Sugar, Tea, and New Domestic Femininity

Sugar, Tea, and New Domestic Femininity

By Charles Horn

Few ingredients have done more to reshape the British diet than sugar, growing from its original luxury status to a staple for all classes. Inescapably tied to the expansion of the brutal regimes of enslavement that brought increasing amounts of sugar to Europe, sugar changed everything from work-schedule to diet. New foods and drinks trickled down from the upper classes, with influence from new queens, new crops, and new ways of living. The subject of much debate in the new and highly influential papers of the time, the spaces created by these new beverages disrupted and challenged the existing social order in new and unprecedented ways. Present scholarship has tied sugar to the creation of coffeehouses and tea rooms that became the foundation for new expressions of femininity and masculinity. The tearoom, and the furniture within, has been written of extensively, with its relationship to consumption culture analyzed in Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace’s Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century. Kowaleski-Wallace argues that the central role of femininity in tea and china serves as evidence of this historical construction of woman as a consumer, with the woman negotiating and staking her place in the world on the back of her personal purchases and ability to consume. This paper extends this line of analysis into the kitchen as well, with sugar signifying an increasingly open arena for a certain cloistered form of independence. Sugar’s enabling of coffee, tea, and cakes contributed to the construction of a new domestic femininity rooted in consumption and emblematic of new standards of refinement.

Sugar enabled new beverages to enter the English diet, chiefly coffee and tea, each of which became explicitly gendered through the creation of exclusive spaces of consumption and rituals of consumption. Sugar consumption in England was approximately 2 lbs. per person per year in 1660, and in the forty years following it doubled as imports from the West Indies plummeted the price of sugar and caused a dramatic rise in the cooking and consumptions of sweets, coffee, and tea.[1] Of these, coffee was the first to become a powerful social force and builder of new spaces of masculinity. Coffeehouses were locations that men could meet and discuss more serious issues than their companions that gathered in taverns, and without the inhibition of alcohol some worried that the coffeehouses were encouraging feminine behavior in their social practices. In particular, men described as fops, men seemingly over-invested in their outwardly experience were both coffeehouse regulars but also regarded as a danger served alongside the cosmopolitan company at the coffeehouse.[2] Within the coffeehouse, men discussed issues trivial and grave, with the air of questioning troubling pious rule makers and the wives of some coffeehouse patrons. In 1674, a group of concerned women wrote The Women’s Petition Against Coffee, a document that argued that coffee was feminizing and jeopardizing the masculinity of their husbands and sons. The women claimed that the drink was making women both impotent and weak, and also argued that the social aspect of the drinking was making men both talkative and gossipy. To the women, this reflected an increasing fear of men turned effeminate in their exclusive spaces of socialization, with the women describing the dangers associated with the patrons of coffeehouses as, “That Men by frequenting these Stygian Tap-houses will usurp on our Prerogative of Tattling and soon learn to exeel us in Talkativeness: a Quality wherein our Sex has ever Claimed preeminence”.[3] The fears of effeminate men where echoed in the Tatler, the Spectator, and the Guardian, the papers of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, who decried the rise of the “fop”, a term reserved for men seemingly over-invested in their self-presentation and feminine behaviors, within all-male coffee-houses. To Addison and Steele, coffeehouses brought feminine ideals of social refinement, the conversation unencumbered by alcohol and brash behavior, to men.[4] Past arguing for the exclusion of feminine practices, the papers argued against the inclusion of women themselves in these spaces. In one issue of the Spectator, a letter to the editor argued that the presence of women within the rooms would make them the center of attention and keep both them and the men from their necessary duties, saying “I know, in particular, goods are not entered as they ought to be at the Custom-House, nor law-reports perused at the Temple, by reason of one beauty who detains the young merchants too long near Change, and another fair one, who keeps students at her house when they should be at study”.[5] The emergent feminine traits of socialization were regarded as a threat to the existing coffeehouse era, but tea soon proved to entirely flip the existing order as it, and polite domestic society, became the domain of women.

Tea was first given to the masses within the coffeehouse, with male customers able to buy leaves to bring home to their female relatives as women were still excluded from entry into the coffeehouse.[6] At the same time, a parallel feminine and domestic tea drinking culture was emerging in upper class homes across England in the example of Catherine of Braganza, the wife of Charles II, who in 1662 brought with her a large supply of tea and drank it every day. From her example the practice seeped out of the court as the flavor seeps out of a modern tea-bag, eventually becoming a central aspect of British life.[7] Within the home, tea was consumed not in the kitchen or traditional dining room, but rather within a bedchamber or closet with fragile and elegant porcelain dishes that were displayed in the closet rather than cupboard. Tea’s rise was bolstered by a consumer movement dubbed the “china fever” that by the end of the 18^th century had made porcelain and china a central element in the creation of a new domestic femininity.[8] The woman’s control of the tea room and its dishes signified a shift that increased the domain of women within the home, with both tea and china objects of a woman’s desire The 17^th century brought tea drinking to mostly wealthy families, while working families continued to drink alcoholic beverages and homemade syrup drinks. The relationship between tea and alcohol was oppositional, as while the men would drink throughout the day and grow loud and brash at the end of dinner, women retreated to the closet and increasingly drank tea. 19^th century writer and poet, and avid chronicler of queens, Agnes Strickland wrote at the height of the “china craze” and tea boom that the cultivation of a tea based social femininity was directly tied to the influence of Catherine of Braganza, “The use of the simple luxuries had in time a beneficial influence on the manners of all classes of society, by forming a counter charm against habits of intoxication, and have promoted the progress of civilization in no slight degree”.[9] P. Morton Shand wrote extensively of the role of tea in the construction in a new sort of femininity. Shand argued that tea and alcohol were the domain of women and men respectively, yet eventually men became drawn to the sobriety and companionship of the women’s salons and thus tea became an indispensable element of the British social scene. Shand believed that the rise of tea demonstrated the increasing dominance of women in respectable society, saying, “It was not long before man completely capitulated to woman, accepting and sharing the supernumerary snack on her own terms, so that today there are few Englishmen who will consent to be deprived of their tea, whether at work or play, at home or abroad”. [10] Shand affirms an understanding of the domestic and alcohol-free society as increasingly the domain of women, with conversation and gossip the tools of this emergent femininity.

Sugar has always been linked to the drinking of tea within England, as it was commonly added to other herbal tonics which tea was originally marketed and sold as. The sugar was stirred into the tea with little tea spoons, a feature found in paintings of upper-class tea-drinking European families that only reinforced the refinement of this new practice. Further criticism of sugar in tea arose based on the conditions in which sugar was cultivated. Anti-slavery groups encouraged sugar boycotts and the consumption of tea without the cash crop, with tea parties serving as vital sites of spreading abolitionist literature and ideas.[11] The boycott reached its peak in 1791, with more than 300,000 households joining the protest movement.[12] One abolitionist cartoon aimed at women depicted Queen Charlotte, alongside King George, lecturing her daughters on how tea is preferable without sugar, saying, “O my dear Creatures, do but taste it! You can’t think how nice it is without Sugar-and then consider how much work you’ll save the poor Blackemoors by leaving off the use of it!”.[13] The intentional choice of targeting upper class women in the cartoon demonstrates the central nature of teatime to the construction of an elite femininity, with the trademark silver teaspoons held by every daughter. Additionally, the Queen is depicted with rotting teeth, a seeming consequence of over-indulgence of sugar. The cartoon is thus able to simultaneously appeal to feminine beauty standards while also appealing to their sense of morality, indicating an idealized femininity free of the vice of sugar. Some women would wear medallions with enslaved persons depicted on their knees with an inscription reading “Am I not a Man and a Brother” to indicate their participation in boycotts of Caribbean sugar.[14] In line with Kowaleski-Wallace's analysis on the expansion of consumer power, women viewed their china, sugar, and tea as potential arenas of political agency, as evidenced by the teapot with abolitionist messaging seen in the Wedgwood teapot below.

Outside the parlor and in the kitchen, the increasing use of sugar contributed to new recipes and types of feminine tasks in the kitchen and home. Breads and tea, both enabled by the spread of sugar, grew in popularity tremendously in the 18^th century, with the consumption of tea and pastry even becoming a central part of the British day in the traditional tea break from work. The recipes of Mrs. Hannah Glasse offer insight into the increased mass consumption of sugars past sweetening tea to the cooking of various puddings and pies. A commercial cookbook writer of the 18^th century, Glasse wrote The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy which became a bestseller and an authoritative text on cooking of the time. Glasse’s books were commonly read by and published for the rapidly growing common and working class rural and urban populations. In one Orange Pudding recipe found in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Glasse calls for half a pound of sugar showing how the common person now had access to significantly more supplies of sugar as the machinery of colonialism and the brutality of slavery revved up to supply Britain’s insatiable sugar needs.[15] Sugar dramatically changed the cooking patterns of women, as working class began working outside the home they had less time to prepare more laborious foods and broths despite their positive nutritional contribution.[16] The introduction of sugar enabled sweetened preserves which did not spoil, meaning working women could skip meal preparation for their kids while still providing plentiful calories. These factors allowed women to balance the traditional domestic demands of English femininity alongside their new jobs outside the home as industrialization forced all adult members of the family into labor.

Coffee, tea, and the creation of new recipes were enabled by the steadily increasing supply of sugar to the British populace, creating new zones of feminine and masculine constructions that reshaped English socialization. This influx of the valuable product of sugar was enabled by the brutality of the enslavement of millions, with this enslavement causing prices to tumble that allowed Britons of all classes to access sugar. With lasting effects on both diet and society, sugar’s impact and its relation to gendered spaces remains worthy of close study.

[1] Pettigrew, Jane. A Social History of Tea: Tea’s Influence on Commerce, Culture & Community. Danville, Ky: Benjamin Press, 2014.

[2] Cowan, Brian. “What Was Masculine about the Public Sphere? Gender and the Coffeehouse Milieu in Post-Restoration England.” History Workshop Journal, no. 51 (2001): 127–57., p. 139

[3] Well-willer. The Women's Petition against Coffee : Representing to Publick Consideration the Grand Inconveniencies Accruing to Their Sex from the Excessive Use of That Drying, Enfeebling Liquor : Presented to the Right Honorable the Keepers of the Liberty of Venus. London: [s.n.], 1674.

[4] Cowan, Brian. “What Was Masculine about the Public Sphere?”, p. 136

[5] Spectator no. 87, 9 June 1711; in ed. Bond, vol. 1, p. 37

[6] Pettigrew, Jane. A Social History of Tea”. P.23

[7] Pettigrew, Jane. A Social History of Tea”, p.27

[8] Kowaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth. Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 58

[9] Pettigrew, Jane. A Social History of Tea”, p.31

[10] Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York, N.Y: Viking, 1985., p.141

[11] Pettigrew, Jane. A Social History of Tea”, p.58

[12] Pettigrew, Jane. A Social History of Tea”, p.58

[13] Pettigrew, Jane. A Social History of Tea”, p.59

[14] Kowaleski-Wallace, “Consuming Subjects”, p. 37

[15] Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery, made plain and easy, London, 1755, Courtesy of the Wellcome Library, p. 208

[16] Mintz, Sidney, Sweetness and Power p.130

Bibliography

Cowan, Brian. “What Was Masculine about the Public Sphere? Gender and the Coffeehouse Milieu in Post-Restoration England.” History Workshop Journal, no. 51 (2001): 127–57.“JSTOR Full Text PDF.” Accessed November 21, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/10.2307/4289724.pdf?acceptTC=true.

Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy : Which Far Exceeds Anything of the Kind Ever yet Published. Fifth Edition., 1755. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/cjg67kxa.

Kowaleski-Wallace, Beth. “Women, China, and Consumer Culture in Eighteenth-Century England.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 29, no. 2 (1995): 153–67.

Kowaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth. Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York, N.Y: Viking, 1985.

Pettigrew, Jane. A Social History of Tea: Tea’s Influence on Commerce, Culture & Community. Danville, Ky: Benjamin Press, 2014.

Well-willer. The Women's Petition against Coffee : Representing to Publick Consideration the Grand Inconveniencies Accruing to Their Sex from the Excessive Use of That Drying, Enfeebling Liquor : Presented to the Right Honorable the Keepers of the Liberty of Venus. London: [s.n.], 1674.

Spectator no. 87, 9 June 1711; in ed. Bond, vol. 1, p. 37