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CHAPTER FOUR The Creation of theAmerican Political Salon THE A M E R I C A N response to the French Revolution afforded women the opportunity to participate intermittently in public political activities. The theater offered them a public presence and a profession. At the same time, the creation of a federal government in 1788 fostered yet another public role for American women. The emergence of a national elite, based in the capital city, afforded women a new place in the cultural, social, and political life of the developing nation. Unlike the political culture of the street and the theater, the salon was not a contested space.The Federalists' dominance of official functions and the president's control of both formal and informal occasions ensured that Federalist women would hold sway, establishing for themselves avenues to political power and influence throughout the 1790s. The American salon was a part of the public sphere where gender, politics, and society intersected. This nexus of social and political functions provided women with access to public political space through the vehicle of social occasions for the nation's political elite. This new public existence was made possible by the formal roles created by both the first president and his wife. George and Martha Washington hosted official dinners, celebrations, and weekly levees, all of which were attended by the capital's elite residents, political associates, and foreign dignitaries. In turn, the formal and semiformal political occasions provided women who had access to this circle with an opportunity to court political figures and establish a reputation for 126 Chapter 4 elegar~tentertainment and polite intercourse, simultaneously participating in political culture and helping to make politics an accepted part of women's public lives. No one did this better than Anne Willing Bingham. As a close friend of the President and First Lady, and wife of a wealthy, prominent Federalist senator, she was able to create a social space where congressmen, senators, and cabinet members could discuss politics, consolidate alliances, and lobby colleagues in an informal setting. Though Martha Washington had the official Philadelphia salon, Bingham's was the most lavish, and the most talked about. The American salon was a product of American culture, but not exclusivelyso. It owed some of its features to French influence as well. It is worthwhile to begin an examination of American salon culture in the 1780s and 1790s by explaining how French salons functioned, who hosted them, and who participated in them.1 The salons of Old Regime France were not political in nature. Their very existence depended upon the fact that salons were removed from politics. Groups of men and women came together for the purpose of furthering cultural and intellectual pursuits in an atmosphere of sociability. To discuss politics, or to assemble individuals because of their political affiliations, would have done violence to the nature of salon culture . The role of the salonniere was as a "civilizing force" in a femalecentered , mixed-gender setting. The need for women at the heart of these gatherings was based on the philosophical notion of "complementarity ," a neo-Platonic theory which implied that "autonomous, rational beings (gendered male) were not sufficient to the attainment of the ends they sought by nature, whether philosophical, social, or political."2 Hence, women were essential, not peripheral, to this enterprise . Salonnieres did not create their meeting places to achieve power through their association with men. It was women who were central to salon culture, not men.3The Enlightenment salonnikres instead strove first and foremost to meet their own intellectual and educational needs. Their task was to bring order to "the variety of views expressed by [their] guests. Such harmonizing was necessary both because different views were expressed, and because strong egos were involved."4 The Creation of theAmerican Po/itical Salon 127 In England the salon was particularly important as a source of literary patronage as well as a public space for serious conversation. Hostesses such as Elizabeth Montague used their wealth not only to create a physical space for the gathering of the London intelligentsia, but also to provide financial support in the form of unofficial pensions, gifts, and living accommodations for struggling authors. Hester Thrale's care and feeding of Dr. SamuelJohnson in the 1760s is a case in point. Her attentions allowed Johnson the freedom from poverty and domestic cares necessary for him to write.5 The English salon was a social space for the dissemination of new ideas in a polite social...

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