Women’s Domestic Activity in the Romantic-Period Novel, 1770-1820 by Joseph Morrissey

Author:Joseph Morrissey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Despite the quality of her performance , the ‘Dilettanti [...] were perfectly disposed to be as parsimonious to all without their line, as they were prodigal to all within it, of those sweet draughts of flattery, which they had so liberally interchanged with each other’ (Burney 1988, 295). Among the amateur female performers at this concert, there are many gradations of rank, and yet little snobbery is apparent between the ladies of fashion. Instead, snobbery manifests through refusing to acknowledge Juliet. Earlier I made the point that the Brighthelmstone musicians function as a proxy for the landed and commercial classes to express their distinct forms of snobbery in lieu of direct conflict between each other, and something similar occurs here. As someone who elides firm classification into either the genteel or middle classes, Juliet is a perfect object for displaced status anxiety or status snobbery.

There is also something else at work here insofar as the snootiness of the lady performers actually seems to operate to cement their intimacy. By all ignoring Juliet together, they suggest a solidarity between each other. As previously noted, Vickery shows that status anxiety was usually not sufficient to dissolve intimacy between the upper levels of society, and Burney suggests that the polite subscription concert might be a space in which this intimacy was fortified. By expressing indignation at reduced genteel performers , gradations of rank among the upper classes might be smoothed over.

Vickery (1998, 240–241) draws attention to the power of female patrons in running long eighteenth-century assemblies. For example, ‘As late as 1821, men about town still complained about the necessity of being on their best polite behavior at Almacks [gambling club] before “the fastidious PATRONESSES, that parade up and down here, as the arbiters of fame and fortune”’ (original italics).4 While this undoubtedly emphasises women’s autonomy, Burney cautions that there is no requirement that this autonomy be free of prejudice through Miss Arbe’s patronage of the subscription concert. Just as the female performers do not applaud Juliet, neither do the audience, but ‘had a single voice been raised in her favour, nearly every voice would have joined in the chorus’. Since Juliet’s ‘patroness was otherwise engaged [...] no one, therefore, deemed it prudent to begin’ (Burney 1988, 295). Where Vickery highlights how female patronage gave women a degree of power over men, Burney rather shows how it could be used to delineate class difference through the exclusion of female musicians , cementing intimacy between the higher-class characters through shared smugness into the bargain.

The hired band also excludes Juliet. Despite ‘the compliments which the whole company united to pour forth’ (Burney 1988, 294) on each other, ‘Ellis alone was heard in silence; for Ellis was unprotected, unsustained, unknown’ (Burney 1988, 294). As a figure on the periphery of the gentry, Juliet’s status is not quite as low as that of the band. Thus she is not one of them, and she is ignored by them just as she is by the genteel and aristocratic characters.

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