The Competition for Judgement in Mid Eighteenth
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THE EMPIRE OF BEAUTY: THE COMPETITION FOR JUDGEMENT IN MID EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND. ONE VOLUME ROBERT W. JONES DPHIL 1995 THE EMPIRE OF BEAUTY: THE COMPETITION FOR JUDGEMENT MID EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND. ONE VOLUME ROBERT W. JONES DPHIL THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE JANUARY, 1995 ABSTRACT This dy explores the modes of judgement and forms of social practice that were inyolyed in the discussion of the Beautiful in the mid-eighteenth century. Concentrating ei_sively on British thought it seeks to examine how the practices of tasteful discrimination were iny4yed in wider cultural changes. Particular focus is given to the increasing prominence_of commercial enterprise, and the increased public visibility of women. The nature and importance of these changes are made clear in the 'Introduction'. 'Chapter 1' describes the existence of two competing modes of social address within eighteenth-century culture: that formed by the aristocracy and derived from classical sources and that which was taken from the modern sensibility of the middle classes. Focusing on the latter I demonstrate how the Beautiful was increasingly made into an account of sensuous contemplation rather than rhetorical persuasion. 'Chapter 2' argues that after admitting the sensuous into the process of judgement, the criticism produced by and for the middle classes came to focus on the conduct and appearance of women. This emphasis had not been desirable in the aristocratic criticism of the early part of the century. As a result, accounts of Taste became accounts of the 'appearance' of women in a variety of social and familial locations. 'Chapter 3' examines a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds in the light of these developments. The portrait - of Elizabeth Gunning, a society beauty - is read as a complex social referent.. One which images the uncertainties and ambivalences about the judgement both of art and women's conduct. I contend that Reynolds work reflects a bifurcation in mid-century accounts of art; between a narrative which stresses civic discrimination, and one which emphasises polite sensibility. 'Chapter 4' explores the latter theme in relation to a bourgeois moral politics which centred on physical appearance. The argument is conducted in terms of four novels by Charlotte Lennox and Sarah Scott. It is suggested that middle-class discourse is characterised by a resistance to the social and sexual authority of physical beauty. What was promoted instead was an attention to plainness, even to ugliness, as the sign of a retired, domesticated feminine subject. The 'Conclusion' attempts a broader consideration of what was meant by a division of public and private in the eighteenth century. In this discussion the ideological aspects of the Beautiful are brought to the fore. PREFACE The account which follows concerns Beauty, and examines what shaped and defined what was thought to be pleasing, worthwhile or merely pretty in the middle years of the eighteenth century. Most importantly it is a study of what a discussion of the Beautiful meant in eighteenth-century culture, when a reference to the Beautiful constituted a claim to cultural fluency and intellectual participation. This was a debate, as I shall argue, which produced a number of competing theories. For what constituted the Beautiful was determined by the vagaries of the occasion, and by the class and gender of the speaker. In particular the 'beauties' of women received minute attention; the attractions of female society or the corruptions of the effeminate made for a compelling, if uncertain, debate. With this said I can make a hasty and pointedly unfashionable disclaimer: this is not a study of the body. Instead I focus on the techniques of judgement and the ideologies of conduct upon which the practices of discrimination were based. Crucially, the social structure within which such pronouncements were located was one riven by the emerging mercantile culture of city merchants as it clashed with the patrician claims of the established order. More specifically I am interested in how, in the middle years of the century, the prominent role of commerce intensified the struggle to define good taste. In an increasingly commercial culture, the nature of desire and judgement is a matter of central concern, if only as a guide to 'good shopping'. For the citizens of a mercantile society, a society where the distribution of wealth is increasingly broad, there is a perceived need to have a clear idea of what to desire - which pictures, which plate, and what costume or coiffure. There is also an urgent need for that desire to be expressive of difference and distinction, and not indiscriminate choice. It is not enough to wish to have one's portrait painted, one must know who is the best equipped for the task, or more importantly who has the most fashionable clientele. A country retreat is no marker of taste if it is only a "Cit's Country Box". This last example makes plain a process which is distinctive to the eighteenth century. The expansion of wealth production and distribution, particularly among the merchant classes, enabled a far greater number of people to participate in high culture, both as consumers and connoisseurs, than ever before. Certainly the number exceeded those able to play an active role in politics. The result of such a change was an intensified interest in the nature of taste, with more and more people wishing to know what was good or beautiful. Despite this general requirement, what it was that each individual needed to know was strikingly different. Consequently each arbiter of taste speaks for a recognizably different constituency, or market. For example, the elite tastes and high political aspirations of aristocrats such as the third Earl of Shaftesbury did not countenance the poorly resourced judgements of the middlè-classes, who were seen as deficient in both delicacy and wealth. Shaftesbury, amongst others, annexed his sense of both taste and morals to a politics most conveniently described as civic humanist, which he represented as centred on the participation of the landowning elites alone. While Shaftesbury had his successors (in art theory Reynolds is the most famous example) his vision of the place of the Beautiful and of the nature of politics did not go unchallenged. By the second quarter of the century it is possible to identify ways of writing on the nature of Taste wholly divorced from the civic priorities of the noble earl. This writing begins with Addison and Steele and with Jonathan Richardson, one of England's first theorists of Taste. Denied access to the realms of both politics and large scale landownership, these figures fashion a discourse on the beautiful which articulates the aspirations of the minor gentry and the middling classes. This discourse is not concerned with patrician political claims, but with justifying a mode of cultural consumption based on the ownership and appreciation of goods which might otherwise be derided as luxuries. Indeed the attempt to raise the status of commercialized tastes is the decisive factor in much English writing on aesthetics after 1740. In the debate these texts constitute, Beauty emerges as a vital indicator of the structure of England's commercial culture, making possible the articulation of a number of competing ideas of judgement. I am confident that this thesis will provide a challenging context for a reappraisal, not only of the major thinkers of the period, such as Burke or Hogarth, but also a more diverse range of writings encompassing the gossip of Walpole's Correspondence and the essays of the Connoisseur, texts which all have something to say on the nature of Beauty. Analysis of the Beautiful, however, has an importance beyond the consideration of individual figures or texts. It achieves this critical importance because it enables the study of at least two fundamental cultural and literary shifts. First, analysis of the Beautiful makes visible the relationship between ideas of taste and judgement and the experience of commodity culture. This is unquestionably a relationship that is central to our understanding of eighteenth-century society. Secondly, the issue of Beauty is crucially gendered. Any discussion of Beauty necessarily asks questions about the relationship of women to social and cultural practice. However, it is the high degree of mobility exhibited by the term, Beauty, moving between contrasting spaces and texts, which most strongly highlights the difficult and uncertain state of eighteenth-century culture. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT PREFACE TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS viii INTRODUCTION The Cultural Politics of Beauty 1 The Empire of Beauty: The Authority and Ambivalence of the Beautiful 2 A Term of Vague and Extensive Meaning: Beauty and Social Discourse 16 The Education of Hercules: From Civitas to Civility 30 New Spaces: Public and Private 40 Summary and Scope of the Thesis 51 CHAPTER 1 The Theory of Beauty: Philosophical Criticism and Commodity Culture 56 Beauty and Culiural Transformation 57 Proper Feelings, Proprietorial Tastes: Francis Hutcheson's Inquiry 69 Price and Prejudice: Connoisseurship in a Commercial World 79 The Thrill of the New: Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty 88 John Gilbert Cooper and the Luxury of Feeling 96 CHAPTER 2 The Art of Being Pretty: Polite Taste and the Judgement of Women 121 'Now I Know What Love Is': Advice from the Adventurer 122 'That Magdalene Look': Real Personal Beauty and the appraisal 129 of women 'Certain Pleasing