The art of the insulting Valentine message
Published 12 February 2013
A University of Brighton academic has discovered a collection of Victorian 'anti-Valentines' messages which show that it is not just modern-day cynics who find the 14 February celebrations overly sentimental.
Faculty of Arts lecturer Dr Annebella Pollen says the 'vinegar Valentines' are the precursor of an anti-Valentines trend among modern greetings cards manufacturers.
Dr Pollen, who teaches on the faculty's History of Art and Design programme, came across the Valentines whilst researching a project on love and courtship for the Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton and Hove. In the back of a stationer's sample book from 1870, she discovered dozens of insulting Valentines, each featuring a comic sketch and lines of verse.
Dr Pollen, who has been interviewed about her research for the latest edition of Collectors Weekly, said the intent behind vinegar Valentines was the opposite of sweet, sentimental Valentines. They could be used to reject unwanted romantic overtures, but they were also used for more than this: "You could send them to your neighbours, friends, or enemies. You could send them to your schoolteacher, your boss, people you thought drank too much, or people acting above their station. There was a card for pretty much every social ailment."
The cards, which were often sent anonymously, can be seen as a way of enforcing social norms. For example, Dr Pollen noted there are cards that mocked men with babies on their laps as being henpecked – the kind of thing we would now think of as a man doing the right thing by taking his share of childcare. But these cards were specifically designed to make the man seem emasculated and disempowered by being left holding the baby.
For the article in Collectors Weekly, interviewer Lisa Hix gathered together a range of examples of vinegar Valentines from Britain and America from the 1840s to the 1940s, and asked Dr Pollen to make sense of their origins and meanings. While the format and the aesthetic of the cards change over a century, Dr Pollen observed that what remains the same is the sentiment — or lack of it. For example, the women who are pilloried in them may wear different outfits, but they're still mocked for how they look, whether they're wearing a crinoline or a bustle or a skin-tight dress.
Although the main focus of Dr Pollen's research is the Victorian period, she believes the cards may shed light on our contemporary culture and may help us understand contemporary forms of anonymous communication, from cyberbullying to online 'trolls'. Dr Pollen argues that behind the new technology lies an old impulse to insult and one that is resurfacing in modern day anti-Valentines.
She said: "Maybe it's because people are forever seeking out new products to sell that they think haven't been sold before, or perhaps it is because vinegar Valentines answer some kind of human need. People need a safety valve, so maybe an insulting Valentine card is a good way of letting off steam. After all, anyone with any sort of critical faculty is going to find some of the sentimental aspects of Valentine's Day a bit cloying and unpleasant."
Read the Collectors Weekly article in full: Happy Valentines Day, I Hate You.
Here's a pretty cool reception, At least you'll say there's no deception,
It says as plain as it can say, Old fellow you'd best stop away.
HATMP000904_d102: Reproduced courtesy of Royal Pavilion, Museums and Art Gallery, Brighton and Hove.
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