RETHINKING FEMALE CHASTITY AND GENTLEWOMEN'S HONOUR IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

Abstract

ABSTRACTHonour was a gendered phenomenon for the eighteenth-century English social elite; scholars have argued that for women, honour was mainly equated with chastity. By problematizing the concept of chastity as well as chastity's relation with women's social reputation, this article questions the widely adopted view of the crucial importance of female chastity for maintaining honour and social status. A critical examination of eighteenth-century discourses of feminine propriety shows that even though chastity was presented as an internal feminine feature, it was evaluated by external signs, making it less dependent on physical continence than on public display of purity. Chastity should thus be seen as a negotiable performative identity rather than a stable state of sexual virtue. Moreover, the relation between chastity and social reputation is more complex than hitherto supposed; even a public loss of chaste reputation did not necessarily lead to the social disgrace threatened by eighteenth-century writers, but could often be compensated through other performative means. The article concludes that not only was chastity's role in the construction of female honour ambiguous, female and male honour also resembled each other more than has been assumed, since they were both based on an external spectacle of proper honourable appearance.