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Activities: Context Activities The Best Seat in the House: Parlors and the Development of Gentility in Nineteenth-Century America  Back to Context Activities
When Huckleberry Finn meets the rural Grangerford family in the course of his adventures on the Mississippi, he is awed by the grandeur of their house: "I hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style.... There warn't no bed in the parlor, not a sign of a bed." Huck's naive description of the Grangerfords' "stylishness" is of course meant to be funny, but Mark Twain's satire of the family's genteel pretensions depends for its humor on his audience's knowledge of what might be called "parlor culture." By the mid-nineteenth century, middle-class Americans had come to believe that the appearance and physical layout of their homes could both express and construct an aura of domestic harmony, social success, and moral rectitude. In particular, the parlor--a formal space set aside for social ceremonies such as receiving guests or hosting tea parties--came to signify the refinement and comfort of respectable family living. Primarily designed for display rather than use, the parlor was generally the "best room" in the house and usually contained furnishings and knick-knacks that cost more than the objects in the house that were intended for everyday use. The fact that the Grangerfords do not have a bed in their parlor--that is, they can afford to devote the space to formal display rather than stock it with furnishings designed for private, daily use--marks them as genteel and cultured in Huck's eyes. As Twain's satirical description of the Grangerfords' decorous parlor in backwoods Arkansas makes clear, the values that informed parlor culture were not limited to the wealthy or the urban in mid-nineteenth-century America. As industrialization and mass production made furniture and textiles affordable to even the lower middle classes, Americans everywhere began to create parlors to serve as visual assertions of their sophistication and good taste. Architectural plan books such as S. B. Reed's House-Plans for Everybody (1878) offered designs for inexpensive houses that, though small, included front parlors meant to signal respectability and refinement. Plans like the "Design for $600 Cottage" featured in the archive reveal that a parlor was perceived as necessary in even the most humble home. Even Americans whose dwellings were so small that there was no room for a formal parlor made an effort to adorn their living spaces with the decorative objects that were integral to parlor culture, such as the wreath, birdcage, and rocking chair visible in a nineteenth-century photograph of a primitive cabin on the Nebraska plains. Intended to serve as a buffer zone between the outside world and the private domestic areas of the bedroom and kitchen, the parlor was a semi-public space that both protected people's privacy and publicized their accomplishments. Thick carpets muffled noises, while protective doilies and layers of lace curtains and heavy draperies shielded the room and its furnishings from bright light and prying eyes. The large-scale, luxuriously upholstered furniture of the ideal "parlor suite" cradled the body even as it controlled posture. But while the parlor was shrouded and protected, it was at the same time designed to open itself to display. Curio cabinets, mantles, and shelves exhibited the photographs and knick-knacks that occupants felt expressed their individuality and good taste. Parlors often contained pianos, handmade artwork, and embroidery stands intended to show off the inhabitants' domestic accomplishments. The effect, though cluttered and oppressive by today's standards, was meant to be simultaneously comfortable and cultured, inviting and impressive. While some social commentators complained that most parlors went unused--Americans often felt that their parlor furniture was "too good" to actually sit on--homeowners continued to perceive them as important rooms. The parlor could be used for evening parties at which guests would listen to piano performances, sing, or play specially developed "parlor games" such as charades, puzzles, or "Twenty Questions." At Christmas-time, the decorated tree would stand in the parlor. Because they were not in constant use, parlors offered a secluded place for young couples to court one another. In Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's short story "The Revolt of 'Mother,' " Mother is particularly frustrated that her daughter, Nancy, is forced to host her fiancè in the family's kitchen because Father is unwilling to spend money on a parlor. Among wealthy city-dwellers, parlors were the location of choice for hosting "callers." The formal ritual of social calling, in which women paid brief visits or left specially designed "calling cards" at the homes of their female acquaintances, persisted into the early twentieth century and thus kept parlor culture alive. The ubiquity and conventionality of social calling is clear in Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening. Edna Pontellier scandalizes her husband and her community when she stops receiving callers or making social visits and instead opts to structure her time according to her own desires. As Chopin's novel illustrates, parlor culture could seem unappealing, suffocating, and overly regulated. It is significant that Edna's social revolt is enacted through her decision to spend her time in successively more unconventional domestic spaces: she first retreats to her painting studio, then to Mademoiselle Reisz's unfashionable and "dingy" apartment, and eventually takes the radical step of moving out of her husband's formal house and into a small home she calls the "pigeon house." While Edna's rejection of convention is to a certain extent enabled by her wealth, leisure, and social status, less privileged women struggled in their own ways with the imposition of the values of parlor culture. In her autobiographical essays, Zitkala-Sa poignantly narrates her Sioux mother's difficulty in making the transition from living in her traditional tipi to inhabiting a Euro-American style cottage. Never completely comfortable with the curtains and tablecloths in her cabin, Zitkala-Sa's mother continues to cook and perform most of her domestic chores in a nearby canvas tipi. As Zitkala-Sa explains it, "My mother had never gone to school, and though she meant always to give up her own customs for such of the white man's ways as pleased her, she made only compromises." Such "compromises" were, for many, more meaningful acts of self-expression than strict adherence to the norms of parlor culture. Questions
[1056] William S. Soule, Arapaho camp with buffalo meat drying near Fort Dodge, Kansas (1870), courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Still Picture Branch. Parlor culture was not limited to white, upper-class women; less privileged women also struggled with the imposition of these values. In her essays, Zitkala-Sa narrates her Sioux mother's difficulty in moving from her traditional dwelling to a Euro-American style cottage. [1207] George Harper Houghton, Family of slaves at the Gaines' house (1861), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZC4-4575]. For many slaves, merely having a large enough home on the plantation where they worked proved problematic. [3609] Anonymous, Design for $600 Cottage (1883), courtesy of Cornell University Library. Sketch and floor plan of modest four-room cottage with high, narrow windows and a chimney. [4076] Unknown, Writing at the Quarry farm [Mark Twain] (c. 1871-75), courtesy of the Mark Twain House, Hartford, CT. Photograph of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) in a white suit, writing at a small round table in front of a modest fireplace at Quarry Farm. Though Clemens satirized the corruption and genteel conventions of high society, he aspired to higher social status himself. [4423] Anonymous, The First Step [Godey's Lady's Book] (June 1858), courtesy of Hope Greenberg, University of Vermont. These homespun Americans might be the characters in Royall Tyler's The Contrast. The parlor was felt to be necessary in even the most humble homes. Even when there was no room for a formal parlor, Americans adorned their living spaces with decorative objects. [5770] John C. Grabill, Home of Mrs. American Horse (1891), courtesy of the Library of Congress, American Memory, Grabill Collection [LOT 3076-2, no. 3638]. Uncovered tipi frame with Oglala women and children inside, most likely near the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. In contrast to typical Euro-American dwellings, canvas tipis were where Native American women performed most of their domestic chores. [5799] Anonymous, Ladies S.J.A. Glee Club 1897-1900 Breckenridge, Colo. (c. 1897), courtesy of the Western History/Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library. Breckenridge, Colorado, was first settled in 1859 when gold was discovered in the Blue River. Glee clubs--or choral societies--were an important way of socializing in and domesticating the frontier town. [8263] Anonymous, One of the Many Parlors in a New York Apartment-Hotel (1904), courtesy of Cosmopolitan [no. 38, Dec. 1904]. While most Americans, from the very rich to the humblest frontier family, had some parlor or leisure space in their homes, rooms such as this one in a Manhattan apartment exemplify the vast divide between the rich and the poor and the urban and the rural that existed in this country at the turn of the twentieth century. |
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