“There were no more debates over whether the tea table was a good thing,” she says. Though some questioned whether drinking tea at home would lead to women gossiping too much or harm their health, by the 19th century it was well accepted that everyone just drank tea everyday. “It was in the 18th century that the tea table became a specifically female place and space within the home,” says Fromer, of tea-drinking’s transition from a public activity to a domestic one. In the second half of the 18th century, tea and sugar “might seem extravagant items in a labourer’s wage,” social historian John Burnett writes in Liquid Pleasures, “but they gave some palatability and variety to a monotonous diet, warmth to cold meals, and some stimulation to fatigued bodies.”Īround the same time, as tea was spreading, it was moving out of public tea shops and becoming something people would drink at home, thus moving into the traditionally feminine domestic sphere. Tea provided a restrained version of excess and a little pleasant luxury. By then, even though tea was still not exactly cheap, it had become standard fare even among the poorest.

What is the afternoon