swan_tower | New Worlds: Queen Bees

So far we've been talking about friendship in a one-to-one sense, as a relationship between only two people at a time. But of course, we all exist in a much larger social world -- even during periods when that existence is best defined by a position firmly outside the circle. What does friendship look like when we open up our scope?

Well, for starters, "friendship" starts to be a word that maybe ought to have sarcasm quotes around it. We are social primates, and unfortunately, that entails some pretty nasty behavior alongside the nice stuff. As I said last week, depending on how you use the term, a friend might just be somebody you know and haven't outright declared an enemy or dead to you. Or, depending on how you use the term . . . your "friend" might indeed be somebody you are out to hurt.

If that sounds like a particular negative feminine stereotype, you're not wrong: in our society, teenaged girls in particular are proverbial for how horribly they may treat their so-called friends. This isn't inherent to being adolescent and female, though; it tends to show up anywhere you foster the kind of hothouse atmosphere where a bunch of people are trapped together and can only rise socially by climbing over each other.

And that means it can describe a royal court every bit as much as a high school! Reading about the interpersonal dynamics of Elizabeth I's nobles and ministers, I was struck by how much their behavior resembled the cliques and grudges of teenagers. The specifics differed -- A offended B, so B arranged to have one of A's political hangers-on denied the right of entry to the more exclusive precincts of the royal presence -- but the vibes were much the same.

Associating this specifically with women is therefore not entirely true, because men can behave in similar ways. It's also not entirely false, though, because control of social dynamics is a form of soft power, and in a patriarchal society where women are denied access to the formal levers of government, soft power is the only kind they can use. So now the question becomes: how do you acquire that power?

Some of it comes from obvious sources. If a person has some more formal type of authority -- or, in the case of a woman, is associated with a man who has such authority -- that tends to give their social presence more weight. After all, offending the prime minister or the wife of the Lord Treasurer might mean all kinds of political difficulties, whereas gaining their friendship could open new doors. This is true even at lower levels of society than a royal court; the wife of a town mayor or village headman probably has a certain amount of social cachet.

Similarly, wealth brings the ability to host more people more extravagantly, which is beneficial no matter what scale of party you're looking at. Though in many cases, the power of wealth has to be evaluated in light of status: where commerce is scorned, then a woman from a merchant family, be she never so rich, will be seen as more déclassé than a noblewoman of more modest means. The former can still win social authority, but she'll have to work harder for it.

What form that work takes depends on what's admired in the society at hand. As we've discussed before, fashion can play a role here: exhibiting good aesthetic taste will bring approval, and if you can combine that with just the right amount of daring innovation, you might become the trendsetter everyone else looks to for guidance. That's difficult to pull off if you're a social nobody -- your innovations are more likely to be sneered at as missteps -- but one admiring comment from the right person might begin your rise to social influence.

For those of more modest financial means, it may be easier to aim for becoming known as a good conversationalist. Remember, this is a social world, so being someone people enjoy talking to is a major asset! Flatter the right people just the right amount, so you don't sound too obsequious; tell rousing anecdotes about interesting situations; extemporize good poetry to commemorate the occasion at hand; exhibit whatever type of wit is most admired right now . . . which, yes, can include the back-biting type where you're constantly tearing other people down, though it doesn't have to. A lot depends on how vicious the local dynamic is.

Under the right circumstances -- and this will be of interest to many people who enjoy reading SF/F -- you can even win social influence through your book-learning and smarts. If you live in an environment of intellectual ferment and scientific exploration, then being au courant with the latest discoveries gives you fodder for attracting attention. You do still need to be a good conversationalist, so you can deliver what you know in an interesting fashion -- otherwise you'll have a reputation as a pedantic bore -- but it isn't always about jokes and empty gossip.

For women in Enlightenment-era Europe, in fact, social gatherings were a major part of how they kept up with the intellectual scene. The French salonnières of the early modern period famously established a model of social interaction that spread across the continent and into the British Isles. "Bluestocking," the Victorian pejorative for an excessively bookish woman, was originally the name of an eighteenth-century "salon" or social circle focused on literary discussion -- which, given the era, included philosophy, history, and scientific research, not just fiction. Their community included men, but it was led by women, and through the connections formed at their gatherings, they helped advance each others' minds, laying the groundwork for the advances of feminism in the nineteenth century.

It's not all so high-minded, of course. Like I said, these environments can also feature a ton of backstabbing and social climbing: witness all scenes set at Almack's Assembly Rooms in Regency romances, where a single introduction from the right person might set an individual on a path to an advantageous marriage . . . while others with competing interests do their best to spike any such alliance. The Lady Patronesses of Almack's, with their control over vouchers for admission, held a great deal of power over that scene.

In that case there was a group of women in control, but where a single queen bee rules over it all, she can be as capricious and arbitrary as any formal autocrat. She's likely to be a central gathering-point for gossip, and whispered into the right ears, those juicy tidbits might become a scandal that brings down a minister. Even without such weapons at hand, declaring someone persona non grata at her own events can mean they find themself excluded elsewhere as well . . . and without the chance to rub shoulders with influential people, their chances of advancement, whether through marriage or political appointment, go into a steep decline.

So is the social scene occasionally petty and vicious? Absolutely -- but that doesn't make it trivial. Stylish ladies or sociable gentlemen can leverage this world as an alternative route to power, all without ever lifting anything more dangerous than a fan or a pen.