Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton's New York (review)

With the publication of Displaying Women, Maureen E. Montgomery, Professor of American Studies at the University of Christland, New Zealand, adds elite women to the growing body of literature on urban leisure. In contrast with historians Christine Stansell, Kathy Peiss, Joanne Meyerowitz, and Pricilla Murulo who analyzed the activities of working-class women, Montgomery examines upper-class women’s leisure and explores the entrance of society women into new public arenas of commercialized entertainment and consumer capitalism in turn-of-the-century New York City.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, when New York City became the center of banking and finance as well as the headquarters for national corporations, many elite business and professional men relocated to the growing commercial center. The rapid influx of “haute bourgeoisie” families into New York increased the number of upper-class urban residents. The numerous “haute bourgeoisie” greatly expanded the potential membership of the upper class, and this resulted in competition between wealthy newcomers and the old New York elite. In contrast with European society where inherited wealth formed the basis of upper-class identity and where male leisure activities indicated social status, Montgomery argues that in New York society elite women’s leisure signified class-status. She suggests that in New York, where elite males worked, elite women claimed family status by attending the opera, going to the theater, and hosting social events. These social activities identified upper-class status and demonstrated female cultural knowledge as “tastemakers.”

The first two chapters describe the creation of a new social elite in New York City after 1865, the era of Mrs. Caroline Astor and the Four Hundred, and a time when the social elite followed a rigid schedule of day and evening events that included the opera, theater and formal entertainment in private homes. Chapter three demonstrates how the private home served as an arena for the display of wealth and an opportunity for status competition among the elite. Chapters four and five describe the sexualization of women in public space and at commercialized entertainment. Chapter six addresses how elite women sought to control newspaper publicity and society journalism through the engagement of press agents.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the growth in membership of the upper-class coupled with the advent of commercialized entertainment gradually decentralized elite social activities. Montgomery scrutinizes reports on New York City’s “haute bourgeoisie” women to demonstrate how women empowered themselves in public and private spaces: in drawing rooms and city streets, residential dining rooms and public restaurants, and private ballrooms and public opera boxes. She draws from a variety of texts including society columns, newspaper accounts, etiquette manuals, gossip magazines, private diaries, and public memoirs. Montgomery employs discourse and counterdiscourse to demonstrate ways “in which some texts take up and circulate dominant meanings of femininity, while others contest those meanings and produce alternatives.” To expand the discussion of femininity and gender relations presented in the print media and encouraged by consumer capitalism, she contrasts these accounts with contemporary fiction from Edith Wharton and Henry James. In addition, Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman’s 1897 publication, The Decoration of Houses, provides a contrast for contemporary accounts of nouveau riche homes by illustrating how the possession of wealth did not automatically confer the ability to spend money tastefully.

Montgomery argues that in elite society women sustained the “social fabric” of the upper class by demonstrating social refinement and civilization. She observes that while elite women’s participation in public entertainment provided new heterosexual leisure activities, their attendance at public performances made their activities more vulnerable to sexual innuendo and misrepresentation. While women may have enjoyed the glamour associated with attending public entertainment and in displaying their elaborate clothing and jewelry, these events provided the opportunity for society journalists to subject women’s behavior to intense scrutiny. For example, while women’s elaborate theater attire might have encouraged heterosexual attention, social norms...