Phaeton [ Transport ]
… speeds enabled drivers to conspicuously display their control, daring, and skill. It was a carriage designed for performance and spectacle. This carriage model enabled people to perform their elite status to others and encouraged … a few, were bound up in non-verbal communication of who you were, or aspired to be, driving oneself became a new social performance. For example, in Frances Burney ’s 1778 novel Evelina, Lord Orville’s slow and careful phaeton driving is a performance of his restrained, manly gentility whereas the foppish Mr Lovel and the rakish Lord Merton’s reckless phaeton …
Animals | Courtship | Elite
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