Keynote by Professor Penelope Corfield:
‘Out of the Shadows: Eighteenth-Century Women Greeting their Fellow Britons . . . and Shaking Hands’.
This year we were delighted to welcome Professor Corfield as our 2025 Workshop keynote speaker. Her recent work on the complex nature of shaking hands throughout history informed her talk which was amply illustrated with slides. As she noted, styles of greeting are evidence of the changing social status and roles of women, but they are difficult to research. They usually go unremarked as part of daily life and changes only take place over decades. There are few images of women shaking hands. Urban and commercial growth, the rise in literacy and the expansion of radical Protestantism were all involved in the development of different styles of salutation. There are passing references to greetings in different forms of literature, plays, diaries, letters, etc., and examples from many women writers of the eighteenth century were cited. Forms of greeting between working women prove harder to identify than the deep formal curtsey which remained current in elite and court circles. Eventually the egalitarian handshake of the Quakers spread throughout society to become the most acceptable and common mode of greeting.
Five-minute presentations by workshop attendees revealed, as usual, a fascinating variety of interpretations on the theme. We had two panels, Women in Society and Music and Manners, with many connections between them. We discussed the different forms of public and private residential access provided by bells and doorknockers, the forms of surveillance, control and punishment imposed on women who transgressed in public, and the visible signs of conformity provided by uniform dress, particularly for charity school children. The means of distinguishing social status through access to public spaces in London, the Spa towns and the sites of Parisian promenades, and the alarm caused when this delineation broke down was discussed as a feature of eighteenth-century urban living. The anxiety of arranging introductions, announcing arrivals and of adhering to correct precedence and customary greetings was covered by several presentations; the different meanings of the term ‘Gallantry’ in Austen and Burney novels was examined, and an array of calling cards from the Sophia Banks collection demonstrated their role in sociability and self-fashioning but also how they maintained exclusivity.
Among our papers on music, we learnt about dedications in books of music, both their polite and political significance, and about the precarious status of musicians who were often segregated in the homes where they performed, even if celebrated for their talent. Occasionally, however, music became a leveller and musicians became part of the household. Finally, we enjoyed a demonstration of ‘Making the Honours’ before dancing, the formal bows and curtsies, eye contact and body postures which became essential features of eighteenth-century dance.
We had a stimulating and convivial day with so much to think about as a result of our discussions. Thank you to all participants for putting so much thought into your contributions, and to Professor Corfield for providing the focus of our event!
Women's Studies Group 1558 - 1837 