Women’s relationship with public attention was constantly debated within the discourse of politeness, because it highlighted many of the inconsistencies of the culture of politeness. What complicated women’s self-display was the fundamental duality of women’s social role. On the one hand, women played an important public and civilising role that subjected them to the theatrical expectations of sociability and exposed them to the gazes of polite society. On the other hand, women’s private role as daughters, wives, and mothers required modesty, reserve, and privacy, making public exhibitionism a threat to their domesticity and chastity. In other words, women’s public and private roles were in constant conflict. A woman’s body was subjected to two sets of demands: it needed to be all at once on display and hidden away, visible and invisible, public and private, polite and demure. The balance between these roles was constantly discursively redefined, which made it difficult to pin down on an individual level. Too much publicity could ruin a woman’s reputation, while too little could make her an old maid.
∆ Soile Ylivuori, from Women and Politeness in Eighteenth-Century England: Bodies, Identities, and Power