Working Class Freedom

Upper Class had their future planned out, they had every move mapped out and organized, but with the turn of the 19th century and the rise of the industrial revolution poor and middle class women ever given a gift.  This gift was opportunity.  There paths were no longer set in stone they had opportunity for movment up the social ladder and right to gain respond with out being required to be married.  Instead of following the trend rages to riches through marriage, one would use thier own minds and hands and hard work to elevate their status.

James Tissot, Young Lady of the Shop, 1883-85

James Tissot, painted the real world around him not only portrait for the rich upper class.  I Young Lady of the Shop,  He paints the working class women.  This women’s only hope 20 years earlier would be to look pretty and try and find a husband. Now she is able to work in this hat shop and make her own earnings. The door is open like it is the door to opportunity, and there is barrier to what will happen in the future. There is a man looking in at the women but it is he is not the the focus of the painting and they are not paying attention to him.  They no longer need a man to elevate their status or provide for them.  Work is their door to freedom.

Edouard Manet, Plum Brandy, ca 1877

Edouard Manet also paints a working class women with out a physical tie to men or marriage. This women is most likely a working class women who has just finished a day of work.  She could be a seamstress, or clerk, or work at a department store, non the less she has her own spending money and is relaxing with a glass of Plum Brandy and a cigarette.  She is out in public with out an escort and it is acceptable. She is not tied down by upper class society etiquette which would have required a male escort at this time.  She is out enjoying herself and her own personal earnings.

Vaudeville: Elevating the Middle Class Through Etiquette

Vaudeville was much more than Entertainment, Bengimen Fraknklin Keith its creators was a visionary who aided in the rise of the middle class and acceptance into society. Vaudeville created its own rules and etiquette which uplifted the quality of entertainment and respect of the middle class and mass entertainment. Before these rules were put into place the actives of a disgruntled audience was horrific.  For example “audiences expressed their disapproval of a theatrical performance by screaming, hollering, stomping, or throwing vegetables at the performers. In some cases, they even rushed the stage to attack the performers who they felt were particularly unworthy.” (Vaudeville)

Walter Sickert, The Old Bedford: Cupid in the Gallery, 1890

Walter Sickert paints The Old Bedford: Cupid in the Gallery and turns is gaze away from the stage and onto the audience as drama unfolds in theater seats. The seat he paints here are the cheapest seats often filled with lower class male patrons. These patrons were encouraged not to spit, but no rules were enforced and often heckling, fighting, and spitting was common practice.

With the introduction of Vaudeville, rules were printed and distributed to the audience by ushers. For examples this card would be printed and given to gentlemen attending the performance:

“Gentlemen will kindly avoid carrying cigars or cigarettes in their mouths while in the building, and greatly oblige. Gentlemen will kindly avoid the stamping of feet and pounding of canes on the floor, and greatly oblige the Management. All applause is best shown by clapping of hands. Please don’t talk during acts, as it annoys those about you, and prevents a perfect hearing of the entertainment.”

And if these rules were not followed there was concequences. Owner Keith explained “Our rule was to have the party approached by the usher first, second by the assistant head usher, then by the head usher, and lastly by the manager who would request the party to leave.”

Pamphlets and books were printed to enhance etiquette for the audiences, similar to those created for upper class children to study 20 years earlier:

Course to Vaudeville Entertainment

Everett Shinn, Footlight Flirtation, 1912

Everett Shinn paints the culture and rules of Vaudeville Culture,  although he was a British Patienter he still painted the change in theater etiquette. In Footlight Flirtation we see a women removing her hat, which was rule of Vaudeville.  In the early 1900’s women’s hats were becoming extravagantly large and in order to provide equal viewing opportunity for every one in the audience women were required to remove their hats. You also can see women on the right of bottom of the painting finding their seats unaccompanied.  Vaudeville clean entertainment was promoted as an acceptable entertainment for single or working women to attend.  These women are probably “New Money” and part of the rising upper middle class with spending money.  The theater would be an acceptable opportunity for them to go out, and enjoy their extra earnings.

Etiquette was initially created as means to separate the upper class from lower and middle class but Vaudeville help to elevate the middle class by introducing new and European etiquette lessons.  It also promoted the idea of the new found independent women who could attend entertainment by themselves.

 

 

Vaudeville: Bridging Classes

American Vaudeville was entertainment created for the middle class masses.  A group of intuitive business men headed by Benjamin Franklin Keith capitalized on the rising American middle class, which was created after the American Civil War during the industrial revolution, at the beginning of the 20^th century.   With a middle class who had more spending power, more leisure time, and a need for somewhere to go, Vaudeville entertainment stepped into fill this need. Vaudeville is a term “referring specifically to American variety entertainment, came into common usage after 1871”  (Vaudeville A History) This entertainment was widely varied from comedians, dancers, circus acts, magicians, theater productions, and later on movie clips.  Brochures and posters from the time stated that “there is something for everybody.” (Vaudeville A History)

Benjamin Franklin Keith

Vaudeville was created by businessman to provide entertainment but it also provided education in etiquette for a rising middle class. Vaudeville was family friendly entertainment that was no explicit sexual content and no profanity.  Benjamin Keith ordered performers to eliminate “ “vulgarity and suggestiveness in words, action, and costume” (Vaudeville A History).  Rules were not just created for the performers but Rules were created to guide and to teach the new middle class theater etiquette these rules included no heckling, stomping, or spitting.  This was a form of entertainment fathers felt comfortable letting their daughters go to unaccompanied.  Working women could buy tickets and see the show themselves.

Vaudeville Performers, Something for Everyone!

Continuous Vaudeville

Vaudeville entertainment was revolutionary because there were not timelines or curtain calls.  There would be many different acts looping to form a continuous performance. Numbers would be displayed outside the theater door to show which act was currently being performed.  The acts would build and decline in desirability with act seven being the most highlight of the evening. Audience members could come and go as they pleased so the performances could fit into any working class person’s time schedule.

Vaudeville Theater

New venues were created to capitalize on this new form of entertainment.  When Vaudeville first was becoming popular, performances took place where ever there was open space, amusement parks, town halls, schools, and public spaces.  Although as popularity of the performances rose large ornate theater halls sprung up in every major city across the country.  These halls such as the Paramount Theatre in Seattle were decorated lavishly, with high ceilings, dramatic lighting, rich velvety seating, and exquisite gold molding.  Privilege and luxury were brought to the poor and middle classes, “The age of luxury seems to have reached its ultima thule. The truth of this has never been impressed upon one so forcibly as in a visit to Keith’s dream palace of a theatre . . . .It is almost incredible that all this elegance should be placed at the disposal of the public, the poor as well as the rich.^” (Vaudeville A History).  Someone no longer had to be rich in order to enjoy lavish entertainment and privilege.

Vaudeville entertainment and theaters brought about change to America.  Vaudeville theaters became melting pots for Americans, locations where classes, poor and middle class would mix, and have equal opportunity to be entertained.  They were also places where a rising middle class could was taught European influenced etiquette and started to narrow the gap between the lower and upper classes.

Etiquette: Cradle to Coffin

At the turn of the 20th century children were considered small adults and they were treated as such.  Upper class children had tutors or governess to take care of them and teach them how to enter into society as proper polite and respectable young adults.  Etiquette books were printed as guide lines for children to follow, all aspects of a child life was mapped out and controlled.

Books such as Etiquette for Little Folks (part of “Susie Sunbeam’s Series”) was printed in Boston in 1856. It’s a model of didactic mid-19th century children’s literature, and rules children were expected to adhere by.

Etiquette for Little Folk, 1856

Etchings from the Sunshine Series, 1856

Etchings from this book and others like it depict proper behavior, the little girl is taking her brother under her wing and instructing him in proper behavior.  She is becoming a leader and stepping into her adult role.  They have laid down their toys and are intrigued with this new information regarding manners and etiquette. There mother sits in the background contentedly sewing or knitting watching her perfect offspring excel in societies expectation.  This family model etching sets the standard for child and mother relationships.

The text of this etiquette book is bold letter print with not any froufrou text or stories, it is rule after rule, shaping the lives of children of the day.  Some rules from this society include directly quoted from the sunshine series :

 At Home:  If you wish to speak to your parents, and see them engaged in discourse with company, draw back, and leave your business till afterwards; but if it is really necessary to speak to them, be sure to whisper. Never speak to you parents without some title of respect, as Sir, Madam, &c.  Never make faces or contortions, nor grimaces, while any one is giving you commands.  Use respectful and courteous language towards all the domestics. Never be domineering or insuting, for it is the mark of an ignorant and purse-proud child.

At the Table:  Sit not down until your elders are seated. It is unbecoming to take your place first. When you are helped, be not the first to eat.

Among Other Children: Be not selfish altogether, but kind, free, and generous to others.  Scorn not, nor laugh at any because of their infirmities; nor affix to any one vexing title of contempt and reproach; but pity such as are so visited, and be glad you are otherwise distinguished and favored.

In School: Bow at entering, especially if the teacher be present. Make not haste out of school, but soberly retire when your turn comes, without hurrying.

In the Street: Jeer not any person whatever. Give your superiors place to pass before you, in any narrow place where two persons cannot pass at once.

Going to a Company: A young person ought to be able to go into a room, and address the company, without the least embarrassment.

Cleanliness: Now, clean garments and a clean person, are as necessary to health, as to prevent giving offence to other people. It is a maxim with me, which I have lived to see verified, that he who is negligent at twenty years of age, will be a sloven at forty, and intolerable at fifty.

Modesty: Nothing can atone for the want of modesty; without it, beauty if ungraceful, and wit detestable.

Good Breading: Observe the best and most well-bred of the French people; how agreeably they insinuate little civilities in their conversation. They think it so essential that they call an honest and civil man by the same name, of “honnete homme;” and the Romans called civility, “humanitas,” as thinking it inseparable from humanity: and depend upon it, that your reputation and success will, in a great measure, depend upon the degree of good breeding of which you are master.

This final warning is a threat to children, if they do not fallow the guide lines of good breeding they will fall into a lower class of society.

Édouard Manet, The Railway (Gare Saint-Lazare) , 1872-73

The etching above of the little girl, is the picture of a proper young lady studying manners.  This etching is reflected in Manet painting, The Railway.   A young women who has accepted her role in societies turns away from the fence.  She is properly dressed in the fashion of the time, perhaps in morning clothing, her puppy sits quietly on her lap as a fashionable accessory of the time.  She is proper and prim as she reads her book, perhaps an etiquette book of the time.  She sits with her back again the fence to the train station, rejecting or ignoring the new era of the industrial revolution. She has accepted her role in society and is resigned to fulfill it.  The smaller girl has her back turned towards the train and the future, she is still properly dressed for her age, but she is looking out past the fence trapping her in.  She is not properly posing for the painting but defying society by turning her back, she has not yet been molded to fit into proper society.

Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in Blue Armchair, 1878

Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in Blue Armchair, Is a painting of frustration, board-um, and reality.  This little girl has escaped into an area free from rules and expectations, but she still is trapped in the house.  Her mother, father, or governess must be away for the moment, so she is taking advantage of this freedom and letting her undergarments show.  She is slouching in the chair with nothing to do.  She is trapped in the house with nothing to do, as a small proper lady she is not allowed to get messy or rough house so she is trapped by societies expectations and etiquette, yet is is escaping for a few min to be a board small child. She is expected to be a proper lady for her entire life.

For more information about etiquette books visit: http://the-panopticon.blogspot.com/2012/01/lopaprogress.html

Etiquette: Defense and Attack of the Upper Class

At the turn of the 20^th Century there was a division of the upper class, due to the rise of the industrial revolution two groups were created the terms “old money” and “new money” were coined.   A strong movement among “Old Money” to avoid social mixing was created, and in rebuttal the “New Money” etiquette books were created to educate men and women as they stepped into new social rolls and society’s.

I would explain more about etiquette, but researcher Cas Wouters in her journal articles ” Etiquette books and emotion management in the 20th Century” paints a clear picture of what and how society could control and segregate classes with media and manners.

“One of the functions of etiquette is to draw and maintain social dividing lines, to include new groups that have ‘the necessary qualifications’ and to exclude the ‘rude’–that is, all others lower down the social ladder. In this way, changes in etiquette convey changes in established-outsider relationships, that is, in power relationships. Another function of etiquette is, within an environment protected by exclusion, to develop forms of behavior and feeling that are considered and experienced as ‘tactful’, ‘kind’, ‘considerate’ and ‘civilized’. The social definitions presented in etiquette books are dominated by the established, those who are ‘included’… Etiquette is a weapon of defense as well as a weapon of attack. Rules of etiquette function to define the boundaries between those who belong and those who do not belong to the group; they function to hold outsiders at bay and to set standards of sensitivity and consideration which preserve the (feeling of) purity and integrity of the group, group-identity and group-charisma. This paradoxical function of etiquette, as an instrument of exclusion or rejection on the one hand, and on the other as an instrument of inclusion or group-charisma, I call the Janus-Head of etiquette.[4]”

This group identity through etiquette separated classes which gave power to the rich, but it had a dark side.  This dark side mainly affected mainly women at the beginning and end of the 20^th century; the social etiquettes that freed them from a life of poverty alienated them from a life of free will. The rules spoken, taught, and written were dividers between the ‘good’ and ‘lesser’ people.

James Tissot, Early

This young women has fallen pray to etiquette.  Tissot paints the young women in blush arriving too early to the ball.  She stands in the middle of the floor abashed, and awkward.  Even the blush of her dress reflects the situation.  The hostess is talking to the musicians trying to figure out what to do, and how to fix the situation.  An assigned etiquette protocol has not yet been assigned to this situation yet, and it is jumping out side the boundaries of polite. Perhaps this young women is part of the class of “New Money”  and has not been brought up going to balls, being drilled in regards to social expectations for dances.  Her lack of knowledge of social etiquette has separated her from the rest, and made her inferior and the one to be laughed at.

 

Relax in the Country

In the country compared to the city etiquette rules were more relaxed.  Female Painter Mary Cassatt spent a portion of her time in the country because she could escape social rules herself.  She portrayed the relaxed atmospheric of the her work.

Mary Cassatt, A Woman and a Girl Driving, 1881

A woman and Girl Driving,  is an image of Mary’s sister Lydia Cassatt with the niece of Edgar Degas.  They are driving through the Bois de Boulogne, the rural country are out side of Pairs.  Still accompanied by a male supposedly a groom, Lydia is allowed to drive, which would be improper in the city.

Mary Cassatt, The Boating Party, 1893-94

The Boating Party,

Mistresses out to Play

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Theater Box, La Loge, 1874

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Theater Box, 1874 This painting looks at the rage of Parisian society the theater, but not at a stage of theatrical productions but a social stage where relationships are one display. Instead of painting the stage Renoir paints the theater box and the dynamics between the couple taking up residence there.   The woman is “most likely a mistresses” says Art History Professor Melanie Enderle, “the theater is where you took your mistress while your  w left your wife at home.” We can speculate that this women is a mistress because she is heavenly made up extra white power and red lips and her dress is ostentatious and low cut.  She has also lowered her opera glasses allowing herself to be admired and noticed by the other audience members, while her male companion is doing just the opposite.  He has raised his glasses in order to admire other ladies of the theater.  For more infomation about Renoir’s paitings at the theater visit Renoir at the Theater.

Jean-Louis Forain, The Public Garden, ca 1884

 

This women is most likely a upper class courtesan or Mistress.  She is painted in red, a color of passion.  She is also leaning against the pillar, if she was of an upper class upbringing she would be standing up properly.  It is unclear if she has a male companion, but she looks as if she is alone looking, allowing herself to be seen.  She is presenting herself the crowd most likely looking for a date.  The woman standing behind her with the red feathered hat is probably a respectable women acceptable prostitution in her society. Compared to a married women in this society the women dressed in red is out enjoying the company of men, and the night, where a married women would be expected to stay home.

Trapped by Finery

 

 

William Steer Mrs Cyprian Williams and her Two little Girls 1891 depicts an upper class women sitting with her children in a furnished drawing room.  Steer work was influenced by Edgar Degas as well as Japanese block prints which influences the tone, cropping, and posture of this piece.  This painting’s sever cropping conveys a sense of claustrophobia and confinement of Mrs. Cyprian Williams; confinement from the rest of the world but also a separation from her daughters.  She is separated from the childish play of her daughters physically because diagonal line of the platform in the room but also by her posture and emotions.  Mrs. Williams posture is proper but relaxed as her back is touching the chair she is sitting in, the posture of her daughters is childish with their legs open like ballet dancers or men, their age does not require them to enter into the world of proper rules yet. Her gaze and posture is directed away from her children non-interactive and lost, reinforcing the sense of separation.  Mrs. Cyprian Williams was a successful armature artist, yet as a upper class woman she was still expected to stay at home.  In the background behind the second child you can see evidence of her art as a painting leaning against the wall and easel with a paintbrush protruding from paint jar.   At this time is was rare to see a professional female artist, Mary Cassatt being one of the rare exception, because a women’s job once she has had children was to take care of them.

Mary Cassatt was one of the only successful known professional artist of the time, and she had to forgo getting married in order to pursue her career, according to Mary’s biography, “Mary Cassatt is one of the rare women who lived of her work at this time not being married.” As a women living in this time Cassatt was able to shed light on women’s roles in society and their house confinement.  This painting Five O’ Clock Tea 1880 tells us the boredom of encouraged and acceptable social outings of tea time.

In Five O’ Clock Tea 1880  Cassett also traps her subjects by the sever crop of the frame as well as the table in front of the two ladies.  The vertical lines of the wall paper behind the women was fashionable for the time, but could be viewed as prison bars, there is no escape from the life these women were born into.  The forward most woman

There was a social rule for everything.  Linked is a quick guide 19th Century Etiquette and it is mind boggling all the rules a women or gentle man could break.

 

Freedom in Poverty

Welcome to Freedom in Poverty, an art history blog which will explore gender stereotypes of women and men at the turn of the 20th century in London, Paris, New York, and Tokyo.  Through this blog I hope to explore the hypothesis that, low class more impoverished women, had more social freedoms than those of richer members of the community. This was due to societies expectation of upper class ruled by strick etiquette rules, which were more relaxed or excusable in lower classes.