Spaces of Sociability in Fashionable Society: Brighton and Nice, c.1825–35



Chalus, EH ORCID: 0000-0002-5146-2526
(2019) Spaces of Sociability in Fashionable Society: Brighton and Nice, c.1825–35. In: Gendering Spaces in European Towns, 1500-1914. Routledge,New York, pp. 75-94. ISBN 978-0-415-71698-7

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Abstract

The annual reconstitution of fashionable society was central to the success of the social Season in the spa town. This chapter takes a case-study approach, through the letters and journals of a middle-aged widow, Elizabeth (Betsey), Lady Fremantle, to identify and examine the spaces of sociability available to, and employed by, elite women in two leading spa towns, Brighton and Nice, in the early nineteenth century. It argues that the construction of a cohesive social group was a transactional process that depended not so much upon place as upon space (that is, upon places used for purpose), and that the creation of fashionable society required the cooperative effort of individuals with shared social skills, behaviours and beliefs-people from different regions, or even countries, but with a shared social vocabulary based on similar class-based socialization-who used the physical provision of the town to establish and replicate spaces of sociability that served both individual and collective needs. These spaces or urban sociability played a vital role in establishing personal identities and fulfilling personal desires, as well as in engendering group cohesion and constructing social identities.

Item Type: Book Section
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 26 Mar 2019 16:40
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 00:56
DOI: 10.4324/9781315871684
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URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3034982