. Brenda Frazier, the most famous debutante of the twentieth century, whose face sold cars and perfumes, claimed in a 1963 LIFE magazine story that her mother drove her into the spotlight at the age of 17 and stated, “I was a fad that year, the way midget golf was once a fad, or flagpole sitting.”

In addition, there are countless anonymous females who went through this process and left only their debutante scrapbook, which contains press clippings and images of fellow debutantes. These scrapbooks are typically located at the conclusion of family records, where one must first sift through the recorded deeds of renowned and accomplished businessmen, politicians, and landowners. Even though these girls played an important role in the transmission of their fathers’ authority, their lives are unknown.

Ironically, the season provided the sole opportunity for a debutante to gain even the most basic sense of control over her own body and mind. The transitional space between her parents’ and her husband’s homes was probably the most liberating she’d ever felt. At a party, this could entail noticing the feel of champagne flowing down her throat, the constraint of a corset, or the discomfort from her lovely shoes. She’d hear the din of an orchestra, the whirl of the lights, whispering in corners, murmurs of agreement, and hesitant demurrals. She would detect the heavy perfume of flower arrangements, the deep, humid smoke of cigars, and the dryness of cigarettes.

The debutante rite has endured since its institutionalization in the late 18th century. Though there is a period at every debutante party when an elderly relative plays a dirge for the passing of the age of debutantes, this is not a fading tradition, but rather one that is absolutely indestructible. Its sheer outmodedness is part of its value; its inherent nostalgia is vital to its survival.

It took time for the barter of daughters to get an appealing polish, for the debutante ceremony to become so beautiful and exclusive that girls began to seek participation. The debutante ritual was such a successful social-climbing tool that parents competed for presentation locations; it was so expensive that it developed new businesses for its support workers. The debutante ritual established a soft economy in which persons with knowledge and family history but no money could make a living as custodians of historic social norms.

Today’s social life continues to follow the rhythm of the debutante season, with a concentration on money—fathers not only advanced via their daughters, but also worked out how to make them beg for the privilege to curtsy. Because of its primitive connection to coming-of-age rituals and success in raising the social standing of its participants, the debutante ritual has been embraced by a wide range of civilizations, which have either democratized or damaged it, depending on who you ask.

For numerous centuries, the ceremony was the primary driver of upper-class marriage in Britain and the United States, but historians never took it seriously. When I began researching the ritual’s beginnings, I was surprised at how difficult they were to establish. Historians have been content to tell when it began but have not addressed why. Elitist rituals are simple to ignore, and when they impact the lives of young women, it is much easier. However, if we do, we will be missing out on an important aspect of women’s history, as well as the history of marriage.