It is easy to think of the Regency as romantic – duels, elopements, dashing bucks and gorgeous gowns. But the slang of the period soon dispels that, as do the some of the images of the time, unlike Rowlandson’s The Embrace above. (I do love how he always includes a dog).
Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue pulls no punches with the slang for marriage – For a man it was to “be in parson’s mousetrap”, “to live under the cat’s foot”, “to be yoked”. The wife and children were “heavy baggage” (as this father below is finding) and, as like as not, the husband would be tied to a “buttock and tongue” or a “crooked rib”. There’s no indication of how the women involved thought of it – slang was for men.
Young ladies might dream of romance, like this one shown on a fan playing “loves me, loves me not” with daisy petals while a young man passes by.
They might send or receive love notes like these from the French print series Modes et Manières.
But there were plenty of warnings about how romance, or the lack of it, might end. This fan shows all sorts of dire situations – the horrors of being left a spinster with only cats for company, the fact that you can’t trust a young man as far as you can throw him or the risk that your romantic young husband recoils in horror from the responsibility of a family.
But perhaps it will all end with a kiss. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Jane Austen's London 
Thank you, I think this is important clarification to point out. Too many people just presume and romanticize too much of the Regency era and connect and pull Jane Austen into this mischaracterization! Dena