Sanditon

The bathing machine—a contraption that to the 21st-century eye may seem almost ludicrously censorious—symbolizes the Regency era’s deeply ambivalent attitudes toward progress and modernization. Bathing machines were small enclosed changing rooms on wheels. When a person finished changing, the machine was wheeled into the water so the person could wade in directly from the machine. They were designed so that men and women could bathe separately without being exposed to one another. These machines are the first thing Charlotte sees when she reaches the beach at Sanditon, and as such they stand as a visual symbol of the economic and cultural tensions the beach resort creates. The idea of bathing in public was so novel and scandalous in the 19th century that machines had to be invented to allow men and women to bathe without seeing one another. The act of public bathing is itself a marker of modernity, liberalization, and a capitalist economy that for the first time turns places into commodities. Mr. Parker’s insistence that everyone should visit Sanditon and bathe reflects not only a philanthropic interest in public health but also a desire to profit from the town’s marketability. When Charlotte arrives at Sanditon and sees the beach for the first time, she sees “the descent to the beach and to the bathing machines,” noting that “this [is] therefore the favourite spot for beauty and fashion” (79).