Big Hair: A Wig History of Consumption in Eighteenth-Century France

In the winter of 1751, after accepting a position of some responsibility in the world of finance, Jean-Jacques Rousseau fell gravely ill. Bedridden, delirious with fever, and facing the prospect of his own death, the philosopher resolved to change the course of his life. He renounced “all projects of fortune and advancement,” including his new job, and vowed to spend what little time he had left in a state of “independence and poverty.” After his convalescence, Rousseau remained true to his pledge and embarked on what he called his “personal reform.” His first act was to change his wardrobe: “I began my reform with my finery,” he wrote. “I gave up my gold trimmings and white stockings, I took a short wig, I laid aside my sword, I sold my watch.” Later recounting the same episode, he stated: “I left le monde and its pomp. I renounced all finery: no more sword, no more watch, no more white stockings, gold trimmings, hairdo.” Instead, he wore “a simple wig and clothes of good rough wool.”1 As a philosophical statement, Rousseau's personal reform was loaded with meaning. The act of dressing down signified that the author of the recently published Discours sur les sciences et les arts was putting his philosophy into practice; he was turning his back on the luxury and artifice of Parisian high society and embracing a virtuous and authentic mode of living. I invoke Rousseau's reform, however, not only to raise its philosophical implications but also to make a specific sartorial observation. Although Rousseau renounced fashionable clothing and accessories, he did not jettison the wig. Instead, he abandoned his old wig to adopt a simpler and shorter model, the round wig, a gesture that raises a number of questions. Why, if Rousseau was intent on rejecting the artifice of le monde, did he not simply discard the wig altogether and wear his natural hair? Why opt instead for a different style? Were certain styles not implicated in the corrupt high society that Rousseau was determined to repudiate? These may seem frivolous affairs of fashion, but, as I will argue, the multiple meanings attributed to wigs illuminate an important Enlightenment transition—economic, social, and cultural in scope—from courtly to modern forms of consumption. Liberal scholars have long hailed the Enlightenment as the birthplace of the modern world, an era in which great thinkers deployed reason to battle faith and superstition in an effort to liberate the individual from the constraints of custom.2 Today, historians are rightly suspicious of such linear—call them Whiggish—interpretations of the period, yet many still cling to the idea of the eighteenth century as threshold to the modern world. As it is now described, however, the modernity of the eighteenth century has less to do with a philosophical or literary canon than it does with transformations in a wide range of social, cultural, and political practices. Among such changing practices, consumption looms large. Indeed, the study of consumption has been central to the historiographical project of recasting the relationship between eighteenth-century life and modernity.3 Historians of consumption have generally followed social theorists in emphasizing two different aspects of modernity. While social scientists emphasize long-term processes of “modernization,” such as urbanization and industrialization, cultural historians and literary critics define modernity in terms of consciousness, stressing in particular the development of a reflexive self and a heightened awareness of one's present age as new and set off from the past.4 Both understandings of modernity underpin current historical literature on eighteenth-century Western European consumption. Highlighting socioeconomic processes of commercialization, historians argue that eighteenth-century Western Europe experienced a “consumer revolution” as men and women freed themselves from the grip of scarcity to initiate a buying spree of historic proportions. Although its geography and periodization remain highly controversial, such a revolution is commonly represented as a step toward modern consumer the same the study of has a cultural new between the Enlightenment and has the that the of consumption was an of a cultural change in which the of a gave to the and of modern the is of is important to that did not in generally The of to “a new state of more more in more and more than but intent on a between Enlightenment consumption and that the on to of As social from took its As with all historiographical the of consumption has a of in its historians on the to which consumption did in eighteenth-century Although some in the of consumption the of modern consumer emphasize and social the of the in have not with the cultural of new of consumption. did the of new forms of consumption understandings of self and the of consumption the of an or of the Instead, to more the meanings to specific consumer and to such meanings and cultural to 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what is as of the wig that to the periodization of with to number of historians have that eighteenth-century in clothing consumption the of in which men as and women as as current on the to with the of social The of the wig that eighteenth-century consumption was not Indeed, the that wigs the of men and does not seem to have had on the of the of the if are all to of a that it in two The first which the eighteenth was courtly forms of consumption to a consumer with Enlightenment of and The which in began in the of society the and a of and a of The of the wig that the first luxury and more consumer that with a of courtly consumption to the to modern of and to the of or the of and to the for the in eighteenth-century consumption.