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Presentation
The Conservatism of 1784: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and ‘Representative Publicness
South Central Modern Language Association (2004)
  • Adrianne Wadewitz, Occidental College
Abstract

The 1784 Westminster election has garnered a lot of attention because of the extraordinary contemporary reactions, both positive and negative, to the participation of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Historians such as Amanda Foreman, Elaine Chalus, Anne Stott, and Judith Lewis have used this election to illustrate the potential for female political involvement during the eighteenth-century. They also convincingly argue that the harsh criticism leveled at Georgiana was a consequence of her ‘democratic’ canvassing techniques and not a reaction to her sex, but their analyses lack a clear framework that accounts for the violence of the responses. I would like to suggest that the uproar surrounding Georgiana’s electioneering was a result of the anxieties of an aristocratic class struggling to hold onto its traditional powers in the face of an emerging bourgeois public sphere. A close analysis of the electoral rhetoric swirling around Georgiana using Jürgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in addition to a consideration of the ways gender complicated this event will help to demonstrate this class conflict. According to Habermas, before the emergence of the modern ‘public,’ no public sphere existed outside of the state or that which represented the state. That is, the only kind of ‘publicness’ was that generated through the symbolism of aristocratic spectacle, what Habermas terms ‘representative publicness.’ Habermas explains that ‘representative publicness’ was ‘not constituted as a social realm, that is, as a public sphere; rather, it was something like a status attribute.’ He describes it as a ‘strict code of “noble” conduct’ that involved ‘the staging of the publicity involved in representation.’ Georgiana’s ‘democratic’ electioneering tactics challenged this aristocratic notion of ‘representative publicness’ while both the Whig rhetoric defending her and the opposition rhetoric attacking her implicitly support this older idea by presenting the ideal image of an aristocratic electioneer as one based upon ‘representative publicness.’ Moreover, beneath the gendered rhetoric of the debate is a real concern with the challenge mounted by the emerging bourgeois power structures. For not only was ‘public opinion’ becoming more important at the end of the eighteenth-century, but as P.J. Jupp reminds us, the nature of parliamentary politics itself was changing from a familial model to a professional political model. Both the opposition and the Whig leaders were trying to preserve the older aristocratic model. Thus, although Georgiana’s conduct itself may have been more ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive,’ the rhetoric of the debate about that conduct exposes a profoundly ‘conservative’ and slightly reactionary 1784. I will suggest that the rhetoric of the 1784 Westminster election both displayed a reactionary and conservative emphasis on ‘representative publicness’ and that it chose to express its anxiety through gender because of the increasing pressures being put upon the old patriarchal order by both aristocratic women and the rising middling sorts.

Keywords
  • eighteenth-century literature
Publication Date
October, 2004
Citation Information
Adrianne Wadewitz. "The Conservatism of 1784: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and ‘Representative Publicness" South Central Modern Language Association (2004)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/adrianne_wadewitz/18/