Technology, Self-Fashioning and Politeness in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Refined Bodies

A. Withey

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781137467478
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137467485
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The second half of the eighteenth century brought important changes in attitudes towards shaping the body. New expectations of polite conduct, deportment and demeanour were projected onto the body, with emphasis laid upon neatness, elegance and a 'natural' body shape. Deformities were to be concealed, whilst bodily surfaces were managed to convey a harmonious whole. A large number of 'technologies of the body' were involved in this process, including wooden legs, elastic trusses, and even wigs. But the introduction of a new type of steel - cast steel - around 1750, offered new material possibilities for shaping the body. The physical properties of steel transformed the design and function of many instruments, from postural devices to spectacles, and even the smallest daily items of toilette. By no means was steel the only material involved in transforming the body. Neither did it simply sweep away all that had gone before. But, as an 'enlightened metal', cast steel was a key material in the refinement of the body.

1

Shaping the Body: The Politics of Posture

Abstract: Bodies that were deformed, crooked or twisted were stigmatised in the eighteenth century. Apart from inviting ridicule, a body that was not ‘ideal’ could inhibit social prospects. Changing ideas about the body laid new emphasis on ‘correcting’ the vagaries of nature and restoring it to a ‘natural’ form. The elastic properties of cast steel rendered it a useful component in corrective devices. Makers who styled themselves as body specialists, rather than medical practitioners increasingly used it. Such devices ranged from trusses to treat hernias, to machines to correct posture and promote upright stance and ‘straightness’. The treatment of children and adolescents was seen as especially important for their future prospects. Devices were often extremely uncomfortable for users, as well as unsightly. Charting contemporary debates about the nature of ideal body shapes, Withey explores the eighteenth-century paradox of using unnatural means to achieve a natural shape.

Withey, Alun. Technology, Self-Fashioning and Politeness in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Refined Bodies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137467485.0006.

There are few diseases which afflict the Human Body, attended with greater disadvantages, than those produced by Distortion. It gives not only an unpleasing appearance, but innumerable complaints generally follow.¹

As the above statement from an 1800 advertisement suggests, deformed, ‘crooked’ or twisted bodies could seriously impede the social ambitions of their owners. Deformity was not merely physically discomforting. It also portended serious social consequences, not least in the mockery often meted out to the disabled. Many slang terms and insults were levelled at those whose physical appearance was enough to draw glances. According to James Caulfield, author of a 1793 dictionary of slang, ‘these unhappy people afford great scope for vulgar railleries’.² Imagining an encounter with a ‘crooked or hump-back’d person’, Caulfield detailed the sorts of insults that could be let loose. ‘Did you come straight from home? If so, you have got confoundedly bent by the way’, went one example. ‘Don’t abuse the gen’man’, adds a bystander, ‘he has been grossly insulted already ... don’t you see his back’s up?’³ Besides hurt feelings, there were more material concerns. Physical impairment could hinder women’s prospects of marriage, not to mention her hopes of romantic ardour. Some eighteenth-century singles’ advertisements even stipulated that the prospective match should be, as one put it, ‘without any deformity in her person’.⁴ Many afflictions were begotten by the conditions of daily life or simply through sloppy habits of posture. Occupations and pastimes requiring close work, bending and stooping could injure the shape of the human form, amongst them ‘holding down the head; putting out the chin; stooping in the shoulders; bending too much forwards and thrusting out the belly’.⁵

The period after 1750 was transformative in terms of attitudes towards bodily ideals, and the extent to which intervention was permissible and desirable. Work by Georges Vigarello, for example, has explored the early modern change from a culture in which children’s bodies required shaping, to one in which they were left to nature.⁶ However, the use of stays by women to enhance the visual aesthetic of their bodies increased and, by the 1760s, was integral to female bodily transformation.⁷ David Turner and others highlight the multifarious meanings of impairment in the long eighteenth century, and the various ways in which missing limbs, bent backs and twisted bodies were understood and articulated.⁸ As Turner notes, the use of terms like ‘lame’, ‘crippled’ and ‘deformed’ reflected broader connections of impaired bodies with ‘monstrosity’.⁹ The lexical focus lay firmly upon bent, misshapen and otherwise highly visible deformity. There were, however, also lesser degrees of impairment. Whilst no formal category existed in contemporary terminology, many bodies were irregular, rather than deformed. In his 1754 essay on disability, the MP William Hay, himself a sufferer of a spinal condition and restricted height, differentiated between degrees of disability. For Hay, spinal conditions were fundamentally different to, say, deafness or blindness, each of which resulted from different causes and had its own unique consequences.¹⁰ Hay also defined deformity as ‘visible to every eye’, suggesting a condition that was manifest and hard to disguise.¹¹ A combination of poor diet, hard working conditions and lack of adequate medical intervention into congenital diseases and defects in childhood further served to mark the body. In this sense much of the population probably inhabited bodies that did not conform to any sense of an ideal.

Many less acute conditions could be disguised to imitate a natural form. Many new devices aimed at subtle correction rather than root and branch reshaping. Indeed, as will be discussed, many bodily technologies were sold upon their ability to be dicreet, allowing the wearer to be indistinguishable from nature. Alongside correction was the second important issue of ‘improvement’. Whilst the visibly disabled and deformed perhaps formed the primary market for corrective devices, advertisers tapped popular fears about body image and addressed those seeking cosmetic ‘improvement’ of their own bodies, as well as preventative measures. Into this latter category fell parents keen to train their children’s posture.

In the early eighteenth century, the signs and symptoms of an impaired body might represent vagaries of nature, for which individuals held responsibility to correct.¹² For others correctional devices went against nature, and debates raged about the health risks involved in reshaping the body, as well as the moral consequences of bodily reshaping through vanity. Some viewed stays, collars and other corrective devices as deceitful, creating the mere phantasm of a natural body that evaporated once the person disrobed, revealing their true state. Constant tension existed between the quasi-medical need to prevent or correct deformity, and the social and cultural background of improvement. Nevertheless, by the second half of the eighteenth century, cultural shifts meant that the use of artificial means to restore or improve the body was no longer frowned upon. In the midst of a growing consumer market, bodily technologies could reflect fashion as well as function.¹³

Metallurgical innovation, particularly in steel, afforded new possibilities for bodily shaping. Recent work has focussed on the part played by steel in the construction, marketing and consumption of hernia trusses in the eighteenth century.¹⁴ Far less attention, however, has been paid to its broader impact upon devices for altering posture. Steel’s physical properties made it perfect for devices where support or compression was needed. But unlike the advertising of other products in this book, such as razors, the use of cast steel was not, of itself, a marketing tool for postural devices. Although makers sometimes claimed it as a superior alternative to other types of elastic materials, neither the ‘scientific’ nor ‘philosophical’ credentials were emphasised. Likewise, while makers of razors and spectacles could highlight the aesthetic appeal of their products, the emphasis in the marketing of postural devices was more often upon concealment and subtlety.

Importantly too, while medical professionals originally claimed dominion over the prescription, fitting and application of correctional devices, specialist makers began to circumvent practitioners, marketing their products directly at lay consumers. As this occurred, people took greater control over shaping their bodies. Debates raged about the efficac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Framing the Enlightened Body
• 1  Shaping the Body: The Politics of Posture
• 2  Shaving and Masculinity in Eighteenth- Century Britain
• 3  Managing the Body: The Material Culture of Personal Grooming
• 4  New Ways of Seeing: Sight, Spectacles and Self-Fashioning
• Coda: Surgical Instruments and Bodily Transformation
• Conclusion: (Re)constructing the Eighteenth-Century Body
• Select Bibliography
• Index