On Tuesday 15th and 22nd of January 1712, Joseph Addison produced two articles in The Spectator magazine on the “Dissection of a Beau’s Brain” and the “Dissection of a Coquette’s Heart”. He took a satirical look at the inner workings of two eighteenth-century stereotypes, and caricatured their natures in terms of how their brain and heart worked. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “Beau” as “a man who gives particular, or excessive, attention to dress, mien, and social etiquette; an exquisite, a fop, a dandy”, and “Coquette” as “a woman (more or less young), who uses arts to gain the admiration and affection of men, merely for the gratification of vanity or from a desire of conquest, and without any intention of responding to the feelings aroused; a woman who habitually trifles with the affections of men; a flirt”.
Such figures presented a fascinating caricature of individuals in Addison’s society, but do these typical flirts exist in our society today? If we disassembled two young persons we happened to borrow from a club one night, what would we find inside? A heart beating to the incessant pulse of dance music? A blood supply coursing with what appears to be a strange mix of plasma, beer, blood cells and vodka? As I’m sure we all know, the clubbing scene is prime hunting ground for our modern day flirts. We have substituted the Balls and Assemblies of Addison’s era for the Bars and Clubs of the 21st century, and this is where the investigation shall begin.
Now just how different are we these days from the Coquettes and Beaux of the past? We can accept that Addison has presented us with raging stereotypes here, so I shall take the same liberty and shamelessly typify our subjects in a similar manner. Much of Addison’s description of the Beau crosses over into what we would now consider to be a stereotypically feminine mindset, as of course effeminacy was the major trait of a “dandy”. The 18th century saw major challenges to traditional conceptions of gender roles, which helps to explain why many of the descriptions in Addison’s articles can apply to either sex; in fact, many of the described feminine traits come across as equally valid for men. In view of this, I shall explore each description as pertaining to either sex, since both pieces correspond to the concept of the Social Flirt.
The beginning of Addison’s piece takes us to one specific cavity in the dissected brain that is “filled with Ribbons, Lace and Embroidery, wrought together in a curious piece of network”; and oddly enough, a similarly material construct can be found in the brains of young people today. The basic structure appears to be the same, yet the fabrics have altered somewhat, and taken on a more transparent and revealing quality in the brain of the young lady, whilst in the brain of the male, many of the networked sections resemble miniature gold chains and emit a small “blinging” noise (though we have later discovered that this appears to be specific to a certain type of male). In his description, Addison then moves on to another cavity which “was stuffed with invisible […] Love-Letters”. The corresponding section in the brains of today’s youth, however, appeared to be much altered, to the extent that most of the text we found there was illegible and did not seem to express any sentiment whatsoever. A small segment was extracted for examination, reading thus: wt u up 2 l8r u cmin out, cnt w8 2 c u agn, but we were unable to make any sense of it, and concluded that the function for communication is somewhat diminished in our modern era.
In tracing the small canals running from the ear to the brain, Addison found “a bundle of Sonnets and little Musical Instruments”; we found some obscene rap lyrics and a five-piece crashing black drum kit where the single eardrum should have been. Another canal extended to the tongue, in which Addison discovered “a kind of Spongy Substance, which the French Anatomists call Galimatius, and the English, Nonsense.” Strangely, no difference whatsoever was found here in our modern day subjects. It was also revealed, that despite nearly 300 years of evolution, the “Ogling Muscles” were in the exact same state: “very much worn and decayed with use”, for both the male and female parties.
Remarkably, as we move on to examine the heart, it appears that the young Coquettes and Beaux of today share an almost identical anatomy to those of Addison’s era. The same little scars over the hearts’ surfaces from “the Points of innumerable Darts” could be seen, but again the heart itself remained unpierced. Addison also noted that the heart of the Coquette was extremely light, as it was filled with tiny hollows, which “were stuffed with innumerable sorts of Trifles”. Examples of such trifles uncovered in our female heart include: chocolate, little shoes, lip-gloss, miniature flowers and ice cream, whilst in our male heart we found: cars, guitars, little women in bikinis and computer games. We can see, therefore, that though the content of these hearts and brains has been somewhat altered since the 18th century, the basic structure remains the same. But however they may change in the future, I’m sure the inner workings of our stereotypical flirt shall continue to fascinate others throughout time.