In eighteenth-century productions of The Man of Mode (1676), Sir Fopling Flutter sashayed onto the stage, followed by a sedan chair, on which reposed a mountainous full-bottomed periwig.  The actor Colley Cibber had first created this wig for “Sir Novelty Fashion,” a character modeled on Sir Fopling, and further iterations of the character followed, always accompanied by the monstrous periwig.  An anecdote captures the wig’s allure: young Henry Bret, new to London, shoves his way into the green room after the play and begs Cibber to sell him the wig so that he too can “cut a figure,” —that is, become a man of mode.

 

Fashion (being à la mode) is the focus of the play’s title and Sir Fopling’s ruling passion.  He (naturellement) wears only French designer labels: “The suit?...Barroy...The garniture?...Le Gras...The shoes?...Piccat...The periwig?...Chedreux” (III.ii).  We tend to cast the Restoration fop as queer drag queen avant la lettre, and the play does hint that Sir Fopling may not be so interested in the ladies after all.  (“[L]et me embrace thee,” he exclaims to Dorimant, “prithee let thee and I be intimate,...there is no living without making some good man the confidant of our pleasures” [III.ii]).  Moreover, his “breech” (like his voice?) is “a handful too high,” as Medley tells him (perhaps handling the breech in question).   “Peace, Medley; I have wished it lower a thousand times, but a pox on’t, ’twill not be” (III.ii).

 

And yet, Sir Fopling’s passion for fashion turns out to be a more general social pathology (“He...represents ye all,” the Epilogue reminds us).  Fed by new trade routes and a culture of global consumerism, modeled by a glamorous king, fashion’s erotic allure proves irresistible.  What drives the new consumerist fashion regime is “mimetic desire” (in the words of Joseph Roach): desire for what others desire (clothes, accessories...).  Like Sir Fopling’s periwig, it spawns “a parade of substitutes, surrogates,...knock-offs.”

 

Sir Fopling is, in a sense, a knock-off of Dorimant: the fashionable rake (himself modeled on the scandalous Earl of Rochester).  But Dorimant is also a man of mode, a version of Sir Fopling: restlessly pursuing novelties, only to cast them off.  Paradoxically, mimetic desire leads not to regard for others but to narcissistic mirror-gazing.  Sir Fopling’s literal mirror-gazing (“a man may entertain himself [in a mirror],...’Tis the best diversion” [IV.ii]) finds a parallel in Dorimant’s vanity.

 

Enthralled by his erotic magnetism as they are, Dorimant’s mistresses nevertheless see through him.  As Mrs Loveit tells him, “you are...vain and loud,...[a] ridiculous animal who has more of the ape than the ape has of the man in him” (V.i).  And, in the end, however masculinist the culture, Etherege chooses Harriet as his mouthpiece.  After a crushing imitation of Dorimant, she declares: “When your love’s grown strong enough to make you bear being laughed at, I’ll give you leave to trouble me with it” (IV.i).  That is, ultimately, it is satire—the ability to laugh at ourselves—that offers a cure for the narcissistic mirror-gazing of modernity.

 

JULIE PETERS
Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Columbia University