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A Woman is Only as Good as Her Jewelry: The Meaning of Gems in Loretta Chase’s Your Scandalous Ways

by Natasha Brandstatter

In Loretta Chase’s recent release, Your Scandalous Ways, the heroine, Francesca, is a courtesan obsessed with jewels. Her vast and expensive collection of pearls, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and other adornments receive so much attention in the novel they could be a secondary character. Francesca isn’t the only character obsessed with expensive stones: one of the villains in the book, Marta Fasi, is also obsessed with jewelry; and the hero, James, calls himself a jewel thief at heart. When he first catches sight of Francesca’s exquisite emerald necklace, his palms start to itch.

Why all the attention paid to gemstones in the novel? It’s not just because they’re sparkly. In 18th- and 19th-century England, jewelry was a tangible symbol of financial security and social status. When a woman wore diamonds, emeralds, or other gemstones, she was demonstrating the wealth of her family. Ironically, despite the fact that they were strictly feminine adornments, women could not own jewelry. For one thing, women couldn’t own their own property; for another, jewelry was often entailed with the estate, which was passed down from male heir to male heir, a symbol of the survival and legitimacy of the title. When an English woman displayed these “family jewels,” she was not making a statement about her own personal wealth or beauty, but the prosperity of the estate owned by her male relatives—in other words, associating herself with the men folks’ property.

The exception to this rule was the English courtesan, who did use jewelry to flaunt her personal wealth, beauty, and success. In Joseph Reynolds’s Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra Dissolving the Pearl, we can see just this sort of exhibition on display. Kitty Fisher burst onto the London scene in her late ‘teens with a cleverly orchestrated publicity stunt: While riding through Hyde Park one afternoon, Fisher, an expert horsewoman, “lost control” of and fell off her horse in the middle of Rotten Row, exposing her legs (and a lot more than that, according to some sources) to a crowd of soldiers and noblemen. Minutes later, she was whisked away in a brightly colored, covered Sedan chair already holding an unknown (presumably male) occupant. This single incident spawned a publicity furor that made Fisher one of the richest and most admired women in London.

One of the most popular images of Fisher is Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra Dissolving the Pearl, which is also one of Joseph Reynolds’ most interesting and layered paintings. In it, we see Fisher holding a goblet of wine in one hand and an enormous pearl in another. The first thing that comes to mind when viewing this portrait is a famous incident in Cleopatra’s life, when she put the largest pearl ever found into a goblet of wine and swallowed it in front of Mark Anthony—a demonstration of her personal wealth, as well as a challenge to his power as a man. This echoes a similar and oft-repeated story that Fisher once showed her contempt for the Duke of York’s gift of twenty pounds (or fifty or a hundred pounds—the amount varies) by putting the banknote between two slices of buttered bread and eating it in front of him. The pearl in both the portrait and Cleopatra story is a symbol of power; but in the Reynolds portrait, it is also a symbol of Kitty herself. Kitty’s dress is covered in pearls, and her skin, which is as white as her gown, shows that she, too, is a “pearl.” Ingesting the pearl signifies her taking possession of her own wealth and sexuality. The image thus challenges a whole host gender values for 18th century women: the right to sell and acquire their own property, and the imperative to become a mother and continue the family dynasty at the expense of personal freedom.

Thus, in Your Scandalous Ways, when Francesca flaunts her jewelry, she is also flaunting her financial and sexual independence. When she offers sapphires to Marta Fasi, Francesca is metaphorically presenting Fasi with an opportunity for true autonomy. Fasi, however, is unable to recognize the significance of the gift.

As for James’s lusting after Francesca’s jewels, well—you can probably interpret that one for yourself.

(credit: Joshua Reynolds, Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra Dissolving the Pearl, 1759, oil on canvas, Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, England, www.tate.org.uk)

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