On Saturday, March 22, 1884, The Illustrated London News published a set of sketches of an imaginary leap year ball, accompanied by a short article on the topic. The sketch above shows the central conceit of such a ball: gentlemen lounging on seats with their dance cards while the ladies move around asking them to dance. Role reversal was the idea:
The amusing possibilities of a temporary exchange of parts in the mutual courtesies of the sexes during Leap-Year...Ladies are entitled to make a discreet use of the opportunity, and gentlemen will find it very pleasant to become the victims in their turn, instead of bearing the constant responsibility of an aggressive attitude, striving for the conquest and annexation of fair partners in society or domestic life.
Perhaps semi-jokingly, some men found regular balls exhausting:
the required solicitations and negotiations, and the maintenance of consequent assiduous behaviour, “take it out of a man,” in a crowded assembly for several hour of a warm night, to such an extent that he often becomes and object of humane compassion.
At a leap year ball, the ladies would take the initiative in all aspects:
...inviting the others to dance, securing engagements for the next available number on the programme card, leading their coy but grateful swains to the performance of a waltz or polka, and serving them with ices, macaroons, or champagne from the buffet, at intervals of two hours, before and after supper.
(I'm fascinated by the implication that the ladies were actually leading the couple dances, but I have found no explicit confirmation of this anywhere else.)
The sketch of a lady taking care of her exhausted partner:
Gentlemen, particularly older and less vigorous ones, were assured that they would enjoy this:
Men are not, indeed, accustomed to this agreeable treatment; but they will be sure to like it when they get it; and some of them may wish it were always Leap-Year, and will hereafter remember the balls and parties of 1884 as the happiest experience of their youthful lives. Still more certainly will the pleasant and salutary change be felt as a welcome relief to men who are no longer young, whose vigour is waning, and whose spirits are unequal to the task of striking up a fresh conversation with a score of nice girls, or blooming and graceful matrons...
There was even what is probably a joking suggestion that by making men's lives easier, women might encourage the general expansion of women's rights, for which there was an active movement in England in the late nineteenth century:
For the advocacy, in general, of “women’s rights,” it is good policy, no doubt, to show that they may have the effect of saving men a great deal of trouble.
The artist, at least, was not oblivious to the unpleasantness that role-reversal could create for a less conventionally attractive lady seeking a partner or a gentleman awkwardly making an excuse to refuse a request for a dance from an unwanted partner:
I'd love to say the above sketch was meant to show how role reversal could increase empathy between the sexes, but I'm afraid it was more meant as a cruel joke about unattractive women. That doesn't erase the value of leap year role reversal and the learning possibilities inherent in the exchange of one gender's social pressure for the other's.
I'm not entirely sure of the meaning of the caption on this sketch depicting one attractive gentleman in a row of much less attractive male wallflowers as a lady prepares to make her choice:
Was it that it would have been easier for a lady to marry well (in a financial sense) because there were so many desperate, albeit unattractive, men? Regardless, this picture suggests the nervousness with which some men viewed these balls and their fear of being a wallflower and being treated as badly by women as men treated female wallflowers. Perhaps that is why a fifth sketch, not particularly interesting, showed a group of men labeled "Some People who object to Leap-Year Balls".
I'm going to take some time this month to look at various published descriptions of leap year balls and examine how far the role reversal was taken in different circumstances.
A full transcription of the article follows.
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A LEAP-YEAR BALL.
The amusing possibilities of a temporary exchange of parts in the mutual courtesies of the sexes during Leap-Year—for this reversed condition of their intercourse has not been understood to be confined to a single day, the Twenty-ninth of February—will continue to demand some playful remark. Ladies are entitled to make a discreet use of the opportunity, and gentlemen will find it very pleasant to become the victims in their turn, instead of bearing the constant responsibility of an aggressive attitude, striving for the conquest and annexation of fair partners in society or domestic life. Even in the ball-room, where ten or twenty successive partnerships are formed and dissolved between the evening and the next morning, the required solicitations and negotiations, and the maintenance of consequent assiduous behaviour, “take it out of a man,” in a crowded assembly for several hour of a warm night, to such an extent that he often becomes and object of humane compassion. It is not amiss, therefore, once in a way, to let the enterprising and energetic young women, who enjoy superior physical and intellectual training at the present day, exert their powers in the various arts of refined and delicate courtship, inviting the others to dance, securing engagements for the next available number on the programme card, leading their coy but grateful swains to the performance of a waltz or polka, and serving them with ices, macaroons, or champagne from the buffet, at intervals of two hours, before and after supper. Men are not, indeed, accustomed to this agreeable treatment; but they will be sure to like it when they get it; and some of them may wish it were always Leap-Year, and will hereafter remember the balls and parties of 1884 as the happiest experience of their youthful lives. Still more certainly will the pleasant and salutary change be felt as a welcome relief to men who are no longer young, whose vigour is waning, and whose spirits are unequal to the task of striking up a fresh conversation with a score of nice girls, or blooming and graceful matrons (these are much easier to talk with), one after another committed to their temporary charge. The idea which has been successfully developed in our Artist’s Sketches of “A Leap-Year Ball” is worthy of all commendation, notwithstanding the austere looks of those “People who object to it,” and with whom it is not worth while to argue the point. For the advocacy, in general, of “women’s rights,” it is good policy, no doubt, to show that they may have the effect of saving men a great deal of trouble.
-- "A Leap-Year Ball". The Illustrated London News (London, England), Volume 84 , Issue 2344, p. 270.
For those who have academic database access, original page images may be found in The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003.
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