Title: The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities
Author: Richard Bushman
Year of Publication: 1992
Thesis:
Argues that a culture of "gentility," seemingly antithetical to capitalism, turned out to be the driving economic force that turned producers who would otherwise be savers and reinvesting in business (think of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) into consumers. Primarily concerned with (white) middle-class interests, he shows how much of gentility proved to be presentation, creating an inwardly and outwardly critical sense of distinction by appearance and behavior. This not only allowed for the (white) middle class, who, according to Bushman, adopted a "vernacular gentility," to heap disdain on people they considered peasants, and selectively adopt what they perceived as values and appearance of the aristocracy.
Time: 1690-1850
Geography: American Colonies, especially Delaware
Organization:
With vignettes from families, then a systematic accounting for their material culture.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
- Increase in number of mansions after 1720 in Delaware
- Shift in location of rooms
- "They wished to transform themselves along with their environments." (xii)
- Idea of gentility moves from Renaissance (1690) in Europe -> England -> U.S. (xii)
- U.S. style eventually changes in sync with England (this seems similar to style shifts in Mexico - need to check on this, but mid-1800s along with Díaz or did this happen before? ...)
- People who appear not to belong are mocked (xiii)
- Middling people acquire "vernacular gentility" - end of 18th, early 19th century (xiii)
- This book as a curation (cool idea, xiv)
- Performance & gentility go hand in hand (Irving Goffman idea) (xiv)
- Performing on the outside, judging internally - if this hasn't stuck with us I do not know what has (xiv)
- Ugliness important to contrast with beautiful (xiv)
- "Not only was criticism directed outward to others, but people had to watch themselves through the eyes of others. They had to perform for themselves and suffer from their own self-criticism. Performance was unrelenting." (xiv)
- The parlor as genteel performance, but seldom used (xvi)
- Owners had to physically transform themselves as they came into the parlor - describes this as an uneasy event (xv)
- On the paradox of capitalism and gentility:
- "Capitalism rested on an ethic of disciplined work and self-denial in the effort to maximize production and reinvestment. To flourish in a capitalist economy one had to husband resources for investment and devote oneself doggedly to productive effort." But later, he points out that capitalism also relies on consumption. So an ideology of gentility actually fuels capitalism buy turning producers into consumers (xvii, xviii)
GENTILITY 1700-1790
I. The Gentrification of Rural Delaware
II. The Courtesy-Book World
III. Bodies and Minds
IV. Houses and Gardens
V. Cities and Churches
VI. Ambivalence
RESPECTABILITY 1790-1850
VII. Vernacular Gentility in Rural Delaware
- Uses Ridgely family to show rising merchant class alongside existing aristocrats.
- Assessment of their material culture.
- Ends with Mary Welsch, who is indicative of her connection to aristocracy and demeaning of laborers/famers (all considered "peasants.") (235)
VIII. The Comforts of Home
(8,9,10 - gentility, domesticity, and religion interact with one another to create a composite of middle-class virtue) (xvii)
- No professional architects prior to 1800 "as we understand the term" (243)
- architecture as art (includes the house as well as the surroundings - reminds me of Frank Lloyd Wright) (245) & also seems to draw on the Renaissance descriptions of women in pastoral settings.
- *esthetics and utility become a thing (250)
IX. Literature and Life
X. Religion and Taste
XI. City and Country
XII. Culture and Power
- Gentility used to establish respectability, distinction (404)
- "Appearance and manners" become the way people judge others (404)
- Gentility becomes a marketable industry in and of itself (406-407)
Notes
Index
List of Illustrations and Credits
Type:
Material Culture
Methods:
Sources:
Historiography:
Keywords:
genteel
civil
urbane
gentility
polite society
"With the houses went new modes of speech, dress, body carriage, and manners that gave an entirely new cast to the conduct and appearnace of the American gentry. Altogether these changes created what the eighteenth century called polite society.
- architectural author
Themes:
- Paradox of social equality w/aristocratic leanings (xv)
- Irony of an anti-capitalistic culture (gentility) fueling the economy (xviii)
- Past as aristocratic (and authoritarian) and future as democratic and capitalistic
- rural/urban
Critiques:
Discussion of slavery and gentility 392-396, but no apparent discussion of servants and how they fit into this equation.
Questions:
Quotes:
"Gentility flecked lives without coloring them." (xii)
On the paradox of gentility and equality:
"Gentility was worldly not godly, it was hierarchical not egalitarian, and if favored leisure and consumption over work and thrift. These values ran at cross-purposes with religion, republicanism, and the work ethic, powerful complexes of values subscribed to by the same people who wanted to become genteel. But instead of leading to competition for dominance, as might be expected, in most instances the result of the interplay was mutual exchange and compromise." (xvi,xvii)
On Gentility and Commerce:
- "The irony and incongruity of this exalted impulse is that it was so fully put to the service of commerce in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Capitalism joined forces with emulation to spread gentility wherever the lines of commerce could reach. Without the mass production of genteel goods, ordinary people with limited incomes could not have afforded the accoutrements of refinement. Entrepreneurs responded to every sign of increasing demand for fabric, furniture, parlors, clothing, and ingeniously provided them at affordable prices." (406) - so you really need to look at where the raw goods are to make this analysis whole.
"At the same time, gentility did its part in advancing capitalism. A large market for consumer goods was a prerequisite for industrialization. Industrial capitalism would not come into existence in America until workers willingly spent all they earned to purchase the products of the factories. Gentility served the vital role of turning producers into consumers, helping to form the national market on which industrialization rested. Gentility and capitalism collaborated in the formation of consumer culture, gentility creating demand and capitalism manufacturing supply. All the participants in the emerging industrial system had a vest interest, understood or not, in the promotion of gentility.
Notes:
This is so interesting with respect to Bourdieux. And now that I am thinking about it, from there must develop whiteness as social, political, and economic capital.