gender and taste in the eighteenth century

1. FASHION, TASTE AND
AESTHETICS

9. ◦ The Concept of Taste – Rational, centred on reason. 18th-century debates about the extent
to which one can cultivate (learn) good taste; how far does the idea of taste extend (goût,
food, etc.).
◦ The Concept of the Aesthetic - Centred on an emotional, visceral response. Related to the
sublime.
◦ 2.1 Aesthetic Objects
◦ 2.2 Aesthetic Judgment
◦ 2.3 The Aesthetic Attitude
◦ 2.4 Aesthetic Experience
◦ Debates include: whether artworks are necessarily aesthetic objects; how to balance the
allegedly perceptual and subjective basis of aesthetic judgments with the fact that we give
reasons in support of them; the relationship between the aesthetic and utility; how best to
understand the relation between aesthetic value and aesthetic experience.

10. Timeline of taste
1. Shaftesbury: aesthetic questions in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (first published in 1711)
Shaftesbury's spokesman, Theocles, issues a pair of imperatives: one ought “never to admire the Representative-
Beauty, except for the sake of the Original; nor aim at other Enjoyment than of the rational kind”.
2. Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725): Gives one argument for the
sensibility, and another for the internality, of the power by which we discern beauty.
◦ This superior Power of Perception is justly called a Sense, because of its Affinity to the other Senses in this,
that the Pleasure does not arise from any Knowledge of Principles, Proportions, Causes, or the Usefulness of
the Object; but strikes us at first with the Idea of Beauty …. And further, the ideas of Beauty and Harmony,
like other sensible Ideas, are necessarily pleasant to us, as well as immediately so; neither can any Resolution
of our own, nor any Prospect of Advantage or Disadvantage, vary the Beauty or Deformity of an Object.
(Hutcheson 1726/2004, 25)
◦ What new meaning of ‘sensible’ emerges here? How does sense relate to sensible and to sensibility?
3. Hume, 1751:
◦ [I]n order to pave the way for [a judgment of taste], and give a proper discernment of its object, it is often necessary,
we find, that much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn, distant
comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained. Some species of
beauty, especially the natural kinds, on their first appearance command our affection and approbation; and where
they fail of this effect, it is impossible for any reasoning to redress their influence, or adapt them better to our taste
and sentiment. But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the fine arts, it is requisite to employ much
reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment. (Hume, 1751, Section I)

11. Philosophies of taste
◦ In 1737, Lord Shaftesbury had expressed a delight in the perceived effeminate East, declaring,
‘Effeminacy pleases me. The Indian figures, the Japan work, the enamel
strokes my eye. The luscious colours and glossy paint gain upon my fancy’.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 3 vols (London:
James Purser, 1737), I, p. 341.
◦ It is impossible to reduce to simple reason a subject which has been so
adulterated & sophisticated by custom, fashions, superstitions &c as that of
ornament.
◦ Elizabeth Montagu to Henry Home, Lord Kames, 13 April 1767, ‘Correspondence Between Lord Kames and
Mrs Montagu’, in Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review, 5 (1808): 150-153 (p. 151).

12. Gender and Taste part 1 (Northanger Abbey)
◦ The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital
pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men,
that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great
enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well
informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance. But Catherine did not
know her own advantages—did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart
and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances
are particularly untoward. In the present instance, she confessed and lamented her want of
knowledge, declared that she would give anything in the world to be able to draw; and a
lecture on the picturesque immediately followed, in which his instructions were so clear that
she soon began to see beauty in everything admired by him, and her attention was so earnest
that he became perfectly satisfied of her having a great deal of natural taste. He talked of
foregrounds, distances, and second distances—side-screens and perspectives—lights and
shades; and Catherine was so hopeful a scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen
Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a landscape.
Delighted with her progress, and fearful of wearying her with too much wisdom at once, Henry
suffered the subject to decline, and by an easy transition from a piece of rocky fragment and
the withered oak which he had placed near its summit, to oaks in general, to forests, the
enclosure of them, waste lands, crown lands and government, he shortly found himself arrived
at politics; and from politics, it was an easy step to silence.

13. Gilpin, Observations on the River Wye
(Gilpin’s view of Tintern Abbey)
No part of the ruins of Tintern is seen from the river except the abbey church. It has been an
elegant Gothic pile; but it does not make that appearance as a distant object which we expected.
Though the parts are beautiful, the whole is ill-shaped. No ruins of the tower are left, which might
give form and contrast to the buttresses and walls. Instead of this a number of gable ends hurt the
eye with their regularity, and disgust it by the vulgarity of their shape. A mallet judiciously used
(but who durst use it?) might be of service in fracturing some of them; particularly those of the
cross-aisles, which are both disagreeable in themselves, and confound the perspective.
Henry Austen’s biographical notice of her, published in the
first edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion
(posthumously printed) he said that Jane Austen was
enamoured of Gilpin on the Picturesque at a very early
age…

14. Gender and taste part 2
◦ The general pause which succeeded his short disquisition on the state of the nation was put an end to by
Catherine, who, in rather a solemn tone of voice, uttered these words, “I have heard that something very
shocking indeed will soon come out in London.”
◦ Miss Tilney, to whom this was chiefly addressed, was startled, and hastily replied, “Indeed! And of what
nature?”
◦ “That I do not know, nor who is the author. I have only heard that it is to be more horrible than anything we
have met with yet.”
◦ “Good heaven! Where could you hear of such a thing?”
◦ “A particular friend of mine had an account of it in a letter from London yesterday. It is to be uncommonly
dreadful. I shall expect murder and everything of the kind.”
◦ “You speak with astonishing composure! But I hope your friend’s accounts have been exaggerated; and if
such a design is known beforehand, proper measures will undoubtedly be taken by government to prevent
its coming to effect.”
◦ “Government,” said Henry, endeavouring not to smile, “neither desires nor dares to interfere in such matters.
There must be murder; and government cares not how much.”
◦ The ladies stared. He laughed, and added, “Come, shall I make you understand each other, or leave you to
puzzle out an explanation as you can? No—I will be noble. I will prove myself a man, no less by the
generosity of my soul than the clearness of my head. I have no patience with such of my sex as
disdain to let themselves sometimes down to the comprehension of yours. Perhaps the abilities of
women are neither sound nor acute—neither vigorous nor keen. Perhaps they may want observation,
discernment, judgment, fire, genius, and wit.”

15. Novelty, taste and indulgence
Hogarth, Taste in High Life is an oil-on-canvas
painting (engraving seen on the right) from
around 1742.
This is Something New
(1777)

16. Elegance versus vulgarity in Emma
◦ Jane Fairfax was very elegant, remarkably elegant; and she had herself the highest value for elegance. Her height was pretty,
just such as almost every body would think tall, and nobody could think very tall; her figure particularly graceful; her size a
most becoming medium, between fat and thin, though a slight appearance of ill-health seemed to point out the likeliest evil
of the two. Emma could not but feel all this; and then, her face—her features—there was more beauty in them altogether
than she had remembered; it was not regular, but it was very pleasing beauty. Her eyes, a deep grey, with dark eye-lashes
and eyebrows, had never been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to cavil at, as wanting colour, had
a clearness and delicacy which really needed no fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the reigning
character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles, admire it:—elegance, which, whether of person or of mind,
she saw so little in Highbury. There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and merit.
◦ In short, she sat, during the first visit, looking at Jane Fairfax with twofold complacency; the sense of pleasure and the sense
of rendering justice, and was determining that she would dislike her no longer. When she took in her history, indeed, her
situation, as well as her beauty; when she considered what all this elegance was destined to, what she was going to sink
from, how she was going to live, it seemed impossible to feel any thing but compassion and respect; especially, if to every
well-known particular entitling her to interest, were added the highly probable circumstance of an attachment to Mr. Dixon,
which she had so naturally started to herself. In that case, nothing could be more pitiable or more honourable than the
sacrifices she had resolved on. Emma was very willing now to acquit her of having seduced Mr. Dixon’s actions from his wife,
or of any thing mischievous which her imagination had suggested at first. If it were love, it might be simple, single,
successless love on her side alone. She might have been unconsciously sucking in the sad poison, while a sharer of his
conversation with her friend; and from the best, the purest of motives, might now be denying herself this visit to Ireland,
and resolving to divide herself effectually from him and his connexions by soon beginning her career of laborious duty.

17. Elegance versus vulgarity in Emma
◦ “Here comes this dear old beau of mine, I protest!—Only think of his gallantry in coming away
before the other men!—what a dear creature he is;—I assure you I like him excessively. I admire
all that quaint, old-fashioned politeness; it is much more to my taste than modern ease; modern
ease often disgusts me. But this good old Mr. Woodhouse, I wish you had heard his gallant
speeches to me at dinner. Oh! I assure you I began to think my caro sposo would be absolutely
jealous. I fancy I am rather a favourite; he took notice of my gown. How do you like it?—Selina’s
choice—handsome, I think, but I do not know whether it is not over-trimmed; I have the
greatest dislike to the idea of being over-trimmed—quite a horror of finery. I must put on a few
ornaments now, because it is expected of me. A bride, you know, must appear like a bride, but
my natural taste is all for simplicity; a simple style of dress is so infinitely preferable to finery. But
I am quite in the minority, I believe; few people seem to value simplicity of dress,—show and
finery are every thing. I have some notion of putting such a trimming as this to my white and
silver poplin. Do you think it will look well?”

18. Taste and talent: Emma
◦ Chapter IX
◦ “Don’t class us together, Harriet. My playing is no more like her’s, than a lamp is like sunshine.”
◦ “Oh! dear—I think you play the best of the two. I think you play quite as well as she does. I am sure I had much
rather hear you. Every body last night said how well you played.”
◦ “Those who knew any thing about it, must have felt the difference. The truth is, Harriet, that my playing is just good
enough to be praised, but Jane Fairfax’s is much beyond it.”
◦ “Well, I always shall think that you play quite as well as she does, or that if there is any difference nobody would
ever find it out. Mr. Cole said how much taste you had; and Mr. Frank Churchill talked a great deal about your taste,
and that he valued taste much more than execution.”
◦ “Ah! but Jane Fairfax has them both, Harriet.”
◦ “Are you sure? I saw she had execution, but I did not know she had any taste. Nobody talked about it. And I hate
Italian singing.—There is no understanding a word of it. Besides, if she does play so very well, you know, it is no
more than she is obliged to do, because she will have to teach. The Coxes were wondering last night whether she
would get into any great family. How did you think the Coxes looked?”
◦ “Just as they always do—very vulgar.”