How Teatime and Cartoons Changed the World
In “The Revolutionary Self,” the historian Lynn Hunt explores the way 18th-century culture transformed our sense of power in the world.
By Marjoleine Kars
THE REVOLUTIONARY SELF: Social Change and the Emergence of the Modern Individual, 1770-1800, by Lynn Hunt
Europeans began to consider their own social orders in a fresh light. Scottish thinkers in particular, among them Adam Smith’s disciple John Millar, argued that human development proceeded in stages and could be measured by women’s status — a radical idea at the time. In refined societies, Millar observed, men and women ate and talked together, which made female literacy desirable. Hunt suggests that tea drinking, a habit of British elites that finally reached the masses in the 18th century, may have encouraged such ideas. While coffeehouses were the domain of men, at home tea parties prompted men and women to converse as equals.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/books/review/the-revolutionary-self-lynn-hunt.html