THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

The tea table is emblematic of the eighteenth-century development of what
historians have called a “consumer revolution.” 45 As opportunities to consume material
goods expanded in the Atlantic world in this time period, critics questioned the impact
such changes had on society and, in particular, on women. In a rather wistful look back,
Charles Jenner wrote in l773:
Time was, when tradesmen laid up what they gain’d,
And frugally a family maintain’d;
When they took stirring housewives for their spouses,
To keep up prudent order in their houses;
Who thought no scorn, at night to sit them down,
And make their childrens cloaths, or mend their own;
Would Polly’s coat to younger Bess transfer,
And make their caps, without a milliner:
But now, a -shopping half the day they’re gone,
To buy five hundred things, and pay for none 46
Jenner’s distress is clear. “Time was,” Jenner mused, when the household was orderly,
even frugal. But commerce preyed on the worst of female and male behavior. Women
might have been the driving force behind consumption, as described by contemporary
rhetoric; yet, male impotence in curtailing female consumption contributed to the distress
described by Jenner.
Critics claimed the tea table corrupted women because of its association with
consumption. In a letter in Eliza Haywood’s Female Spectator, published in 1775, John
Careful described the tea table as “the Bane of good housewifery.” Women, according to
45 See for example, McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society.
46 Charles Jenner, Town Ecologues, 2 nd ed. (London: T. Caddell, 1773), 11.
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