The crazy dance of courtship
This is an example of parlor room courtship drama. The young people start out as children under the authority of others, and they marry off after unnecessarily lengthy, complicated courtship processes. But some of them just shack up without letting anyone find out, and others marry for the wrong reason, so even after everyone has been married off, the games are not over. There is another season of crazy courtship in which the affairs of the marriages are sorted, and then once those are sorted, everyone ends up with who they really wanted to be with. Except for the girls who end up dead, alone, or rejected. This is a thorough picture of what romance meant during this period, and it indicates something any human should be able to relate to: the unspoken dance of flirting and courtship.
Commitment
Marital commitment is made the subject matter of the book over and over again. Although the girls play by the rules, more or less, the men are constantly having affairs and pursuing other women. When they marry for money, they are left unfulfilled, and this happens to many men in the story, most notably, the main suitor, D'Elmont. D'Elmont is also a thematic character because of his lack of commitment. It isn't as simple as just condemning him; by the end of the novel, he is with the woman he truly loves, and there's something to be said for that, but ultimately, the book places commitment in a place of honor through Violetta's death speech about commitment.
Passion
Passion is a theme in the book, because although commitment and orderly courtship are treasured in their culture, each character basically just does what they want. Look at the opening sequence of the book: When Alovisa and Amena are competing for D'Elmont originally, they use real strategies to compete against each other, and their passion shows. D'Elmont is himself very passionate, unfortunately for both Alovisa and Amena, because he feels passionate love for another girl, Melliora. Too much passion, in fact, because he almost does some heinous sexual violence because of his passion. The commentary provided in the long, complex plot seems to be about how each character gets what they want.
