While reading selections from The Tatler and The Spectator, two subjects that I found most interesting were that of the coquette and her place in society, and also that of fashion, in particular, the hoop skirt.
The Webster’s Dictionary defines a coquette as "a woman who flirts." One of the reasons why ‘she’ appears so frequently in these essays is because these men sense a danger in them. The croquette is a figure of self-sufficiency and 18th century women were not supposed to be self-sufficient. Women of the 18th century were supposed to be ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’ and, above all, dependent on men. When a croquette comes into the picture, however, the men are the ones who can’t handle themselves. The croquette is a flirtatious woman who knows very well the powers of her sex and uses them to her advantage. Just by looking and acting a certain way around men, she learns how to ‘control’ them to a certain degree. Although the men realize what she is doing, they......
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Approximate Word Count: 579
Approximate Pages: 3 (260 words per double-spaced page) |