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Performative Morality: Godey's Match Plates, Nineteenth-Century Stage Practice, and Social/Political/Economic Commentary in America's Popular Ladies’ Magazine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2014
Abstract
Recirculating the assertion of magazine historian Frank Luther Mott, subsequent generations of scholars maintained that Godey's Lady's Magazine eschewed content treating the social, political, and economic issues of the day. This article challenges that nearly universal reading of Godey's by arguing for the importance of a close reading of the “match plates” commissioned by Godey for his magazine. Appearing between 1840 and 1860, these plates, many engraved from pendant paintings created expressly for Godey, draw on the popularity of stage melodrama, dramatic tableau, and tableaux vivants to enact a performative morality addressing major social, economic, and political issues. Early match plates contrast virtue and vice, capitalizing on the enormous popularity of William Hogarth's engraving series Industry and Idleness. Match plates appear also in the popular fashion plates of the magazine – echoing the city mystery novels, plays, and prints first popularized by Eugene Sue – in Christmas for the Rich/Christmas for the Poor and Dress the Maker/Dress the Wearer. By 1860, even the magazine's “useful” contents, such as the pattern work prized by Godey's readers, echo the popularity of match plates: hence Fruit for Working/Flowers for Working. Closer attention to Godey's engravings calls for a reassessment of Mott's assertion.
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References
1 Mott, Frank Luther, A History of American Magazines 1741–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957)Google Scholar, 589. A recent exception to this reading of Godey's can be found in Sommers, Joseph Michael, “‘Godey's Lady's Book’: Sarah Hale and the Construction of Sentimental Nationalism,” College Literature, 37 , 3 (Summer 2010), 43–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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3 The title of the magazine varied during the two decades in question here, from Godey's Lady's Book and Ladies’ American Magazine (1840–43) to Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book (1844–48) to Godey's Lady's Book (1848–54) to Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine (1854–82). For simplicity's sake, I will refer to the publication simply as Godey's throughout this article.
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11 “City Articles, Number Two: The Chatham,” The Knickerbocker, Aug. 1846, 105. A note on variant spellings: articles published in the antebellum press contain an assortment of spellings: tableaux vivans, tableaux vivant, tableau vivants, and so on. I capture the spelling from the original when using a direct quote; elsewhere I have regularized the spelling to tableau vivant (singular) and tableaux vivants (plural).
12 Admission ran around 25 cents at most theaters. See McCullough, 36.
13 See McConachie, especially chapters 3 through 6.
14 Ibid., 164.
15 Ibid., 175.
16 Ibid., 41.
17 For an extended discussion of Godey's patronage of the arts, see Patterson, Art for the Middle Classes, chapter 6.
18 “Publisher's Department,” Godey's, Dec. 1851, 375.
19 For example, The Eclectic featured in 1849 match plates engraved by well-respected Philadelphia mezzotint engraver John Sartain, drawing on European models of the “progress of love.” These included The Pardon Refused (April 1849) and The Reconciliation (May 1849). Peterson's featured in February 1851 Low Life and High Life, match plate engravings featuring dog characters, based on famous paintings by the English artist Edwin Landseer. The Ladies Repository featured a series of plates based on Swiss-born painter Jean Gabriel Scheffer's ten-tableaux series Conjugating the Verb to Love – at least three appeared: They Love (May 1851); She Will Love (Dec. 1851); and I Have Loved (July 1852).
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27 I examined and catalogued in a searchable EndNote database copies of Godey's Lady's Book from five different libraries: the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Winterthur Library, the American Antiquarian Society, the New York Public Library, and the University of South Florida Libraries Special Collections. Specifically, I catalogued every monthly issue from January 1839 to December 1860 found in each library. Frequently, plates that can be found in one library's copy of a specific volume are missing from another – presumably torn out by readers, since these plates were specifically designed and marketed by Godey for pulling out and framing. It is possible that Godey published match plates before 1842: if so, they did not survive in the volumes I examined and catalogued.
28 See Patterson, chapter 5: “ ‘Illustration of a Picture’: American Authors and the Magazine Embellishments.”
29 See Meisel, Realizations, chapter 7: “From Hogarth to Cruikshank.”
30 Painting provenance and description can be found at www.arcadja.com/auctions/en/prentis_edward/artist/372933.
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42 See, for example, Graham's Magazine, Jan. 1843, with a mezzotint The Coquette engraved by John Sartain from a painting by English artist Edwin Landseer.
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44 See DeBrava, Valerie, “Alice B. Neal Haven,” in Ljungquist, Kent P., ed., Antebellum Writers in New York, Second Series (Detroit: Gale Group, 2002)Google Scholar. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume CCL, Web, accessed 4 Dec. 2012.
45 See Meisel, Realizations, chapter 11: “Napoleon, or History as Spectacle,” 201–28.
46 “Literary,” New York Observer and Chronicle, 20 Nov. 1851, 374.
47 Frick, Theatre, Culture and Temperance Reform, 55.
48 See ibid., 55–56. On the popularity of similar melodramas, such as The Poor of Liverpool and The Streets of London, see McConachie, Melodramatic Formations, 211.
49 McConachie, 211.
50 In referring to the “fashion editress,” I use the term preferred by Louis A. Godey, and used repeatedly in the publisher's columns of the magazine. Godey frequently reminded readers that Mrs. Hale was not in charge of the fashions. For example, in the June 1856 column can be found this notice: “We again respectfully state that Mrs. Hale is not the fashion editress. Address ‘Fashion Editress, care of L. A. Godey’.” By 1860, a regular column appeared in the closing pages of the magazine, entitled “Some Hints” (for addressing queries to the magazine). As part of this standard message appeared the assertion “Mrs. Hale is not the Fashion Editress.” However, during the era under study here, 1840–60, I could find no column in which Louis Godey revealed the identity of the fashion editress.
51 McConachie, 180–84.
52 Meisel, chapter 10, “Perils of the Deep,” especially 189–92.
53 I found evidence of this practice as early as December 1854. By 1860, the list of items available by purchase through the “Fashion Editress” extended to hair ornaments, jewelry, and small articles of clothing, among other items. In essence, it appears that the “Fashion Editress” also performed duties that today we might associate with a personal shopping consultant.
54 See Gordon, Beverly, “Victorian Fancy Good: Another Reappraisal of Shaker Material Culture,” Winterthur Portfolio, 25, 2–3 (Summer–Autumn 1990), 111–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bercaw, Nancy Dunlap, “Solid Objects/Mutable Meanings: Fancywork and the Construction of Bourgeois Culture, 1840–1880,” Winterthur Portfolio, 26, 4 (Winter 1991), 231–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.