Abstract
The genteel habitus required the right kind of environment in which to live, shaped by a battery of material goods to enable management of the self-controlled body and presentation of the self-conscious social person. Considered as performances both in private and in public, material goods constructed the stages on, and the props with which, to conduct the genteel life. To produce effective performances, the material appurtenances had to be the right kind, defined as correct taste, ‘the material counterpart of influence’.1 The precise calibration of setting, equipment and decoration could prove or disprove the middle-class person’s possession of the cultural capital of gentility. The assemblage of goods possessed presented messages about the actor to the audience, enabling others to classify the agent’s exact stratum within the possibilities that composed the nineteenth-century middle class.
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Notes
Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1750–1850 (London: Hutchison, 1987) p. 398.
Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford (London: OUP, 1934 [1853]) p. 4.
A. J. Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses (New York: Dover Publications, 1969 [1850]) p. 407.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Modern Library, 1934 [1899]) ch. 4.
Frederick B. Tolles, Quakers and the Atlantic Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1960) p. 88.
Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988) pp. 32–7.
Clive Wainwright, The Romantic Interior: The British Collector at Home 1750–1850 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989) chs 2, 3.
The older tradition of consumption history is exemplified by E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, Europe 1789–1848 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962) ch. 2.
Production-driven history is reviewed by Cary Carson, ‘The Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America: Why Demand?’, in Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (eds), Of Consuming Interest: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994) pp. 483–6.
Karl Marx, ‘Excerpts from James Mill’s Elements of Political Economy’, cited by Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984 [1979]) p. 267.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Native People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956) p. 233;
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Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp. 205, 216.
Carole Shammas, The Pre-Industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) p. 185.
Consumer revolutions have been identified by historians since at least the sixteenth century, by Joan Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978);
the seventeenth century by Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983)
and Margaret Spufford, The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and their Wares in the Seventeenth Century (London: Hambledon Press, 1984);
the nineteenth century by Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982)
and T. J. Jackson Lears, ‘From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880–1930’, in Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (eds), The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980 (New York: Pantheon, 1983);
and the twentieth century by Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (New York: Pantheon, 1989)
and Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987).
Arthur J. Taylor (ed.), The Standard of Living in the Industrial Revolution (London: Methuen, 1975) p. 1. The same trend appears in the United States, best documented for a slightly earlier period: see Lorena S. Walsh, Gloria L. Main, Lois Green Carr, Jackson Turner Main and John J. McCusker, ‘Forum’ on the standard of living in the colonial era, William and Mary Quarterly, vol. XLV, no. 1 (January 1988).
Neil McKendrick, ‘Home Demand and Economic Growth: A New View of the Role of Women and Children in the Industrial Revolution’, in Neil McKendrick (ed.), Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought and Society (London: Europa, 1974) pp. 172, 208.
See also Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750–1850 (London: G. Routledge, 1930) pp. 215–21; Shammas, Pre-Industrial Consumer, p. 298.
Paul A. Shackel, Personal Discipline and Material Culture: An Archaeology of Annapolis, Maryland, 1695–1870 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993) pp. 3, 7.
Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) p. 201.
Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980) pp. 5–10.
For example, Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (eds), The Consumption of Culture 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text (London: Routledge, 1995).
McCracken, Culture and Consumption, pp. 62–4; Fred Davis, Fashion, Culture and Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) pp. 4–8.
[Samuel R. Wells], How to Behave: A Pocket Manual of Republican Etiquette (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1856) pp. 34, 38.
An American Gentleman, True Politeness: A Handbook of Etiquette for Gentlemen (Philadelphia: George S. Appleton, 1848) p. 18.
James Laver, Modesty in Dress: An Inquiry into the Fundamentals of Fashion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969) pp. 55–6.
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Claudia B. Kidwell and Margaret C. Christman, Suiting Everyone: The Democratization of Clothing in America (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1974) pp. 39–41;
Jane Ashelford, The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500–1914 (London: National Trust/Laura Ashley, 1996) pp. 196–200.
Albert Smith, The Natural History of the Gent (London: David Bogue, 1847) pp. 7–8.
C. Willet Cunnington and Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Nineteenth Century (London: Faber, 1959) pp. 45–50; Ribeiro, Art of Dress, p. 95.
Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits (New York: Knopf, 1994) pp. 87–91.
Naomi Tarrant, The Development of Costume (London: Routledge, 1994) p. 98.
J. C. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes (London: Hogarth Press, 1930) pp. 111–12;
followed by David Kuchta, ‘The Making of the Self-Made Man: Class, Clothing and English Masculinity, 1688–1832’, in Victoria de Grazia (ed.), The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) ch. 2.
Mrs Alexander Walker, Female Beauty As Preserved and Improved by Regimen, Cleanliness and Dress (revised and amended by an American editor) (New York: Scofield & Voorhies, 1840) pp. 25–6. The gigot or leg o’mutton sleeve arrived in the late 1820s and persisted into the late 1830s: Naomi E. Tarrant, The Rise and Fall of the Sleeve, 1825–1840 (Edinburgh: Royal Scottish Museum, 1983).
Patricia Wardle, Victorian Lace (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1968) pp. 221–7;
Pat Earnshaw, Lace Machines and Machine Laces (London: BT Batsford, 1986) chs 1–5.
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Hugh Tait (ed.), The Art of the Jeweller: A Catalogue of the Hull Grundy Gift to the British Museum: Jewellery, Engraved Gems and Goldsmiths’ Work, vol. 1 (Text) (London: British Museum, 1984) p. 105.
Shirley Bury, An Introduction to Sentimental Jewellery (London: HMSO, 1985) pp. 33–45.
For example, 1794–1835 diary of Sarah Snell Bryant of Cummington, MA, analysed by Jane C. Nylander, ‘Everyday Life on a Berkshire County Hill Farm’, in Eleanor McD. Thompson (ed.), The American Home: Material Culture, Domestic Space, and Family Life (Winterthur, DE: Winterthur Museum, 1998) pp. 108–15.
Natalie Rothstein (ed.), Barbara Johnson’s Album of Fashions and Fabrics (London: Thames & Hudson, 1987) p. 14.
John Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive: Three Lectures on Work, Traffic, and War (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1866) p. 83.
Katherine C. Grier, Culture and Comfort: People, Parlours and Upholstery, 1850–1930 (Rochester, NY: Strong Museum, 1988).
Loudon and Downing both assert the sacral value of Gothic style in the home. See also Colleen McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) ch. 2.
Clifford E. Clark, ‘Domestic Architecture as an Index to Social History: The Romantic Revival and the Cult of Domesticity in America, 1840–1870’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 7, no. 1 (1976) pp. 49–52.
A Grier, Culture and Comfort, ch. 4.; Witold Rybcyzinski, Home: The Short History of an Idea (New York: Viking, 1986) ch. 5.
Edward T. Joy, English Furniture 1800–1851 (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet Publications, 1977) p. 217.
John Cornforth, English Interiors 1790–1848: The Quest for Comfort (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1978) p. 15;
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Kenneth L. Ames, Death in the Dining Room, and Other Tales of Victorian Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992) pp. 17–32.
Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982) pp. 59–60.
Terence Lane and Jessie Serle, Australians at Home: A Documentary History of Australian Domestic Interiors from 1788 to 1914 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990) pp. 374]–6;
Kevin Fahy, ‘Furniture and Furniture-Makers’, in James Broadbent and Joy Hughes (eds), The Age of Macquarie (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992) pp. 122–4.
Arthur Loesser, Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History (London: Victor Gollancz, 1955) pp. 267–79.
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Elias, Civilizing Process, pp. 85–8; John F. Kasson, ‘Rituals of Dining: Table Manners in Victorian America’, in Kathryn Grover (ed.), Dining in America, 1850–1900 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987) pp. 130–41.
Paul A. Shackel, Personal Discipline and Material Culture: An Archaeology of Annapolis, Maryland, 1695–1870 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993) pp. 106–7, 144–50.
A. W. Coysh and R. K. Henrywood, The Dictionary of Blue and White Printed Pottery, 1780–1880 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors Club, 1982) pp. 8–9.
Geoffrey Godden, ‘Chinese Export Porcelain’, in David Battie (ed.), Sotheby’s Concise Encyclopedia of Porcelain (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990) p. 67.
Jean McClure Mudge, Chinese Export Porcelain for the American Trade, 1785–1835 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1962) ch. 4.
The salvage of wrecked cargoes of the early nineteenth century indicates that millions of pieces of fairly ordinary quality ceramics were loaded for the markets of the West; see Hugh Edwards, Treasures of the Deep: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Captain Mike Hatcher (Sydney: HarperCollins, 2000) chs 9 and 10.
Cf. Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980) pp. 293–4.
Leslie, House Book, p. 303; Carole Shammas, ‘The Domestic Environment in Early Modern England and America’, Journal of Social History, vol. 14, no. 1 (1980) p. 9; Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790–1840 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988) p. 138.
Loudon, Encyclopedia, p. 654. Downing, Country Houses, p. 419. See also Georg Himmelheber, Cast-iron Furniture and All Other Forms of Iron Furniture (London: Philip Wilson, 1996) pp. 41–4.
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© 2003 Linda Young
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Young, L. (2003). Correct Taste: the Material Conditions of Gentility. In: Middle-Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230598812_7
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