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MODULE TITLE…………Being Human: From the Renaissance to Freud

TITLE OF ESSAY................................................................................................................

In what respects has clothing and dress been an important factor in the discourse of what

it is to be human in the eighteenth century?

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WORD COUNT……………………4518…………………………………………………………………..

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Clothing is the most visible form of identity when defined in accordance with Eicher &

Roach-Higgins as an ‘’assemblage of body modifications and/or supplements displayed by a

person in communicating with other human beings.’’ In other words the construction of

garments worn upon the body are the visible representation of the body in culture; clothing

traverses the boundary between the private and the public, representing the personal,

biological body and an individual’s attitude toward it as well as demonstrating societies

attitudes towards the body.1 Clothing’s importance to discourses on identity cannot be

underestimated, it physically shapes the wearers identity in regards to the space in which

they find themselves but also shapes the wearer’s identity in terms of culture perceptions. To

give credence to this notion of clothing’s social and biological capacity Gorgio Riello and Peter

McNeill have demonstrated that shoes actively construct the wearers identity, the perception

of them in culture and their role in society through creating barriers or aiding in an

individual’s life, drawing parallels between sociocultural limits and the biological, physical

limits that shoes put on a person by changing the way in which they walk, their height and

their posture.2 In regards to the question of human nature, if we take the fact that there is no

objective, universally true form of human nature and that human nature is constructed by

contextual ‘historical forms’ then dress becomes an apt way of exploring historically what

was believed to the human condition when taken into account that dress in the form of

fashion represents peoples interpretation of ‘a specific form of culture for their own

purposes, one that includes strong norms about appropriate appearances at a particular

point in time’.3 The Eighteenth Century is an important period in regards to the discourse of

dress and what it is to be human because it bore witness to much of the Enlightenment, which

although was not a monolithic institution, saw fundamental changes in interpretations of

human nature through the milieu of discourses on the ‘human sciences’ and philosophy that

are characteristic of the century. However it is not simply for that matter that the Eighteenth

1 Crane, Dianna. (2000) Fashion and its Social Agendas- Class, Gender, And Identity in clothing. London: University of Chicago Press. Pp.1-2 & Echer, Joanne B. &Roach-Higgins, Mary Ellen. (1992). Clothing and Identity. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal. 10:1. 2 Riello, Gorgio, and Peter McNeill . (2006) Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers. Eds. Riello, G. and Peter McNeil. Oxford: Berg.. P.53 Smith, Roger. (2007). Being Human – Historical Knowledge And the Creation of Human Nature. New York: Columbia University Press. & Crane, Dianna. (2000) Fashion and its Social Agendas- Class, Gender, And Identity in clothing. London: University of Chicago Press

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century has been the chosen timeframe in which to explore this question of clothing and

human nature. The century saw fundamental changes in the makeup of western society with

the revolutions that occurred in its closing years; and these revolutions, notably the French,

provide an excellent example of the changing conceptions of human nature through the

oppositional identities and views on human nature that are represented by the costumes of

rival revolutionary factions. There are three key areas where this essay will focus, the first of

which is the importance of clothing in the eighteenth century as a way in which European

thinkers enabled themselves to demonstrate difference between peoples and thus justify

certain conceptions on human nature and race theory. Secondly this essay will interrogate

the way in which dress was seen as representative of the internal self and the importance this

had in the representation of differing strands of thought on what it is to be human; and

thirdly there will be an exploration into how dress demonstrates the changing conceptions of

humanity towards the Homo-economicus model of human nature when the consumption and

production of dress is factored into the debate. It is the hope of this essay that in exploring

these factors I will demonstrate the role of dress in the construction of human nature; dress

as a means of imposing hierarchies in terms of race class and gender through fostering

collective identity; and finally how clothing represents popular conceptions of human nature.

To start, dress in the Enlightenment is a demonstration of a hierarchical conception of

human nature built on a platform of opposition in terms of race, class and gender. Exploration

in the Early-Modern period and the discovery of extra-European peoples came with it

challenges to what was believed to be human, a question often framed in terms of why races

were different. This question was the implicit focus of Georges-Louis Buffon’s 1740 work,

Systema Naturae (The System of Nature) and its later 1758 edition which provides a

classification of man in terms of racial groups. Buffon’s four classificatory groups coupled

with Adam Ferguson’s 1776 Essay on the History of civil societies, in which Ferguson argued

that all races progressed in stages from hunting to pastoralism then to agriculture and finally

commerce, created a climate in which ‘races’ were ranked via their place within the

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progressive notion of human history.4 Furthermore this ranking was framed in the rhetoric of

civilisation, and a hierarchy of ‘civilised races’ depending on their place within Ferguson’s

model of human development. Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire

(1776-88) emphasises this, claiming, ‘Since the first discovery of the arts, war, commerce, and

religious zeal have diffused among the savages of the old and New World…we may therefore

acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has increased and still

increases the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue of the human

race.’5 These ‘savages’ that acted as a cultural ‘other’, a tabula rasa, reflecting European

concerns and anxieties about western views of human nature, one in which dress was

employed as a means to rank these extra-European races. Clothing or lack therefore of was an

indicator of a ‘civilised or uncivilised race’ the 1794 article Account of the Persons, Genius, and

Disposition, Name, Dress, &c, of the Japanese. From Thuneerg’s Travel’s in Europe, Africa, and

Asia is a prime example of this, justifying the inclusion of the Japanese as a civilised race on

account of their clothing and culture,

‘This nation is so far from deserving to be ranked with such as are called savage, that it

rather merits a place amongst the civilized… that idle vanity, so common amongst other

Asiatic as well as many African nations, who adorn themselves with shells, beads, and

glittering pieces of metal, is never to be observed, here; nor are the unnecessary

European trappings of Gold and Silver lace, jewels, and the like, which serve merely to

catch the eye, here prized at all; but they endeavour to furnish themselves from their

own manufactures with decent clothing, palatable food, and excellent weapons.’6

We see here the importance of clothing in demonstrating the hierarchical view of human

nature in its equitation with civilisation through the comparison of the Japanese modes of

dress to ‘Asiatic’ and ‘African’ ‘savages’. We can also infer that different modes of clothing

4 Outram, Dorinda. (2013). The Enlightenment: New Approaches to European History (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 54-665 Gibbons, Edward. (1778). The Rise and fall of the Roman Empire. In. Ed. Isaac Kramnick. (1995). ‘The Portable Enlightenment Reader.’ London: Penguin Books Ltd. P.6576 (1794). Account of the Persons, Genius, and Disposition, Name, Dress, &c, of the Japanese. From Thuneerg’s Travel’s in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The Edinburgh magazine, or Literary Miscellany. Jan 1794: 30-37. [Online]. URL: http://0-search.proquest.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/docview/5482632/fulltext/1?accountid=14888. (Date Assessed: 12/04/2015).

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represent types of human within a hierarchical framework, thus clothing was a vehicle for

European thinkers to justify their conception of racial hierarchy and the civilised versus the

uncivilised. But we also see an implicit criticism of western culture and human nature. In

praising the Japanese as ‘furnishing themselves from their own manufacture’, and damming

the western mode of overdressing simply to ‘catch the eye’ the author favours a more austere

view of human nature, where virtue is more important than a gaudy appearance, fitting with

a more Spartan mode of dress that was popular in Europe in this period that represented

more egalitarian and utilitarian conception of human nature. Joseph Carl Flugel termed this

‘The Great Masculine Renunciation’ arguing that the end of the eighteenth century marked by

male clothing loosing the excess of the earlier Eighteenth century, where men 'abandoned

their claim to be considered beautiful' and 'henceforth aimed at being only useful'.7 Though

one must take into account the context in which the dress reformer and psychoanalyst Flugel

was writing and his agenda for more practical clothes in the twentieth century, ‘costume,

must be freed, alike from the ruinous competition and commercialism of fashion and from the

unadaptable conservatism of ’fixed’ dress’, the evidence for ‘the Great masculine

Renunciation’ in the context of this essay is compelling.8

Clothing’s importance in the differentiation between categories of humans and thus

types of human nature was not simply reserved to conceptions of race but also gender, being

a means to judge the natures of men and women by reflecting the differences between them.

As we have seen with the ‘Masculine Renunciation’ men aimed to be ‘only useful’ in that later

half of the eighteenth century, fitting with the pervading philosophical tracts on the nature of

man. Usefulness in this sense can have numerous meanings but it will be taken as being the

reflection of the economic and moral sentiments of the later Enlightenment, the term

connoting rationality, practicality and the honing of the self. One tract from 1774 named Of

Apparel, the Frugality and the Use of it (my emboldening) read:

‘A plain, clean, and decent, habit, proportioned to one's quality and business, is all a

wise man aims at in his dress, and is an argument that he has bestowed more cost and

7 Flugel, Joseph. Carl. (1930). The psychology of Clothes, London: Hogarth Press, p. 1118 Ibid. p. 218

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time in furnishing his inside than his out: whilst fools, who place wisdom in dress, are,

like popish relics, wrapt up in silver.’9

Furthermore, in comparison with the ‘savage’, ‘civilised man gets up with the sun – pursues

his daily occupation – and the sure prospect of a reward to his industry lightens the

burdens of life’ further demonstrating a moral commitment to usefulness.10 In terms of

clothing, the English suit that became popular all over Europe from the late Eighteenth-

century embodies this useful ideal; its primary function was that of sportswear for riding

and hunting among other physical activities meaning it had to be a set of garments of

practical materials so as to be useful, as such it was a sombre woollen ordeal without any of

the trappings of wealth that had previously been the dress of gentlemen.11 Though the

philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau is by no means characteristic of Enlightenment thought,

his thinking on dress serves to highlight the current point well. When trying to do away

with what he believed to be the excesses of modern life, his ‘’personal reform’’, he began

with an overhaul of his clothes, stating “I left le monde and its pomp. I renounced all finery:

no more sword, no more watch, no more white stockings, gold trimmings, hairdo” Instead

he began wearing “a simple wig and clothes of good rough wool” In line with his philosophy

of returning to the virtuous authenticity of nature, removing luxury and demonstrating the

folly of modern life, thus his clothing demonstrated his conception of human nature and the

nature of man.12 Like clothing and the extra-European ‘other’ created an oppositional

identity allowing for Europeans to construct their view of human nature, we see a similar

construction in relation to a gender with male thinkers creating an oppositional identity out

of women in order to demonstrate their conception of a patriarchal human nature; as well

as demonstrating their views of female nature. Unlike the practicality of men’s dress it was

9 (1774). Of Apparel, the Frugality and Prodigality in the Use of it. The Monthly Ledger: Or, Literary Repository. Aug 1774: 409-11. [Online] URL: http://0-search.proquest.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/docview/3874154/fulltext/1?accountid=14888 (Date Accessed: 13/04/2015).10 (1792). The Savage and The Civilized Man. In ed. Anderson, James. (1792). The Bee: or Literary Weekly Intelligencer. 12 Dec 1792: 222-223. [Online] URL: http://0-search.proquest.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/docview/2658197/fulltext/1?accountid=14888 (Date Accessed 14/04/2015)11 McNeil, Peter. (2004). The Appearance of the Enlightenment. In. Fitzpatrick, Martin. Peter Jones, Christa Knellwolf and Ian McCalman. eds. (2004). The Enlightenment World. Abingdon: Routledge. P. 381-400.12 Kwass, Michael. (2006). Big Hair: A Wig History of Consumption in the Eighteenth-Century France. The American Historical Review, 111(3). Pp 631-659

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Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s view that ‘’the clothing of women must have a sex; and this

costume must contrast with ours. A women must be a woman from her head to her toes.’’13

Indeed, from my research women were the source of much more criticism and comment on

their apparel and what it meant for their character and their nature than men. One article

from 1803, although slightly after the period in question neatly puts into words much of the

thinking over the course of the Enlightenment, the presumably male author arguing that

female clothing and beauty demonstrates ‘the caprices and irregularities of the female

character’. The article going on to frame the dangers of female dress in terms of ‘human

nature’ stating the dangers of female dress can ‘be accounted for by the attentive observer

of human nature’.14 Within this discourse of women’s clothing being representative of their

virtue or the lack therefore of, there was a further rhetoric on dresses oppressive nature

which has further implications for what was considered to be human nature in the

Eighteenth Century. Early feminist thinkers began to criticise their exemption from the

public sphere because of the apparent ‘conditions of their sex’ claiming that it was their

exemption that made them unsuitable. Mary Wollstonecraft argued that it was women’s

exemption from education, her oppression, by man that made her lesser and in no way

were men innately superior to women.15 It was within this discourse that dress faced

criticism for limiting of female potential and being a danger to them. Indeed though not a

feminist text like the last, one article from the end of the century frames women’s dress as a

such danger to them that ‘scarce a week passes, [that] we read afflicting accounts in the

public papers of young ladies being burnt to death, occasioned by the light and inflammable

nature of their dress, which is another of the fatal consequences of this strange mode of

apparel’.16 This when looked at in a feminist framework is indicative of a patriarchal view of

human nature in which man is believed to be innately superior to women and indeed, bar

13 Cage, E. Claire. (2009). The Sartorial Self – Neoclassical Fashion and Gender Identity in France, 1797-1804. Eighteenth Century Studies. 40(2). Pp. 193-215 14(1803). Remarks of Regaining taste in Female Dress. The Edinburgh magazine, or Literary Miscellany. Jun 1803: 421-425. [Online] URL: http://0-search.proquest.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/docview/5698409/fulltext/2?accountid=14888 (Date Accessed: 13/04/2015)15 Wollstonecraft, Mary. (1792). A Vindication of the Rights of Women. In. Ed. Isaac Kramnick. (1995). ‘The Portable Enlightenment Reader.’ London: Penguin Books Ltd. Pp-618-628. 16 (1803). Remarks of Regaining taste in Female Dress. The Edinburgh magazine. Jun 1803: 421-425.

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the limited criticism of societies treatment of women by the likes of Wollstonecraft, much

philosophical writing in the Enlightenment places man above women demonstrating a

hierarchy of human nature, Rousseau claimed, ‘Woman is made to be please and to be in

subjection to man’, and Immanuel Kant proclaimed ‘Man should become more perfect as a

man and the woman as a wife… according to the hint of nature.’17

This particular view of human nature as built on rank and differentiation is also

demonstrable in the system of social hierarchy imposed during the Eighteenth Century

through clothing. Sumptuary laws, although coming to the end of their tenure as an

important way in which to maintain social hierarchies, still existed and were still imposed in

the eighteenth century, indeed even where sumptuary laws were failing, the ruling elite still

used clothing as a way in which to impose informal control over those bellow them in

station.18 With the middling sorts emulation of court fashion a certain amount of power was

maintained by the ruling elite as they dictated style, taste and aesthetic values to the

populous through fashion, filtering even to the lower ranks of the social hierarchy. The poor’s

characterisation in the press often invokes imagery used in the descriptions of the extra-

European savages and as such gives the impression that the poorest groups in society were

considered uncivilised, some such terminology being ‘wicked’ and ‘beastly’, among similar

descriptive terms. As such, clothing and taste was a way in which to civilise the inhuman

masses within European society, according to Daniel Roche, ‘neatness… was a discipline and

the affirmation of victory over the savage instincts and animal nature’ of the poor.19

Furthermore, the very dictation of what individuals can and cannot wear, whether formally

through sumptuary laws or informally through taste and fashion as well as fashions ‘civilising

mission’ suggests differing conceptions of human nature depending on social rank. Court life

was very much dictated by dogmatic convention, every action was rehearsed and preformed

day in and day out, indeed Foucault has notably suggested the rituals of the court and the

17 In. Ed. Isaac Kramnick. (1995). ‘The Portable Enlightenment Reader.’ London: Penguin Books Ltd. 18 Freudenberger, Herman. (1963). Fashion, Sumptuary Laws, and Business. In. The Business History Review. Vol. 37 (1/2). The President and Fellows of Harvard College: Harvard. Pp. 37-48.19 Roche, Daniel. (2009). Popular Dress. In McNeil, Peter. Ed. (2009). Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources Vol.2 The Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Berg. P.80

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king of France was a way in which to ‘discipline the bodies of his subjects’.20 The obsession

with mechanics and automatons amongst the eighteenth century courts in Europe and their

strict adherence of quotidian dogmatic rituals like clockwork is perhaps reason why there

was a broad acceptance of Cartesian mechanical philosophy among them; Descartes ideal of a

mechanical body justifying their daily activities and their pre-existing conception of human

nature as a discipline.21 However popular conceptions of human nature differ to this rigid

model that was perpetuated by the ruling elites. The theft of clothing gives us insight into

more popular conceptions of a more fluid version of human nature. Both high and low in

society had a conception of a hierarchical human nature but where the ruling elites saw a

rigid structure to be maintained as evidenced by their control of fashion, the popular

conception was far more fluid and clothing was a means by which one could improve their

station in life. In an era where peoples had increasingly expanding wardrobes, the masculine

wardrobe circa 1700 would contain four or five main pieces by 1785 this had doubled to

around nine or ten main pieces; women experienced a similar increase from around six or

seven to thirteen or fourteen main pieces, a trend that was mirrored in many European

nations22 This expansion in clothing was coupled with an ever-increasing mass trade in the

theft of and resale of clothing from the seventeenth century, evidence for this can be seen in

the influx of pawnbrokers and clothes dealers in England, which doubled fore the later and

went to over three hundred for the former by the end of the eighteenth century.23 However

where this trade suggests a more fluid view of human nature is in what happened to the

clothing after theft, where it would be advantageous to sell them on as so many did there is

also a high proportion of individuals who wore the best of the stolen items at the risk of being

caught, suggesting a social importance to the stolen clothing.24 This importance of better

dress is a symptom of the belief that clothes could improve the station of the individual in

20Melzer, Sara E. and Kathryn Norberg. (1998). In. Melzer, Sara E. and Kathryn Norberg. Eds. (1998). From the Royal to the Republican Body: Incorporating the Political in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century France. London: University of California Press, Ltd. P. 4 21 Thomas, Keith. (1983). Man and the Natural World, Changing attitudes in England 1500-1800. Penguin Books Ltd: London P.22 Roche, Daniel. (2009). Popular Dress. In McNeil, Peter. Ed. (2009). Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources Vol.2 The Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Berg. P.7123 Lemire, Beverly. (1990). The Theft of Clothing and Popular Consumerism in Early Modern England. In the Journal of Social history. Vol.24 (2). Oxford University press: Oxford. P.26424 Ibid. P.259

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relation to their peers and social rank. Writings from the period often discuss this ideal with

both scorn and praise, Henry Fielding was of the opinion that, ‘the dregs of the people, who

aspiring still to a degree beyond which belongs them’ and ‘even the meanest person who can

dress himself clean, may in some degree mix with his betters’.25 Others were less critical of

the practice the Swiss Journalist J. H. Meister simply opined that in England, ‘’Individuals of

the lower classes are better cloathed… with no better means than the same classes enjoy with

us. Pride and a desire to preserve the public esteem seem to force upon them that attention to

their conduct and outward appearance.’’26

We have seen that the internal was represented by the external in regards to the

question of gender however this concept needs exploring in further depth because of the

importance it has had in the discourse of revolutionary France and the insight this gives us to

the debates on human nature in the late Eighteenth Century. Clothes played an important role

in the identity of the French revolutionaries, providing a platform to express their

oppositional identity to the Ancien Regime, and as such representing their opposition to

traditional views on the human nature. We can see this best expressed in the revolutionary

costume that was adopted by the popular movement, comprising of pantalon, carmagnole,

sabots and most importantly the Bonnet Rouge. The riots of the 20 June 1790 where in the

heat of the Revolutionary further the Parisian mob descended on the Tuileries and forced

Louis XVI to wear the Bonnet Rouge, demonstrating its oppositional, symbolic and new

nature.27 The red bonnet is perhaps the most representative of all the clothes the

Revolutionaries wore in that it created a visible association with the popular front of the

Revolution in France and because of this became imbued with all the Revolution stood for.

The cap itself had long associations with liberty, being a symbol of a slave’s emancipation

taken from the Roman Republic.28 We can thus see the Bonnet Rouge as symbolising the

contentions put forward in the Declaration of The Rights of Man and the Citizen, freedom,

25 Ibid. p.25726 Meister, J. H. (1799). Letters Written during a Residence in England. P. 8 in Perkin, Harold. (2002). The Origins of Modern English Society. London: Routledge. P. 7527 Harden, j. David. (1995) Liberty Caps and Liberty Trees. Past & Present. 146. Pp. 66-102P.9328 Harden. (1995) Liberty Caps and Liberty Trees. Pp. 66-102P.73

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equality and fraternity. The caps symbolic meaning as an emancipatory device suggesting

freedom from despotism, people were no longer subjects but citizens free from the whims of

absolutist rule. It represents equality as a universal symbol of the revolutionary’s belief

system but also in that it as an unchanging symbol of the revolution regardless of class of the

wearer, representing equality in its disregard for the hierarchical nature of the Ancien

Regime, as the declaration states ‘social distinctions may be based only upon general

usefulness’ not on birth; Louis XVI’s wearing of the cap at the hands of the mob being the

prime example29. Roger Smith has quite rightly hypothesised that the nature of what it is to

be human changes depending on historical context, however the French Revolution

represents such a sharp break from the traditional interpretations of being human in the

Ancien Regime that technologies had to be used as a way in which to normalise the newer

conceptions of what it was to be human.30 The revolutionary leaders and thinkers employed

dress as a technology by which to normalise this new code of behaviour, David Cannadine has

defined ceremony as an action that ‘embodies and reflects, upholds and reinforces, deeply

rooted, widely held popular values’.31 The very act of dressing in revolutionary clothes

imbued with such philosophical and political meaning can be seen as an act of ceremony, just

as Rousseau made a ceremony out of stripping the luxurious clothes from his life and

replacing them with simpler garments, the adornment of a revolutionary costume

demonstrated political and philosophical inclination in opposition to the past. We can see this

in the Bonnet Rouge in that it came to symbolise so much about the revolution, Robespierre

himself stated ‘the bonnet rouge… was a guarantee to all the world of his unadulterated

patriotism’, but more so in the mode of dress that the Directory tried to impose on the people

of France in the First Republic.32 Because of the need for ‘deeply rooted’ traditions in

ceremony the revolutionaries had to invent them in order to stabilise the new concepts of

29 (1789). The Declaration of The Rights of Man and the Citizen. In. Ed. Isaac Kramnick. (1995). ‘The Portable Enlightenment Reader.’ London: Penguin Books Ltd. P.46730 Smith, Roger. (2007). Being Human – Historical Knowledge and the Creation of Human Nature. New York: Columbia University Press31 Cannadine, David. (1983). ‘The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the Invention of Tradition, c.1820-1977’. in Hobsbawm, E. and T. Ranger. (1983). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. P.10432 Harris, Jennifer. (1981). The Red Cap of Liberty: A Study of Dress Worn by French Revolutionary Partisans 1789-94. In. Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 14(3). pp. 283-312. P.285

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nature after the revolution. In line with Eric Hobsbawm and Terrance Rangers demonstration

that there was an ‘invention of tradition’ in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries where

there was a normalisation of new behaviours as a means to enact social control in some

degree, and indeed this is true of the late Eighteenth Century.33 In order to ground their

newer conceptions of human nature, the revolutionaries appealed to the ancient authority of

the Roman Republic, Greek Philosophers and classicism in general. Dror Wahrman has

contended that there was ‘a new regime of identity’ under the directory in order to cement

the new revolutionary values.34 The introduction of Greek fashion by the revolutionary

officials demonstrates this; they sought to rid fashion of the luxury that had been prevalent in

its history and towards a mode of dress of the classical republics that had associations with

individual liberty, the freedom from despotism and meritocracy. Though there were moves to

dress men in this style it all but failed and it is in female fashion that we see the associations

with revolutionary understandings of human nature. Much like the highly evocative lady

liberty women’s fashion copied from antiquity, D’Abrantés remembered of Napoléon

Bonaparte’s seventeen-year-old sister that her hair was ‘’faithfully copied from statue or

cameo representing a bacchanal’’ and that her dress was ‘’the purest Grecian form’’.35

Finally, clothing also represents the epistemological shifts in the nature of man in

terms of his relationship with socio-economics, being a symbol of the Eighteenth centuries

transformation of individuals into homo-economicus. Though the term ‘economic man’ is of

the Nineteenth century’s John Stuart Mill, we can see the makings of this mode of human

nature in the Eighteenth Century through the Works of Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith,

both of whom use dress as a means to express the concept of an economic man. Where

clothing cemented the new socio-cultural conceptions of human nature is not necessarily

through the action of wearing clothes, as has be discussed so far, but in their employment in

popular literary culture to justify a form of rational self-interest that could benefit society.

Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees uses the relationship between people and clothing as a

33 Hobsbawm, E. and T. Ranger. (1983). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.34Cage, E. Claire. (2009). The Sartorial Self – Neoclassical Fashion and Gender Identity in France, 1797-1804. Eighteenth Century Studies. 40(2). Pp. 193-21535 Ibid. p. 193-4

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justification for self-interest by helping the common good citing fashions continual need to

engage, match and surpass others;

‘Emulation and continual striving to out-do one another it is owing, that after so many

various Shiftings and Changings of Modes, in trumping up new ones and renewing of

old ones, there is still a plus ultra left for the ingenious; it is this, or at least the

consequence of it, that sets the Poor to Work, adds Spurs to Industry, and encourages

the skilful Artificer to search after further Improvements.’36

Mandeville goes on to writes ‘where obscure Men may hourly meet with fifty strangers to one

Acquaintance, and consequently have the pleasure of being esteem’d by a vast Majority, not

as what they are, but what they appear to be: which is a greater Temptation than most People

want to be vain’ demonstrating a conception of human nature motivated by self-interest over

early conceptions of human nature driven by more religious means. 37Furthermore, clothing’s

equation with economics is seen in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, in which he uses the

pin industry, a staple in the clothing trade at the time, to explain his theory of the division of

labour and thus, the elements of human nature by which this construct appeared, a

‘propensity in human nature… to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another’.

What is thought to be human nature in the Eighteenth Century is revealed by the

fashions, dress and costumes worn over the course of the period and the attitudes they

evoked in contemporaries. Clothing’s symbolic significance as a representative of the internal

can be perceived when we look at tracts from the Eighteenth Century, to the contemporary

viewer, a costume was more than simply a covering to the body but a way in which to actively

engage with the conceptions of human nature. This essay has demonstrated clothing was a

means to justify hierarchical views on human identity and played an important role in the

creation of an ‘other’ to define different conceptions of human nature against, particularly in

regards to gender and extra-European peoples. But clothing’s significance in the changing

36 De Mandeville, Bernard. (1732). The Fable of the Bees. (sixth edition) J. Tonson: London

37 Mandeville. (1732). The Fable of the Bees.

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conceptions of human nature went further than simply defining difference; it was employed

as the exemplification new philosophical concepts and their implications on the nature of

humanity, as is the case with Mandeville and Smith’s defence of self-interest and the creation

of homo-economicus. We can draw a wider conclusion from these points and that is; clothing

demonstrates the pervading ideological commitment to Sensationalism in the late

Eighteenth-century. Sensationalism was the basis for the representative nature of dress in the

late Eighteenth-century, Clothing in the Ancien Regime represented a view of human nature

that was based in traditional hierarchies such as the conclusions Hobbes draws in Leviathan

about the need for a monarchical state, but by the end of the period clothing was

representative of the internal. Hume, among other’s idea that the individual was a taubula

rasa (Blank slate) on which experience was imprinted meant that the individual became self-

fashioning thus clothing became a mirror for the soul, a neutral canvas on which a projection

of their internal nature. This can be seen in the revolutionary mode of dress employed in the

French revolution and its innate representation of their conception of human nature based on

liberty.

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