EXHIBITS

A representation of Aesops's fable of Genius, Virtue, and Reputation. Virtue and Genius talking to Reputation on the right. 

Throughout the 1700s, how a person should build a reputation and how a reputation was actually constructed often contradicted each other. Even though discussions about reputation construction go as far back as Aesop’s fable of Genius, Virtue, and Reputation, there was not a clear or followed how-to guide for building a reputation. Faramerz Dabhiowala explains that reputations were central to “how people thought about social status, and about the differences between men and women,” but reputations tended to focus on the surface instead of the depth of the individual. If someone had a good reputation, it typically meant that they were from a high social class and that they fit into the gender roles prescribed for them.  Dabhiowala explains that reputations were considered a “compound of moral and social factors," but the focus tended to be on the social factors. [1] 

A supposed prerequisite for a woman to have a good reputation was that she had to be chaste; however, if she was liked by society, that requirement did not have as much weight. People believed a woman’s “'credit' or 'reputation' was identical with her chastity, and once lost was irrecoverable.” Chastity was the foundation that women’s reputations were built on; however, if she was chaste, society still had to approve of her. Society had to make a judgment call to determine whether or not a woman was worthy, and that judgment was based on “a woman’s ‘civility’, her ‘air’ or her ‘carriage’; or, above all, of the way that she dressed.” Once again, these are all vague terms that are hard to define and execute, and the belief that society was judging you all the time enforced the idea that women had to keep up appearances to get a good reputation. [1]