A01=Ingrid H. Tague
Aristocratic Power
Aristocratic Women
Author_Ingrid H. Tague
Book
Category=JBSF1
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
Correspondence
Cultural Change
Decadence
Diaries
Didactic Writers
Domesticity
Elite Women
English Women
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Femininity
feminism
Gender
Glorious Revolution
Hardback
Informal Social Activities
Ingrid Tague
Intellectual Change
Luxury
Middle-Class Ideology
Natural Feminine Behavior
Political Activities
Private Concerns
Quality
Reputation
Social Change
Social Critics
Status
Trivial Concerns
University of Denver
Wifely Subordination
Women
Product details
- ISBN 9780851159072
- Weight: 548g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 Oct 2002
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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An examination of the interaction between ideology and experience in the lives of English women during a period of great social and intellectual change.
Focusing on the complex relationship between discourse and experience, Women of Quality examines the role of gender in aristocratic women's daily lives during a period of significant cultural change. In the years followingthe Glorious Revolution, didactic writers and other social critics responded to a perceived crisis of gender relations by creating a new discourse of 'natural' feminine behavior in opposition to the luxury and decadence of fashionable women. Modern scholars have often portrayed this agenda as representing the rise of a middle-class ideology, but Ingrid Tague argues that the new rhetoric held enormous appeal for those women who would appear to be its greatest targets: wealthy, fashionable 'women of quality'. Using the correspondence and diaries of these women, Tague traces the ways in which they adopted, adapted, and exploited ideals of femininity. In their hands, feminine values could become powerful tools that enabled them to compete for status and reputation. Ironically, by identifying femininity with private, trivial concerns, these ideals created unique opportunities for elite women. Female participation in informal social and political activities placed women at the heart of aristocratic power in the early eighteenth century, even as they employed the language of wifely subordination and domesticity.
Ingrid Tague is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Denver.
INGRID TAGUE teaches in the department of history, Denver University.
