Book contents
5 - Consumption and Fashion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
Summary
Consumption, like household management, was considered quintessentially feminine not only by moralizing authors but by women themselves. Yet it presented even greater potential problems for women of quality. If the moralists were primarily concerned with the supposedly pernicious effects of such behavior, it offered more complex issues for aristocratic women. In the elite world of competitive display, women's visibility in public through participation in fashionable activities, wearing costly clothes and jewelry, and circulating gifts was crucial in demonstrating their membership in the Quality. At the same time, however, the pervasive view that such behavior posed a moral threat, coupled with the dramatic expansion of new forms of consumption during the early eighteenth century, meant that women constantly renegotiated their roles as fashionable consumers. Refusing to participate in fashionable activities could be a means of asserting status as much as choosing to participate could.
As we have seen, the early eighteenth century is now widely recognized as a significant moment in the development of a consumer society. Historians have noted the introduction of greater numbers as well as new types of consumer goods, with the emphasis shifting in elite households from grandeur to intimacy – what Philip Jenkins has termed “the supplanting of the Great Hall by the drawing-room.” Scholars have also drawn attention to the implications of such changes for ways of asserting status – for instance, through new construction or participation in high culture.
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- Women of QualityAccepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690–1760, pp. 133 - 161Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2002