Touch and sociability [ Communication ]
… own class, he treats women from lower classes with great familiarity – and so, within seconds of encountering Kate (who presents as a barmaid) he is talking of the nectar of her lips, trying to kiss her, and struggling to gain mastery of her … met Samuel Johnson with Burney’s father and her sister Hetty (who had met Johnson before and to whom Johnson had made a present of The Idler when she was little) ‘[…] my father introduced Hetty to him as an old acquaintance, and he cordially … battles over women’s hands, and over the kiss, were clearly unequal in physical terms. Women had to mobilize a self-representation, backed by others, that established them as persons of modesty and chastity (in the broadest sense) who …
Conduct | Conventions | Dance | Gender | Kissing | Propriety | Touch
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