The birth of dining as social performance in 18th century Europe

Capture long-term social progresses in small-scale human interactions is one of the biggest and most exciting challenges of fictional retelling of history. One of my favourite question, for example, how to capture the 18th-centurian decay of the once glorious and powerful Venice. But the "century of the light", as it often-called carriesa lot of big social changes, this is the time period where may of our modern habits, and many element of our modern mentality roots.

The best known change is how marriage became an emotional union rather  financial transaction, and people can show very extreme (sometimes tragically extreme) reaction towards domestic happines being denied, as  novels like The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, and even more the impact of those kind of stories on the younger generations demonstrated. 

The modern interpretation of family (a small core-group of emotionally bounded people) roots in this time period, as well as the modern dichotomy of pubic and private spheres of individual life.

Therefore, although eating had always been a social activity, dining and having guests for dinner changed towards they way we used to perform it in our modern time. 

The transformation was closely linked to the birth of a new type of urban middle-class, expressing their own social identity by class-conscious consumption. (Not to forget, the 18th century is also the birth of consumer society, people used to buy products but just by considering their neccesity and utility, but also the symbolic power to display identity and status.) 

All these changes were demonstrated by how having guests for dinner became a social event instead of a gesture of hospitality. 

From communal eating to structured dining

 For centuries large group of people use to eat together mostly out of neccesity. Owning your own oven or other cooking devices weren't common, people gathered around communal fireplaces. Meals were served in large shared dishes placed at the center of the table, from which diners helped themselves. Even in the world of aristocracy. Tableware was often limited, and strict differentiation between courses was less common. 

As technology advanced, more and more households were able to prepare meal in smaller portions using more and more practical methods, also by producing tableware and cutlery in a more effective, therefore cheaper way, more and more people were able to buy them, individual place settings became standard, including dedicated plates, glasses, and cutlery for each diner. 

Because in consumer society the act of buying certain products represents status, hosting  a dinner in your own home for a carefully selected guests was a perfect occasion to show the world (or at least that part of it you wished to be.associated with) how refined your way of consumption, therefore how high is your social status. 

The rise of table etiquette

Refinements mean, of course not just the tableware you own, the price of the food you serve, but a certain way of behavior, and alongside the new dining practices emerged a growing body of etiquette literature. Manuals on manners instructed readers on proper conduct at the table, covering topics such as posture, conversation, and the use of utensils. 

Good manners at the dining table were increasingly viewed as signs of moral character and social education. 

Although the growing importance of table manners are often imagined as some kind of trickle-down process from the highest tier of society to the middle-classes, even the book industry profited much from printing manuals offering a glimpse into the life of the "great houses", it seem to me that the strickt rules of proper behaviour at the table have been always a pure middle-class thing not only in the 18th century, but even today. 

When I imagine fictional scenes,  specific interactions between fictional characters beyond the phrase "birth of dining as a social event", I imagine rather midling people at the edge of reaching the status of a gentleman (or gentlewoman) or not. The big red line in society what is so important for example the characters in Jane Austen's novels. But because in the eceryday life the display of this big social difference is so subtle, therefore every little gesture matters. These people are always measuring other people through the lense of this social distinction, and while considering themselves part of the gentlemen's world, always express their own attempt to distance themselves from those whom they don't considered representatives of this status. 

That's why such a basic form of displaying your status by consumption and the manners strickly related it, is so important in this tier of society. 

Dining as the performance of social status and connections

In our modern life we find it normal to build up several new social nests/webs around ourselves during our life. We move from social circle to social circle (this is the one aspect of mobility seems working in our modern society, while most of the aspects rather failed to improve in the last few centuries), but in 18th century society, especially in the British society of the Georgian era, a strong web of acquaintances seemed more valuable than money or (aristocratic) rank. (That's what the modern adaptations of Jane Austen's work fail to show, that many of the conflicts and dillemmas of the characters born from the fact that these people are actually prisoners of their own social web, getting out this circle for whatever reasons seem worse than death.) 

Dining, the list of invited guests, even more those one who accepted the invitation could serve as a proof of someone's place in their social circle, and through this circle in the entire society. 

Dining at someone's private home, making the aquaitances less formal, also strenghtened this web, and of course, always offered the opportunity by inviting guests from the most further corners of someone's social nest to widenind the business opportunities or marriage aspects. 


 đź“š More about the rise of the urban middle- class of consumption society throughout the 17th and 18th century:

Spaces of Consumption (ed Andrew Hann, Jon Stobart, Victoria Morgan) 

The English Urban Renaissance by Peter Borsay
 


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