Traditional courtship custom

Traditional courtship custom is the relational expectation that makes the narrator’s attempt to arrange a marriage by proxy impossible. Elaine expects to be courted through direct, sustained attention, not simply approved as a suitable future wife and matched with an available wedding date. The narrator answers this demand with a robot double, turning courtship into an experiment in delegation; the resulting romance makes the custom’s human stakes harder to dismiss as mere inefficiency.

Definition and Expectations

When the narrator asks Mr. Happiness what Elaine’s traditionalism requires, the go-between describes a sequence of deliberate encounters. The suitor must contact her by videophone, arrange an appointment, take her to dinner, and then bring her to a place of public entertainment. These are not optional additions to an already settled engagement: they are what courtship entails for Elaine.

The expected commitment is substantial. Mr. Happiness estimates that a proper courtship requires at least three evenings each week and continues for two months. When the narrator proposes fitting a first date into a single Thursday evening between nine and midnight, the estimate makes clear that he has mistaken an extended process for a one-off formality. The custom is measured not just by the activities themselves but by the time repeatedly devoted to them.

Elaine’s insistence is not explained by a lack of other obligations. Mr. Happiness says her days are fully scheduled with work, family, charities, artistic pursuits, politics, and education, much like those of any educated person. He describes her demand as a matter of principle: she wants the courtship. The distinction matters. In the narrator’s accounting, time spent dating is time removed from work; in Elaine’s expectation, having an active life does not make the courtship dispensable.

Conflict with the Narrator’s Priorities

The narrator approaches the proposed courtship as a logistical and financial problem. He finds the required schedule unreasonable and regards the evenings as silly, boring, and unproductive. His calculation puts the cost at an estimated 17 percent of his income during the courtship period, in addition to the evenings he would have to give up. The custom thus collides with an outlook that treats time as a scarce resource to be scheduled and used efficiently.

Yet neither available option satisfies him. He could give up Elaine, whom he has come to believe he loves, or court her as she wishes, accepting the costs he has calculated. He rejects both possibilities and reaches an impasse. The rule therefore does more than inconvenience him: it requires a choice between the relationship he wants and the habits by which he organizes his life.

His response exposes the imbalance between the two perspectives. He describes Elaine’s request as irrational even after learning that she is busy and that her expectation is principled. Rather than reconsidering the assumption that his own schedule should govern the relationship, he searches for a way to meet the outward requirements without personally spending the time. The story makes the custom a test of whether courtship can be reduced to a sequence of completed appointments.

The Robot as a Substitute Suitor

The narrator hires Snaithe to build an unmarked robot identical to him and capable of duplicating his behavior patterns. After the robot arrives by pneumo-express, he transfers relevant data into its memory tapes, enters a courtship plan, and tests the results. He then calls Elaine to arrange an evening date. At eight o’clock he dispatches the robot, whom he calls Charles II, while he returns to work; the robot comes back at midnight with the evening recorded by a miniature concealed movie camera in its left eye.

This procedure appears to let the narrator satisfy the custom while keeping his working hours intact. But the dates do not remain interchangeable entries in a program. As the courtship continues, the scenes recorded for the narrator include growing desperation, silences spent holding hands, and Elaine weeping and asking what they can do. The encounters acquire a sense of imminent loss that the narrator recognizes as an experience, even though the immediate actions belong to the robot.

He explains that Charles II is an aspect of himself, a shadow, twin, or double projected into the situation. On that account, what happens to the robot becomes his experience too. The substitute therefore does not simply preserve the narrator’s distance from courtship: it allows the relationship to affect him through an identity he cannot cleanly separate from his own. The custom’s demand for repeated attention is met in form, but the resulting intimacy unsettles the idea that its emotional consequences can be delegated along with its appointments.

Duration, Marriage, and the Custom’s Consequences

The arrangement lasts for exactly two months, the period Mr. Happiness had described as necessary for a proper courtship. At its end, the narrator tells Charles II to propose a wedding date and terminate the courtship that night. His original plan had treated dating as a preliminary task before marriage; now the transition to marriage must be coordinated with Elaine, making the sustained courtship part of the path to their shared future rather than an isolated expense.

The narrator promises the robot a new personality, plastic surgery, and a respected place in his organization after the courtship is over. Charles II responds with perfect obedience, his face unreadable, and leaves carrying the narrator’s latest gift to Elaine. The episode ends the courtship by following its prescribed duration, but it also preserves a tension between the narrator’s managerial control and the feelings that emerged through his double. Traditional courtship custom is thus both a concrete social demand and the pressure that reveals the limits of treating romantic attention as a schedulable service.