Exploring the cliché and the unconventional portrayals of conspicuous

consumption in The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley

The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, published in 1787 and written by Elizabeth Steele1,

follow the life and times of the celebrated actress and courtesan, Sophia Baddeley, as related

by her life-long friend. Baddeley, during the zenith of her popularity, had been the reigning

toast of high society, but quickly gained a reputation as a spendthrift. As such, upon her

untimely death in 1786, following a rapid fall from fame, poets and writers took up their pens

in an attempt to find a moral lesson in her fate. Most notably, William Upton’s 1788 elegy ‘On

the Death of Sophia Baddeley’ suggested that Sophia Baddeley’s unfeminine conduct in life

had ‘fix’d her for an early tomb2’. Steele, who had lived with Baddeley for most of her

celebrated years, took it upon herself to counteract some of this tarnishing of Baddeley’s

legacy. Indeed, Amy Culley, in her own study of the Memoirs, has argued that Steele used the

relatively haphazard rules of the prostitute memoir genre in order to recover Baddeley’s

reputation in the face of her critics3. I would also argue that Steele coveted her own stock of

fame in equal measure, as she often places herself as principal character of the Memoirs. Thus,

Steele has weaved together something that is both marketable to an audience hungry for tales

of scandal and demise, and soothing of their various judgements against the late Baddeley.

1
Whilst there was some debate in the succeeding years after publication as to whether Steele had been
heavily aided in producing the Memoirs by the writer, Alexander Bicknell, recent scholarship has attested
otherwise. Most notably, Sophia Baddeley’s most recent biographer, Katie Hickman, argued that there is no
evidence for such a claim at all. See: Katie Hickman, Courtesans (London: Harper Perennial, 2003), pp. 25, 56-
57

2
William Upton, Poems on Several Occasions (London: printed for John Strahan, No. 67, near the Adelphi
Strand, 1788), pp. 194

3
Amy Culley, ‘The Sentimental Satire of Sophia Baddeley’ in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 3,
No. 3 (Rice University, 2008), pp. 677

1
After all, Baddeley was not simply condemned for her spending habits, but as a courtesan

greedy for luxury too. Steele had very particular prejudices to quell.

In light of this, I hope to explore the following assertion: that the Memoirs, although inevitably

formulaic in many ways, still manage to portray the 18th-century sex worker’s4 relationship

with conspicuous consumption in a manner that avoids many of the clichés associated with that

relationship in other 18th century prostitution narratives. The Sophia Baddeley that springs forth

in Steele’s construction is a woman who is not quite as superficial and shackled to luxury as

18th-century critics may have liked to believe. There is a variety in Baddeley’s relationship

with conspicuous consumption and the commercial world that suggests some defiance of oft

one-dimensional clichés on Steele’s part. Certainly, Steele is not immune to accepted clichés

about the consumer habits of courtesans and prostitutes. She seems in-tune with the fact that

the prostitution memoirs that preceded her own publication thoroughly employed conspicuous

consumption as a motif of the sex worker’s decline in a superficial society. In many ways,

Steele quite conventionally lays the blame for Baddeley’s untimely demise at the feet of that

luxury-obsessed fashionable world. Such a trope ensured an enraptured audience. But whilst

Vivien Jones has argued that it may be too much to expect explicit resistance to common

themes within the generally formulaic lay-out and content of the prostitution narrative5, I would

make the counterpoint that the Memoirs does, after a fashion, resist many of the conventional

portrayals of the relationship between the sex worker and conspicuous consumption. Arguably,

4
I will be using ‘prostitute,’ ‘courtesan’ and ‘sex worker’ interchangeably in this essay, usually to enhance
readability and the flow of things. Laura J Rosenthal uses these terms interchangeably, as well as Katie
Hickman, in their respective works on prostitution and courtesanry in the 18 th century (which have been cited
at other points in this essay). ‘Sex work/er’, however, is modern terminology, borne out of the debate as to
whether prostitution is legitimate work. This debate is not being discussed in this paper and thus, ‘sex worker’
in this context is merely another way to refer to an 18th century woman who provides sexual services in
exchange for money or goods.

5
Vivien Jones, ‘Luxury, Satire and the Prostitute Narrative’ in Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates,
Desires and Delectable Goods (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 187

2
Steele had to resist many of the clichés of this relationship in order to successfully restore some

good to Baddeley’s name. In a world where views on the sex worker as a consumer of luxury

commodities, at best, were reluctantly tolerant and, at worst, directed the blame for 18th-century

society’s moral decay towards such women, it was paramount that Steele created something

that, at least in part, rejected this kind of narrative.

Thus, by placing the Memoirs alongside other prostitution narratives of the period, I will be

able to explore how it adheres to and resists many of the recurring clichés of the sex worker’s

relationship with conspicuous consumption. Some discussion of the contemporary debates

regarding the consumption of luxuries and of an emerging commercial society in general, will

situate the Memoirs into a context. These contemporary debates very much influenced the 18th-

century prostitution narrative, and thus informed what Steele ultimately produced. All in all,

this essay will seek to prove that the Memoirs are varied in their portrayal of conspicuous

consumption in the life of Sophia Baddeley, a variety that, I would suggest, is influenced by

the fact that Steele is recovering some of her late friend’s blackened reputation. Though many

motifs of the sex worker’s relationship with conspicuous consumption are, inevitably,

implemented in the narrative, Steele also gives us something unconventional and multi-faceted.

Luxury and the sex worker in contemporary debates

The consumption of luxuries, the endless cycle of emulating fashions, and experiences in a

commercial climate, were particular preoccupations of 18th-century prostitution narratives.

Arguably, this preoccupation reflected broader concerns and discussions about the changing

nature of consumption and luxury in the 18th-century, particularly with regards to women’s

relationship with these concepts. In 1714, Bernard Mandeville set the tone for some of these

debates in The Fable of the Bees, a philosophical exploration of Britain’s economic and

commercial landscape at that point in time. Mandeville associated extravagant spending and

3
an insatiable desire for luxury goods with women specifically. He placed it on par with the

voracious sexual appetites that female consumers generally possessed and rather unflatteringly

concluded that whatever ‘vile stratagems6’ these women employed in order to obtain luxuries,

it was a necessary evil for the greater good of the nation. Berg and Eger point out that the

language of 18th century commerce (‘intercourse,’ ‘conversation’ etc.) frequently mirrors and

overlaps with that of sexual relations7 and thus, for the prostitute whose business was sex and

who represented the coquettish trickster to many, the association between the sex worker and

conspicuous consumption must have been hard to elude. Sex workers were certainly not

included by philosophers like David Hume who, by the mid-18th-century, were thinking more

positively about women’s relationship with consumption by arguing that respectable female

consumers were a civilising influence8.

The sex worker, too, was many of the anxieties 18th-century Britain had with regards to social

mobility and the power of social emulation personified. With the money gained through her

own sexual labour, she was financially able to purchase the latest fashions in order to attract

more clients and penetrate realms of society to which she should, in theory, have been barred

from. Indeed, in 1726, when Daniel Defoe remarked that he could not tell the difference

between prostitutes in a tavern and reputable women on account of the similarity in their dress

and make-up9, he was observing the fact that easier access to luxury goods for sex workers

6
Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits, 2nd edition (London: printed for
Edmund Parker at the Bible and Crown in Lombard Street, 1723), pp. 254

7
Maxine Berg, Elizabeth Eger, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Luxury Debates’ in Luxury in the Eighteenth Century:
Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods ed. by M. Berg and E. Eger, (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp.
19

8
Maxine Berg, Elizabeth Eger, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Luxury Debates,’ pp. 19

9
Daniel Defoe, Some Considerations Upon Street-Walkers. With a Proposal for lessening the present Number of
them (London: printed for A. Moore, near St. Paul’s, 1726), pp. 3-4

4
(who were, generally, not born to wealth or nobility) meant they could uncannily imitate their

social betters. This blurred class distinctions and made morality, usually visible by appearance,

ambiguous. Thus, easier access to luxury was a morally and societally corrupting force.

Rousseau certainly felt that luxury, and social emulation in particular, was a corrupting,

unnatural force in 18th-century society. In his 1750 Discourses on the Arts and Sciences,

Rousseau argued that conspicuous consumption signified ‘the corruption of taste10,’ a decline

in immorality and the erosion of one’s identity. For this reason, he also recommended

government intervention in the superfluous consumption of luxuries11. One of these

government interventions that had, for centuries, targeted prostitutes and courtesans

specifically was the sumptuary law. By the 18th century, some nations in Europe were still

trying to curb the extravagant dress of their subjects via sumptuary laws, but prostitutes and

courtesans were left relatively free to dress and consume as they wish. In Britain specifically,

there were no restrictions placed on the sex worker in an attempt to ‘redress this dangerous

ambiguity12’ between dress, class and morality. Thus, by Rousseau’s logic (and his ideas were

most assuredly favoured by many followers of the Enlightenment in Britain), the prostitute was

doubly problematic: her wealth was acquired through a practice perceived to be immoral, and

her emulation of fashion and easier access to luxury goods represented a subversion of the

natural order, of morality and of feminine identity.

And yet, some contemporary observers felt more positively about the sex worker’s conspicuous

consumption, although even this positivity was tinged with an underlying reluctance. Johann

10
Jeremy Jennings, ‘The Debate about Luxury in Eighteenth-and-Nineteenth-Century French Political Thought’
in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 68, No. 1 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), pp. 81

11
Jeremy Jennings, ‘The Debate about Luxury in Eighteenth-and-Nineteenth-Century French Political Thought,’
pp. 81

12
Katie Hickman, Courtesans (London: Harper Perennial, 2003), pp. 17

5
von Archenholz observed, in 1789, that the British generally tolerated sex workers’ presence

because they recognised their contribution to the economy13. On another occasion, the Anglo-

Irish courtesan, Margaret Leeson alias Peg Plunkett, escaped punishment for false assault

charges because ‘some of the gentlemen observed to the rest, that it would be a pity not to

favour a woman, who, by spending considerable sums amongst the traders of the city, was of

service to it14.’ Arguably, too, there was something rather Mandevillian about the prostitute’s

relationship with social emulation. They were not only obligated to social emulate the

fashionable themselves, but became the socially emulated as fashion icons and thus, stimulated

the economy in this way too. Courtesans have long been noted for their fashionable influence

and indeed, in 18th century Britain specifically, any choice they made to ‘vary the fashion of

[their] apparel15’ immediately spurred on the general population of women to follow suit, for

better or for worse.

Conspicuous consumption in the prostitute narrative

Laura J Rosenthal explored some of the ways in which two particular categories of 18th-century

prostitution narrative deal with conspicuous consumption16. The libertine narrative, favoured

13
Johann von Archenholz, A picture of England: containing a description of the laws, customs and manners of
England. Interspersed with Curious and Interesting Anecdotes, Vol. 2, (London: published for Edward Jeffrey,
Pall-Mall, 1789), pp. 100

14
Laura Rosenthal, Infamous Commerce: Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
(London: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 107

15
Anonymous, The Centinel, Vol. 1, second edition (Dublin: printed for James Hoev Junior, at the Mercury in
Skinner Row, 1758), pp. 169

16
Whilst there are certainly other categories of prostitution narrative (namely, the reform narrative, which
tends to be about fallen women who reject the prospect of sex work all together), I have identified the
libertine and sentimental narrative as specifically relevant to both The Memoirs and conspicuous consumption
as a trope in the construction of the 18th century sex worker’s tale. See in-depth discussion of libertine and
sentimental narratives in: Laura Rosenthal, Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century
(Canada: Broadview Press, 2008), pp. 16-27

6
in the first half of the 18th-century and typically portraying the sex worker as a lascivious

woman, was pornographic and produced by men for the pleasure of other men. It was

fascinated with the way in which the prostitute turned herself into a commodity in order to

obtain luxury and entry into higher social circles and wondered at her navigation of a

commercial society. Rosenthal identifies this as ‘self-objectification17, which directly

contradicts the prostitute’s femininity. Indeed, the sex worker becoming an available luxury

commodity to men across the class divide, in order to gain her own wealth, is titillating because

it is ‘destablis[ing] of class and gender18.’ The libertine narrative is never celebratory of this

aspect of its subject’s exploits, almost always condemning them as unfeminine and borne from

immorality, but they still draw in their reader with tales of luxury, ambition, empowerment and

social mobility. For example, in The Aunthentick Memoirs of the Life, Intrigues and Adventures

of the Celebrated Sally Salisbury, a fairly typical libertine narrative, Sally attacks a client who

pays her with false coins, and transforms into a wealth-obsessed ‘hell-cat19. Her natural

femininity has been overridden by her desire for luxury commodities. Her behaviour in this

scene proves her both dangerous and vulnerable and thus, attractive, in the eyes of the 18th

century male reader. This corruption of Sally’s identity as a woman, arguably, has echoes of

Rousseau, but her uncompromising determination for her own legitimate wealth is

Mandevillian in tone.

The sentimental narrative of the later 18th century, on the other hand, attempts some sympathy

for its subject and does not seek to titillate. It frames its heroine as the victim of a shallow and

17
Laura Rosenthal. Infamous Commerce, pp. 100

18
Laura Rosenthal, Nightwalkers, pp. 19

19
Charles Walker, The Authentick Memoirs of the Life, Intrigues and Adventures of the Celebrated Sally
Salisbury. With True Characters of her most Considerable Gallants (London: printed in London, 1723), pp. 120-
121

7
materialistic society no longer invested in women’s traditional roles but merely in luxury. The

narrative represents ‘downward mobility20’ in that the heroine generally begins as middle-class

and/or genteel and after a tragedy beyond her control occurs, ends up reluctantly in prostitution.

She flounders because becoming a commodity and being obliged to obtain commodities in

order to survive is corrupting and erodes her natural virtues. Society, and particularly the

fashionable ranks she is forced to rely on, is self-interested, immoral and materialistic. The

sentimental narrative was concerned in espousing a moral lesson and chastising what it

believed to be a fatal flaw in modern society and women’s place within it. A particularly good

example of a prostitution narrative that makes much use of sentimental motifs is The Memoirs

of the Celebrated Miss Fanny Murray, first published in 1759. After ruination in Bath, Fanny

Murray sets out for London, the ‘emporium of commerce21,’ hoping to find honourable work.

However, her mounting debt forces her into degrading sexual acts, until she eventually

achieves some fame and social stability. Still, living at the mercy of the fashionable world, she

is doomed to inevitably succumb to its pitfalls and her downfall comes when she is arrested for

debt and eventually fades away. Fanny has to sacrifice some of her virtuous, feminine identity

in order to survive, and even when she eventually lives in wealth and luxury, is able to dress

extravagantly and buy whatever takes her fancy, the corruption of it ruins her femininity

further. Her conspicuous consumption may allow her to become the ‘nonpareil 22’ of

fashionable society, very briefly: but this is merely indicative of her estrangement from virtue,

20
Laura Rosenthal, Nightwalkers, pp. 17

21
Anonymous, Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Fanny Murray, Interspersed with the Intrigues and Amours of
Several Eminent Personages. Founded on Real Facts, Vol. 1 (Dublin: printed by S. Smith at Mr. Faulkner’s in
Essex-Street, 1759), pp. 37

22
Anonymous, Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Fanny Murray, Interspersed with the Intrigues and Amours of
Several Eminent Personages. Founded on Real Facts, Vol. 2 (Dublin: printed by S. Smith at Mr. Faulkner’s in
Essex-Street, 1759), pp. 109

8
as she is simply aping immoral fashionable society whose women, in turn, are ‘command[ed]23’

by Murray’s influence and blur gender roles and distinctions of morality in their subsequent

emulation. Unlike the heroine of the libertine narrative, the heroine of the sentimental narrative

is not framed in a pornographic light. She is not portrayed as naturally avaricious. Indeed, each

prostitution narrative (and there are many) is different in its own portrayal of the sex worker in

a materialistic world, reflecting just how unpredictable the trajectory of prostitution was in this

period. However, both the heroine of the sentimental narrative and the heroine of the libertine

narrative, are equally corrupted by luxury and consumption, and lose their identities and

femininity in a commercial society. This is a very frequent cliché.

Conspicuous consumption in The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley: a conventional tale?

Sophia Baddeley’s trajectory, as related by Steele, has shades of many of its sentimental

predecessors. Sophia is not highly born but she comes from a family who ‘bestowed on her a

genteel education24.’ Marriage to the actor, Robert Baddeley, pushes her quite willingly onto

the stage and into the public eye, but her first attendance to a society ‘party of pleasure25’ and

alienation from her role as a wife ultimately leaves her on the fringes of respectability and

means she is obliged to ensure survival via sex work. And thus, Steele can begin to show us,

by degrees, Baddeley’s eventual downfall in a fashionable and materialistic society. In the

Memoirs, Steele comes to live with Baddeley following the latter’s suicide attempt and is

concerned by Baddeley’s excessive spending on frivolities and her hedonistic lifestyle26.

23
Anonymous, Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Fanny Murray, Vol. 1, pp. 81

24
Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, late of Drury Lane Theatre, Vol. 1 (London: printed
for the author at the Literary Press, No. 14, Red-Lion Street, Clerkenwell, 1787), pp. 8

25
Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, Vol. 1, pp. 14

26
Hickman calculates Baddeley’s eventual debts to what would be around half a million pounds nowadays.
See: Katie Hickman, Courtesans, pp. 73

9
Steele takes it upon herself to attempt to curb Baddeley’s spending by any means she can.

Luxury commodities, Steele states, are the ‘rewards of prostitution27’ and are simply the pretty

dressings of Baddeley’s moral degradation and transformation into a mere commodity that is

divorced from traditional femininity. Furthermore, Steele’s decision to leave out Baddeley’s

sexual assignations in favour of the ways in which Baddeley manages to obtain luxury goods,

despite the restraints Steele attempts to place on her, echoes of the traditional libertine

narrative, where wealth and luxury is the sex worker’s unnatural ambition28. At one point in

the Memoirs, Steele recalls Sophia, after falling for a humble undergraduate, despairing at the

hypocrisy and misery of the ‘wretched29’ fashionable world, which distances her from a sense

of true womanhood. Much like the anonymous writer of Fanny Murray’s memoirs, Steele

chooses to portray Baddeley on her deathbed as friendless, in debt and forced out of London

and out of the society she once reigned, although Hickman argues that this was not the whole

truth30. Her demise, Steele cautions, is a warning to the ‘gay and thoughtless31’ who believe

that a woman’s fortunes in high society can never reverse.

And yet, whilst the Memoirs certainly seem to conform to some of the conventions of preceding

prostitution narratives with regards to conspicuous consumption, they also appear to defy these

27
Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, Vol. 3 (London: printed for the author, at the Literary
Press, No. 14, Red-Lion Street, Clerkenwell, 1787), pp. 141

28
In The Memoirs, Steele recounts, too, how Baddeley would often attempt to get out over sex with her most
famed lover and keeper, Lord Melbourne, by feigning illness. According to Steele, Baddeley called these times
her ‘holidays,’ as she was able to enjoy Melbourne’s money as she pleased without having to sleep with him.
Just like the heroine of the libertine narrative, Baddeley, in this instance, appears to care most about luxury,
treating her body as merely the vessel with which to obtain it. See: Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia
Baddeley, late of Drury Lane Theatre, Vol. 3, pp. 10-11

29
Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, Vol. 3, pp. 168

30
Katie Hickman, Courtesans, pp. 78

31
Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, late of Drury Lane Theatre, Vol. 6, (London: printed
for the author and sold by the booksellers, 1787), pp. 199

10
conventions in equal measure. Steele loves Baddeley: she asserts, or else implies it, throughout

the Memoirs. And whilst this does not necessarily enhance authenticity, it does suggest that

Steele is personally invested in a portrayal of her subject that does not satisfy the critical eye

of Baddeley’s detractors. Thus, whilst Steele is clearly not unsusceptible to employing

clichés32, she does not simply present Baddeley as a one-dimensional figure, emblematic of

what a society obsessed with conspicuous consumption is capable of. Steele’s Baddeley is not

a pornographic invention or a fallen woman: she exists in the Memoirs as woman of many

facets and considerable interiority. When Steele defies convention, her portrayal of Baddeley’s

relationship with conspicuous consumption becomes more complex and, perhaps, more

acceptable to Steele’s readership.

Beyond the clichés of the unfeminine spendthrift

At the crux of it, we have seen that conspicuous consumption in the prostitution narrative,

whether that narrative be libertine or sentimental, is intrinsically linked to the sex worker’s

distancing from traditional femininity, morality and gentility. In the libertine narrative,

conspicuous consumption is emblematic of the heroine’s unnatural avarice for excess and

status beyond her lot. Similarly, in the sentimental narrative, it is symbolic of the heroine’s fall

from the path of virtue and struggle to survive in an iniquitous arena that does not put much

stock into ideal 18th-century womanhood. In the eyes of her own critics, Sophia Baddeley was

damned thus, estranged from chastity and, with regards to her perceived addiction to luxury,

from feminine modesty and restraint. There are certainly instances in the Memoirs where Steele

32
At one point in the Memoirs, Steele questions whether any woman would be able to avoid the temptations
of pleasure and luxury that Sophia was exposed to, thus clearly giving some credence to the idea that the sex
worker was made unfeminine by her experiences with luxury. See: Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs
Sophia Baddeley, late of Drury Lane, Vol. 4 (London: printed for the author at the Literary Press, No. 14, Red-
Lion Street, Clerkenwell, 1787), pp. 75-76

11
gives credence to such a judgement: Baddeley appears to be constantly away from the home,

drawn from quiet gentility to the public excesses of luxury instead.

And yet, in spite of the consistent presence of the public sphere and of a superficial, noisome

society within the Memoirs, Steele shows us Baddeley as a woman of private virtues, just as

much as she shows us Baddeley’s public persona. Culley argues that Steele, in a move that was

quite unconventional for the prostitution narrative up until the publication of the Memoirs,

attempts to relocate Baddeley to the private sphere to provide a foil to the critics who saw

Baddeley as nothing more than ‘surface and self-display33 and thus incapable of accepted

middle-class forms of appropriate femininity. In this vein, Steele’s relocation of Baddeley, in

turn, allows the narrative to defy many of the clichés of sex worker’s relationship with

conspicuous consumption: Baddeley, a spendthrift addicted to the high life in a very public

fashionable society, becomes a woman of substance and a woman who, despite popular

prejudice, is actually imbued with many of the virtues of genteel femininity. Baddeley’s

detractors argued that she was in desperate need of prudence and self-control, and so, Steele

shows us a woman who has both. In the Memoirs, Baddeley and Steele dine as simply as their

servants when they have no guests and Baddeley takes such modest living in her stride. In the

same vein, Baddeley feels the ‘distresses of others34’ very keenly and is thus quietly but

sincerely charitable, passing on clothes and personal belongings to servants and those less

fortunate. And, far from being shallow and unable to resist the mere hint of a ribbon, Baddeley

is as equally invested in spending her money on books and other commodities that furnish the

mind in private, rather than frivolously beautify the body in public. If, as Caroline Gonda

argues, the 18th-century saw a woman’s public persona as a direct contradiction to ideal

33
Amy Culley, ‘The Sentimental Satire of Sophia Baddeley,’ pp. 678

34
Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, late of Drury Lane Theatre, Vol. 2 (London: printed
for the author, at the Literary Press, No. 14, Red-Lion Street, Clerkenwell, 1787), pp. 103

12
femininity35, then Steele recognised this and sought to salvage Baddeley’s reputation in light

of it. By showing Baddeley in a private sphere, separate from commercial society, Baddeley

shines through as a multi-faceted individual who defies the cliché that a sex worker is merely

a slave to luxury, and becomes more palatable to a judgemental 18th-century audience.

Baddeley, as a public entity, is immodest, self-obsessed, and materialistic. As a private woman,

however, she is the exact opposite. These two opposing aspects of Baddeley in the Memoirs

may appear stark and contradicting of each other but they suggest method on Steele’s part:

whilst she cannot completely divorce Baddeley from the public sphere on account of

Baddeley’s status as both a courtesan and a spendthrift, she can put forward the idea that

Baddeley retained femininity and gentility, despite her interactions within a commercial

society. The private sphere has a very persistent presence in the Memoirs and it allows Steele

to contradict the notion of Baddeley as a slave to conspicuous consumption.

Even when Steele is obliged to explore Baddeley’s experiences within the public sphere,

particularly with regards to Baddeley’s status as a fashion icon in the upper echelons of society,

Steele still chooses to imbue Baddeley with all the modest femininity that the heroines of

preceding prostitution narratives were lacking. In an echo of Mandevillian philosophy and

reluctant defences of the sex worker as a driver of the economy, Sophia Baddeley’s fashions,

as related in the Memoirs, are admired most particularly by ladies of rank. However, quite

unlike Defoe’s observations sixty years prior, Baddeley’s fashion choices do not become a

moral point. Rather, her fashionable influence appears to be her due as a woman of ‘divine36’

35Caroline Gonda, ‘Misses, Murderesses and Magdalens: Women in the Public Eye’ in Women, Writing and the
Public Sphere ed. by E. Eger, C. Grant, C. ó Gallchoir & P. Warburton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001), pp. 66

36
Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, Vol. 2, pp. 173

13
charms. Baddeley blushes37 and resists the praise she receives on account of her taste in

commodities. Indeed, she avoids ‘shewing even a little pride upon the occasion38’ and never

courts such attention. Conversely, Fanny Murray, in her own memoirs, drives women to

emulate her own immorality via her taste in fashion and becomes ‘despotic39’ and unfeminine

in her power over her social betters. Sally Salisbury, too, is vulgar and gaudy in her own

approach to fashion and commodity. Neither heroine has any of Baddeley’s marks of modesty

and gentle sway over fashionable taste, which suggests some resistance to the cliché of the

unfeminine luxury addict and immoral social climber on Steele’s part. Whilst Steele has not

avoided portraying Baddeley as a conspicuous consumer and as a cog in the machine of

fashionable society, Baddeley is not Mandeville’s ‘worst of Women and most profligate of the

sex40’ within the public and commercial sphere, either. Indeed, in the vein of writings on ideal

femininity by contemporary didacts, Steele’s Baddeley showcases that ‘[a woman’s] Modesty

is [her] brightest and most valuable Ornament41.’

I would argue too that, in the Memoirs, the private sphere is also a domestic one and Steele

employs the trope of domesticity in the same way she employs the perpetual presence of a

private arena: through it, she is able to counteract the idea that Sophia Baddeley’s access to

superfluous consumption estranged Baddeley completely from what Steele’s middle-class

37
Dr John Gregory, in a moralistic conduct book written for genteel young ladies, suggests that a woman’s
blush in the face of praise for her fashion and appearance in public is the ‘most powerful charm of beauty.’
See: John Gregory, A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters (Edinburgh: printed for W. Creech, Edinburgh; and W
Strahan, and T. Cadell, London, 1774), pp. 26-27

38
Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, Vol. 2, pp. 173

39
Anonymous, Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Fanny Murray, Vol. 1, pp. 81

40
Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, pp. 134

41
Anonymous, The Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed in Such Principles of Politeness, Prudence, and
Virtue, as Will Lay a Sure Foundation for Gaining Respect, Esteem and Satisfaction in This Life and Eternal
Happiness in a Future State, Vol. 1 (London: published by Edward Wicksteed, 1747), pp. 339

14
readership would have seen as ideal feminine identity. Luxury and conspicuous consumption

in preceding prostitution narratives often, in the view of Vivien Jones, ‘distort [a woman’s]

domestic identity’ but within Steele’s construction, we see Baddeley indulging in middle-class

domesticity with a natural ease. In the Memoirs, Baddeley industriously sews all her own

clothes, buys tea and other related goods to make sure that her guests are met with all the

ornamentation of domestic politeness, and furnishes the interior of her house ‘elegantly […]

with good taste42.’ Baddeley observes and gives credence to the trappings of domesticity just

as much as she pays attention to the changing fashions and latest luxury goods. In The Memoirs

of Mary Robinson, a successor to Steele’s creation and written by Robinson herself,

domesticity as a trope is also employed to counteract Robinson’s own reputation as a courtesan

and product of a luxury-obsessed world. For Robinson, a fashionable and materialistic society

threatens her ‘domestic attachment43’ and she yearns to be free from public vices. Whilst this

certainly suggests that Steele was pre-empting a changing approach to conspicuous

consumption in the prostitution narrative, Steele doesn’t necessarily suggest that Baddeley

prefers restrained domesticity and wishes to wholly return to it. What she does imply, by her

inclusion of domesticity as a trope, is that Baddeley, in spite of her profession and despite her

addiction to conspicuous consumption, retains an appropriately feminine sense of domestic

gentility. Whether focusing on domesticity specifically or the private sphere more generally,

such a method of storytelling ultimately suggests that Steele partly recognised the ways in

which conspicuous consumption opposed appropriate feminine conduct. As such, her Sophia

Baddeley is genteel, rather than indelicate.

42
Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, Vol. 2, pp. 161

43
Mary Robinson, The Memoirs of Mary Robinson, ‘Perdita’, 1801 ed. J. Fitzgerald Molloy (London, 1895), pp.
113

15
Conclusions

There is no denying that Steele is, in many ways, conventional and formulaic in her

presentation of the sex worker’s relationship with conspicuous consumption in the Memoirs.

Indeed, at the start of this essay, I suggested that Steele had produced something that was

capable of attracting a large readership, as well as with the potential to salvage Sophia

Baddeley’s reputation. As we have explored in some depth here, there was clearly a precedent

set by other prostitution narratives that offered Steele a marketable framework for the

presentation of conspicuous consumption in the life of a sex worker. Furthermore, Steele does

not prevaricate: Sophia Baddeley was a courtesan and she was heavily in debt on account of

her spending habits. As such, Steele is obliged to address conspicuous consumption and, more

than this, she is obliged to condemn it on moral grounds for the sake of her own reputation. It

is also worth noting that Steele did not live in a vacuum and must have been subject to

contemporary beliefs (be they derived from Mandeville, Rousseau, or others) regarding the

prostitute’s status as a consumer and as a commodity. But by the same token, Steele has

recognised the ways in which the sex worker as a conspicuous consumer clashes with

acceptable forms of womanly respectability. As a result, Steele makes sure that her Baddeley

is as much an embodiment of middle-class femininity as she is a persona within a materialistic

world. In this, Steele seems to pre-empt the late 18th and 19th century female-centric memoir

that would heavily employ the presence of the private, domestic sphere in tandem with the

public, commercial arena44, in order to present their subject in a more acceptable light.

(4305 words, including sub-headings, but not including footnotes and bibliography)

44
For a more detailed discussion on the shift between 18th and 19th century female-centric biographical
narratives, that also gives credence to what Steele appears to be pre-empting in the Memoirs, see: Amy Culley,
‘The Sentimental Satire of Sophia Baddeley’ in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Rice
University, 2008), pp. 677-678

16
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