Читать книгу A Companion to Global Gender History - Группа авторов - Страница 61

While material culture studies have been enormously important for recovering women’s voices and experiences, this is not the only way in which the methodology has made a contribution to gender history. Histories of consumption that are attuned to questions of gender often focus on material objects and the intersection of the three approaches has led to important findings. Anishanslin, who has brought to light the work of silk designer Maria Garthwaite, has also, in the same work, introduced the figure of Anne Shippen Willing, a wealthy Philadelphia woman who was a consumer of fine silk dresses, one of which was made of a pattern designed by Garthwaite (Figure 7.4). Where the pattern showed how Garthwaite was connected to the natural history networks of her time, the dress made from the pattern can be studied to give us clues about the woman who had the dress made and chose to have her portrait painted in it. Her consumption of this sort of garment was not accidental and it can tell us both about her as an individual and the role she played in her society.

Anne Shippen was the daughter and wife of affluent Quakers in Pennsylvania. Despite her well‐to‐do status, Shippen, like Garthwaite, has not left much in the shape of a paper trail that can shed more light on her as a person. Objects like the portrait offer important clues for understanding a woman of her station living in eighteenth‐century Philadelphia. What we can surmise is that Shippen used her access to wealth to acquire goods that helped her fashion an identity for herself as a woman of standing in her community. This can be seen in the pattern she chose, the cut of the dress, which showed off her ample figure, and the decision to have the portrait made.

The Chinese influence seen in the pattern that showed Garthwaite’s ability to adapt designs also shows Shippen’s preferences for designs that displayed an “oriental” influence. Such designs showed a worldliness on the part of the consumer, a trait that Shippen must have been eager to espouse as the wife of an influential businessman in Philadelphia. The decision to have the dress tailored in such a way that would emphasize the fullness of her bosom, and for the portrait to also show this off, can be interpreted as means of signaling her fertility. Giving birth to children was the most important way in which she could be seen to contribute to her family and society according to the norms of the time, and Shippen fulfilled this role more than adequately. She had seven children by the time the portrait was made and gave birth to 11 altogether.

The portrait made Anne Shippen visible to historians, and once she is known to us we can begin to analyze what else we can learn about her through the portrait (and other sources). We might wonder how she was able acquire the fine dress seen in the portrait. Where exactly did the money come from that allowed Shippen to be the consumer of luxury goods and to be in a position to commission a portrait? Her husband, it seems, was a trader of the kinds of fine textiles seen in the portrait, but he was also one of the major participants in the slave trade in Philadelphia. Through this fact the dress becomes entangled in yet another transatlantic network. It was brought over to New England through the trade networks between Europe and the Americas, but much of this trade and other businesses on both sides of the Atlantic were undergirded by the trade of slaves from Africa to the Americas.

Through Anishanslin’s analysis of this particular silk dress, we see the polysemic nature of objects in action. The same object can be studied to offer clues about the lives of two different people living across the ocean from each other. The same object tells us about the skills of its producer and also of the desires of its consumer. The same object could be used to connect Garthwaite to networks that were sharing botanical knowledge and to connect Shippen to the trade of silks and slaves, which was what generated the wealth that allowed her to buy the silk. Shippen’s desire for and consumption of worldly goods, and that of women like her, was one of the motors of the global economy of the eighteenth century. Indeed, one of the ways in which material culture studies and gender studies have made an important contribution is to show the power of women as consumers, especially in the early modern period where we see the formation of global trade.

However, women were not and are not the only consumers of goods, even though shopping is considered a female activity. If we look at premodern consumption, men too were keen connoisseurs of textiles and were also susceptible to changes in fashion. The history of the men’s gown in the eighteenth century illustrates this well. Long robe‐like garments were used in European dress for centuries; however, by studying the objects and other visual material, we see a distinct shift in the design of the gowns and the meanings ascribed to them in the eighteenth century. The gowns of the period are made after Asian designs, especially the Japanese kimono, and there is a noticeable increase in men choosing to have their portraits painted wearing such gowns (Figures 7.5 and 7.6) (Cunningham, 1984).

Figure 7.5 Gown made in the “Eastern” style with Chinese export silk, 1760–70. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Scholars have tried to understand the interest in this particular type of gown in eighteenth‐century Europe and have suggested that the gown helped men fashion new ideas of masculinity at the time (Fennetaux, 2004; Lemire, 2013). As seen with the silk dress worn by Anne Shippen, the gown could be a means of showing off one’s worldliness and access to goods from afar. Yet, considering that it was a piece of clothing that specifically was designed for men and popularized by them, it also served as a tool to signal other values that were important to elite men in the era. Since it was a piece of clothing, we are naturally inclined to think what impact it had on the body that it adorned. Ariane Fennetaux has argued that the looseness of the gown allowed men to feel free and unrestricted, unlike the clothes that they were expected to wear outside the home and for formal and professional occasions. According to her, discussions of the value of these garments aligned with the broader philosophical debate going on in the eighteenth century on nature versus structure. The fashion for such gowns allowed men to be in a relaxed state of dress and even be proud of their ability to do so.

Yet, at the same time, when these men chose to have themselves painted in their gowns they often fashioned themselves as scholars and artists. By presenting themselves as such, they put forth a new idea of the “modern man,” one who was industrious even in his time of repose, since he was shown to be in a study or a studio engaging in some intellectual activity. However, this new idea of manliness was not an uncomplicated one. The material of the gown, silk, suggested a luxuriousness that contradicted the sentiment of industriousness and could even have been seen to be effeminate by some. For Fenneteux these contradictions and tensions are precisely telling of the changing ideas about masculinity in the eighteenth century.

Figure 7.6 Francis Hayman, 1707/8–1776, British, Dr. Charles Chauncey, M.D., 1747. Oil on canvas. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

For Beverly Lemire the gown and the portraits represent another aspect of this modern masculinity of the eighteenth century, that of a man who was adventurous, seen both in the decision to adopt a foreign garment and in choosing to portray himself as a traveler or someone interested in travel and exploration through the accoutrements used in the paintings, of which the gown was one. For Lemire this idea was new for the eighteenth century. The fact that two scholars have made related but distinct points about notions of masculinity in eighteenth‐century Europe using the same objects and paintings is telling of the fact that men were testing the boundaries of what defined a “man” at the time. They used their ability to consume foreign objects as a way to mold new identities that reflected the changing mores of the societies they lived in.

Through the example of the silk garments in the eighteenth century we see that consumption was a gendered activity. Not only did men and women buy certain types of things based on their gender, but they used the things they bought, such as dresses and gowns, to create new ways of being feminine or masculine, thus giving shape to or creating new gender norms.