Regency House Party

Due to the very sparse information on civilian life and especially women’s history during the regency period, we get very excited when we find new sources of information. Therefore, when we found Regency House Party, a reality show based on the regency, we were very eager to watch it. What we found was a Big Brother meets Jane Austen scenario, which is really to be expected when you put modern day people into circumstances of another time.

The premise of the show is that the participants all attend a house party where the goal was to make a good match that would led to engagement. As they explain on the show a woman in the regency period had little chance of improving her circumstances through other means. Each person was given a character to portray along with their back-story when they signed on for the project. Some had titles but no money and vice versa, the whole idea was to make a match based on what you needed from the marriage, romantic love had very little to do with anything at this point.

One gets the notion from Austen’s novels that these ladies were living the lives of luxury and that their biggest priority was to go find themselves husbands. Yet strictly speaking most of these heroines were middle class and would have had to live a very similar life to Laura’s in the sense of what was expected from them. That’s where Regency house party gives an interesting perspective it shows what these ladies and gentlemen would have had to done to make a go of it in the Regency world. It is one thing to read about it, it is quite another to see it play out, even taking away the fact that they carry modern day ideals.

One thing of the things that made it ‘real’ was the bathing rituals exhibited for the project; the whole household was given one bathtub of water to bathe in and only once a week. While we are going to dedicate a future blog post on bathing in the regency it was very interesting to see this aspect first hand it gives it relevance. It is also interesting to see the way they created shampoo and washed their hair and their daily rituals to make themselves more appealing to those they were trying to attract. To those of us who are used to going out and purchasing these items from the grocery store this can be surprising and tedious to watch them perform.

While Regency House Party will not change your life and is rather astonishingly ridiculous at time for those who have an in-depth knowledge of the regency period. The contestant challenge the boundaries of etiquette from this period and remain true to their twenty first century values, however, that being said it is a very good watch for the sake of entertainment and perspective.