For the next few months I will be doing a series on Victorian courtship starting in February, the month of love, as we have just celebrated Valentine’s Day on the 14th.  The Victorians used various items for flirting with, namely fans, gloves, parasols and handkerchiefs!  I imagine the Meynell family at Hoar Cross Hall held lots of dinner parties and Balls back in the Victorian days where most of the young ladies would have had their fans at the ready to signal to a secret beau.  But what were these signals and why were they used? The belief that the fan was used in society to express feelings or commands dates back to at least the early 18th century.  It wasn't like nowadays where you just jump on an app and find the nearest available person to meet up with!  Young ladies were expected to be discreet as their reputations were at stake - any young woman with the slightest slur on her character would not be considered marriageable, which is hard to believe in the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr07ewmg0LE ab_channel=KKWilson-mindfulmusic   se modern times of 'Girl power' and equal rights.  For a woman back then, her only choice was to make a good marriage so she was set for life and well looked after, as women couldn't be financially independent and totally relied on a man (firstly their father, then a husband) to look after them.  And so, this is where the fans came in.  They could look for a man without seeming 'forward'.    They were expected to know how to hold their fans, unfurl their fans and flutter their fans!   Emotions were also added to the movement of fans: “There is an infinite variety of motions to be made use of in the flutter of a fan.  There is the angry flutter, the modish flutter, the merry flutter and the amorous flutter.” Oh la-la! So much to learn before you’re launched into society!  In 1797 a “Fanology or Ladies Conversation Fan&rdqu