The salons of early modern France were social and intellectual gatherings that played an integral role in the cultural development of the country. The salons were seen by contemporary writers as a cultural hub for the upper middle class and aristocracy, responsible for the dissemination of good manners and sociability. Salons became a center of intellectual conversation, as well as a debate stage for social issues, playing host to many members of the Republic of Letters. In contrast to other early modern institutions, women played an important and visible role within the salons. Each woman, or salonnière, played a different role within these salons. Some were actively involved in conversation and debate, while others used their connections to bring others together and spread Enlightenment ideas.
Historiography
The historiography of the salons is far from straightforward. The salons have been studied in depth by a mixture of feminist, Marxist, cultural, social and intellectual historians. Each of these methodologies focuses on different aspects of the salons, and thus there are varying analyses of the salons’ importance in terms of French history and the Enlightenment as a whole. Major historiographical debates focus around the relationship between the salons and the public sphere, as well as the role of women within the salons.
Periodization of the salon
Breaking down the salons into a historical periods is complicated due to the various historiographical debates that surround them. Most studies stretch from the early sixteenth century up until around the end of eighteenth century. Goodman is typical in ending her study at The French Revolution where, she writes: 'the literary public sphere was transformed into the political public'.Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 280. Steven Kale is relatively alone in his recent attempts to extend the period of the salon up until Revolution of 1848.Steven Kale, French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) p. 9 Kale points out: A whole world of social arrangements and attitude supported the existence of french salons: an idle aristocracy, an ambitious middle class, an active intellectual life, the social density of a major urban center, sociable traditions, and a certain aristocratic feminism. This world did not disappear in 1789.Ibid., p. 9
“Penny Universities” In the 17th century “penny universities” started to pop up across Western Europe. These “universities” appeared in coffee shops, where they got the name “penny university”. This name came because people could go to these shops, and for a very low cost (the cost of a cup of coffee), one could learn the newest scholarly information, discuss local politics and other news.Maria Labbato, "From Salons To Revolution" History 2152: European Women’s History (class lecture, University of North Carolina - Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, October 07, 2020) Anyone of any social class could frequent the coffeehouses, and so they became associated with equality and republicanism; however, in many cities and countries, women were excluded because at this point in time they were widely considered the “weaker” sex, incapable of debating or learning in a male-dominated area.Historic UK. “English Coffeehouses.” Accessed December 16, 2020. https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/English-Coffeehouses-Penny-Universities/ . These coffeehouses can be seen as a predecessor to the Salons of the French Revolution in that they provided non-aristocracy with access to knowledge and were a hub for discussion on Enlightenment ideals, political reform, and the arts.
Cultural rise of salons In the 1500s with colonialism and mercantilism rising, wealth and luxury items made their way into Europe. This opulence nurtured elitism among those in the upper class and ideas such as “Art for arts sake”.
For decades Court Life was how upper class French men and women communicated, spread new ideas, and created cultural trends. The lower members of the aristocracy would send their daughters to court, where they would learn about the arts and culture, but also make social connections and gain status, with the ultimate goal of making a profitable marriage arrangement. Over time courts became a half open, half closed place, with members of somewhat different status all mingling. Since court culture focused mainly on the arts, women held an almost equal position to men. However, as Enlightenment ideas spread across Europe and in France, monarchies and courtlife fell out of favor with the public. This allowed bourgeois women in the home to create a culture and atmosphere similar to that of Royal life, but with more equality.
Conversation, content and the form of the salon
The content and form of the salon must be studied in order to understand the character and historical importance of the salon. Contemporary literature about the salons is dominated by idealistic notions of politeness, civility and honesty, but whether the salons lived up to these standards is matter of debate. Older texts on the salons tend to paint an idealistic picture of the salons, where reasoned debate takes precedence and salons are egalitarian spheres of polite conversation.Sisley Huddleston, Bohemian, Literary and Social Life in Paris: Salons, Cafes, Studios (London: George G. Harrap, 1928) Today, however, this view is rarely considered an adequate analysis of the salon.Steven Kale, French Salons, p. 5.
The period in which salons were dominant has been labeled the 'age of conversation'.Benedetta Craveri, The Age of Conversation (New York: New York Review Books, 2005) The topics of conversation within the salons - that is, what was and was not 'polite' to talk about - are thus vital when trying to determine the form of the salons. There is no universal agreement among historians as to what was and was not appropriate conversation. Marcel Proust 'insisted that politics was scrupulously avoided'.Kale, French Salons, p. 5. Others suggested that little other than government was ever discussed.Ibid., p. 5. The disagreements that surround the content of discussion partly explain why the salon's relationship with the public sphere is so heavily contested.
The salon and the 'public sphere'
Recent historiography of the salons has been dominated by Jürgen Habermas' work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (triggered largely by its translation into French, in 1978, and then English, in 1989), which argued that the salons were of great historical importance.Jürgen Habermas (trans. Thomas Burger), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Camb., Mass.: MIT Press, 1989). Theatres of conversation and exchange – such as the salons, and the coffeehouses in England – played a critical role in the emergence of what Habermas termed the ‘public sphere’, which emerged in ‘cultural-political contrast’ to court society.Ibid., p. 30. Thus, while women retained a dominant role in the historiography of the salons, the salons received increasing amounts of study, much of it in direct response to, or heavily influenced by Habermas’ theory.Joan B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988); Goodman, The Republic of Letters; Erica Harth, Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).
The dominance of Habermas’ work in salon historiography has come under criticism from some quarters, with Pekacz singling out Dena Goodman's Republic of Letters for particular criticism because it was written with ‘the explicit intention of supporting [Habermas’] thesis’, rather than verifying it.Jolanta T. Pekacz, Conservative Tradition In Pre-Revolutionary France: Parisian Salon Women (New York: Peter Lang, 1999) p. 3. The theory itself, meanwhile, has been criticized for a fatal misunderstanding of the nature of salons.Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution, pp. 23-4. The main criticism of Habermas’ interpretation of the salons, however, is that the salons were not part of an oppositional public sphere, and were instead an extension of court society.
This criticism stems largely from Norbert Elias’ The History of Manners, Book 1 of The Civilizing Process 1939, in which Elias contends that the dominant concepts of the salons – politesse, civilité and honnête – were ‘used almost as synonyms, by which the courtly people wished to designate, in a broad or narrow sense, the quality of their own behaviour’.Norbert Elias (Trans. Edmund Jephcott), The Civilising Process: The History of Manners, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), pp. 39-40. Joan Landes agrees, stating that, ‘to some extent, the salon was merely an extension of the institutionalised court’ and that rather than being part of the public sphere, salons were in fact in conflict with it.Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution, pp. 23-5. Erica Harth concurs, pointing to the fact that the state ‘appropriated the informal academy and not the salon’ due to the academies’ ‘tradition of dissent’ – something that lacked in the salon.Harth, Cartesian Women, pp. 61-63. But Landes’ view of the salons as a whole is independent of both Elias’ and Habermas’ school of thought, insofar that she views the salons as a ‘unique institution’, that cannot be adequately described as part of the public sphere, or court society.Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution, p. 23 Others, such as Steven Kale, compromise by declaring that the public and private spheres overlapped in the salons.Kale, French Salons, p. 12. Antoine Lilti ascribes to a similar viewpoint, describing the salons as simply ‘institutions within Parisian high society’.Antoine Lilti, ‘Sociabilité et mondanité: Les hommes de lettres dans les salons parisiens au XVIIIe siècle’ French Historical Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Summer 2005), p. 417.
The most prominent defense of salons as part of the public sphere comes from Dena Goodman's The Republic of Letters, which claims that the ‘public sphere was structured by the salon, the press and other institutions of sociability’.Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: a Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 14. Goodman's work is also credited with further emphasizing the importance of the salon in terms of French history, the Republic of Letters and the Enlightenment as a whole, and has dominated the historiography of the salons since its publication in 1994.Kale, French Salons, p. 238 n. 5.
Women in the salon
When dealing with the salons, historians have traditionally focused upon the role of women within them.Jolanta T. Pekacz, Conservative Tradition In Pre-Revolutionary France: Parisian Salon Women, p. 1. Works in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century often focused on the scandals and ‘petty intrigues’ of the salons.S. G. Tallentyre, Women of the Salons (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1926) and Julia Kavanagh, Women in France during the Enlightenment Century, 2 Vols (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893). Other works from this period focused on the more positive aspects of women in the salon.Edmond et Jules Goncourt, La femme au dix-huitème siècle (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1862) and Paul Deschanel, Figures des femmes (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1900). Indeed, according to Jolanta T. Pekacz, the fact women dominated history of the salons meant that study of the salons was often left to amateurs, while men concentrated on 'more important' (and masculine) areas of the Enlightenment.Pekacz, Conservative Tradition In Pre-Revolutionary France, p. 2.