In the latter half of the eighteenth century, English physicians and alleged “Ladies” wrote many advice manuals full of methods for “preserving and improving beauty.” Manuals offered home-made remedies for ailments like pimples, freckles, dark skin, deformed breasts, wrinkles, etc. The authors praised English women for their desire to use art to enhance their nature. They upheld the idea that the English were more civilized than other nations and they should use their bodies as a symbol of pride and identity. Beauty standards were more than shallow and aesthetic ideals. Rather, they existed in the context of British imperialism and the Enlightenment. The eighteenth century was tumultuous, both nationally and globally. The British were colonizing the Americas and India while fighting a war against France and eventually the American Continental Army. This presentation will use a rhetorical analysis of English advice manuals from the eighteenth century, with a feminist perspective based on Kathleen Canning’s “The Body as Method? Reflections on the Place of the Body in Gender History.” Previous work on conduct manuals in the eighteenth century focused largely on the progress of science or the role of women in maintaining a clean and healthy household. However, this presentation argues that English advice manual authors in the eighteenth century used the Enlightenment idea of civilizing nature to police women’s bodies through prescriptive literature about the necessity of modesty and cleanliness.
