29, Jul, 2010

Towards Sensibility

Voluptuousness, according to the brothers Goncourt, was the inspiration of the eighteenth century-the century when, in their view, love-making in France ran to seed.

The brothers' evidence is produced in their book Love in the Eighteenth Century. They write, susceptibly, about ladies' beds with black satin curtains and mirrors for canopies; they note the ubiquitous, suggestive cupids of Fragonard; they remark on 'that seduction of fair white skin, which calls up to jaded eyes images of fragrant flowers and shafts of sunlight'. The imagination of all the craftsmen who work for women is a voluptuous one, they say. Even carriages are designed for love; in the vis-a-vis 'the occupants sit face to face, breath mingling with breath and knees touching knees'. Who can be surprised that carriages are often ordered to take a roundabout route?

Until the death of Louis XIV, the Goncourts say, love spoke as if it had nothing to do with the senses, covering its frailties and scandals with decorum, a majestical air, an appearance of refinement and exoneration. But in this new century secrecy and discretion disappear. 'The lover wakes the quarter where his mistress lies with his lackey's loud double knock and he leaves his carriage at the door to proclaim his good fortune' (this being more congenial than 'dancing attendance out in the cold disguised in wall-coloured cloaks'). The day of 'trooper's love' has arrived. Affaires have become short and primarily carnal, and are described by such euphemisms as 'a passing fancy'. A tete-a-tete means a struggle. One passage of the Goncourts might have been written in the late nineteen-twenties:

The century has embraced the 'realities'; it has restored 'activity to the senses'; it has done away with exaggeration, sham and affection; it boasts 'no more mystery'. ...

There was so much sex in the air, the Goncourts thought, that no girl could preserve a child's imagination. The rules of courtship required a man to tell a woman three times that she was beautiful. The first time she thanked him; the second time she believed him; and the third time she rewarded him.

England inherited the vogue of voluptuousness too, but the two countries were now going their separate ways. The century began in a mood of satire and ended in one of lachrymose sentiment and sensibility. Society tamed its lusts and settled back-some sections of it-into prudery. This was the century when young ladies were to dip their heads irretrievably into romances, and the idea of marriage for love made steady, invincible headway. The arts of courtship were passed down to a larger public, and were not corrupted in the process. Rather were they domesticated. Some of the follies were filtered out and courtship was well on its way to becoming a respectable art, with a matrimonial purpose, as distinct from an aid to seduction.