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Ladies, Gentlemen, Flirts, Mashers, Snoozers, and the Breaking of Etiquette's Code

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Guy Szuberla
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Extract

Some time after the Civil War, writers of American etiquette books marked the rise of the city by introducing new sections on “etiquette in the street” and “conduct in a crowd.” No one should look to their texts and the accompanying illustrations for a faithfully detailed and documented history of 19th-century city life. The stiff, cutout figures that walk through city streets in these old line drawings represent a particular fantasy of social order, focused in the figure and type of the lady and gentleman. “Walk slowly, do not turn your head … and,” The Ladies' Book of Etiquette (1876) warned, “avoid any gesture or word that would attract attention.” That advice is illustrated, with punctilious care, in Gentleman Meeting a Lady, a line drawing in John Young's 1882 guide, Our Deportment (Figure 1). The gentleman and the lady make no apparent eye contact; they, in strict observance of propriety, look off and away from each other. Again, in Alice Emma Ives's Social Mirror (1886), the ladies who illustrate the way to give a gentleman “formal street recognition” grant it with averted eyes and unturned heads. Ives quite properly avoids the word “meet” (Figure 2).

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 15 , October 1990 , pp. 169 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I wish to thank the University of Toledo for the support of travel and research given to me under a Faculty Research Award and Fellowship grant. A grant from the University of Toledo covered the costs of preparing photos for publication.

For their untiring help and support in tracking down and securing rare etiquette and advice books, I wish to thank Richard Oram, Director, and Nancy Burnard, Rare Book Assistant, of the Ward M. Canaday Center, University of Toledo Library. Almost all of the etiquette and advice books that I consulted are on deposit there and in the Arthur M. and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library (Radcliffe College).

1. Hartley, Florence, The Ladies' Book of Etiquette (Boston: J. S. Locke, 1876), p. 114.Google Scholar Future references to Hartley's book are given parenthetically in the text.

2. Ives, Alice Emma, The Social Mirror (Detroit: F. B. Dickerson, 1886), pp. 62–63.Google Scholar Future references to Ives's book are given parenthetically in the text.

3. See Lofland, Lyn H.'s A World of Strangers (New York: Basic Books, 1973)Google Scholar; and Halttunen, Karen's chapter on “Hypocrisy and Sincerity in the World of Strangers,” in Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

4. See, for example, Richard Sennett's discussion of the city as theater in The Fall of Public Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), pp. 34–38.Google Scholar

5. The anonymous author of Our Manners at Home and Abroad (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Publishing Co., 1883)Google Scholar confidently asserted, “Persons on the street attract the attention of every passer-by by their dress, their conduct and their manner of walking. [C]haracter may be read by any of these as readily as by the features of the face” (pp. 87–88). Future references to this book are given parenthetically in the text.

6. Banta, Martha, Imaging American Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 282.Google Scholar

7. See Armstrong, Nancy and Tennenhouse, Leonard's introduction, “The Literature of conduct…,” in The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality (New York: Methuen, 1987), esp. pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

8. Young, John, Our Deportment (Springfield, Mass.: W. C. King, 1882), pp. 145–46.Google Scholar

9. Rideing, William H., “Life on Broadway,” Harper's Monthly 56 (01 1876): 229–39.Google Scholar

10. Scholes, Robert, Semiotics and Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 145.Google Scholar Scholes says, in his glossary definition of “intertext,” that “just as signs refer to other signs rather than directly to things, texts refer to other texts. The artist writes and paints, not from nature but from his or her predecessors' way of textualizing nature. Thus, an intertext is a text lurking inside another, shaping meanings whether the author is conscious of this or not.” Relying on Scholes's definition, I have treated etiquette books as “intertexts” for the fiction, though I might, with slightly altered emphasis, have regarded seminal texts like “Daisy Miller” as intertexts for many of the etiquette books that I examined.

11. I have used James, Henry, “Daisy Miller,” as printed in Tales of Henry James, ed. Wegelin, Christof (New York: Norton, 1984).Google Scholar Future references to this story are cited parenthetically in the text.

12. For a brief sketch of King's life and work, see Peterson, Clell T., “Charles King: Soldier and Novelist,” American Book Collector 16 (1965): 9–12.Google Scholar Future references to King's novel, A Tame Surrender: A Story of the Chicago Strike (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)Google Scholar, are given parenthetically in the text.

13. Hartley, , Ladies' Book of Etiquette, p. 114.Google Scholar

14. White, Annie R., Polite Society at Home and Abroad (Chicago: Monarch Book Co., 1891), p. 345.Google Scholar Future references to White's book are given parenthetically in the text.

15. Morton, Agnes H., Etiquette: An Answer to the Riddle, When? Where? How?…. (Philadelphia: Penn Publishing Co., 1899), pp. 132–33.Google Scholar Future references to Morton's book are cited parenthetically in the text.

16. See, for example, Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), p. 60.Google Scholar Future references to Smith-Rosenberg's book are cited parenthetically in the text.

17. White, Annie Randall, Twentieth Century Etiquette: An Up-to-Date Book for Polite Society (Philadelphia: J. H. Moore, 1900).Google Scholar Future references to White's book are given parenthetically in the text.

18. Hale, Edward Everett, “Susan's Escort,” Harper's Monthly 80 (05 1890): 908–18.Google Scholar Future references to Hale's story are given parenthetically in the text.

19. Chopin, Kate, The Awakening (1899).Google Scholar I have used the edition reprinted in The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, vol. 2, ed. Seyersted, Per (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969).Google Scholar Future references to Chopin's novel are given parenthetically in the text. Chopin, in the first of her extant diaries, wrote this about a walk in Geneva in 1870: “How very far I did go … I wonder what people thought of me – a young woman strolling about alone.” The lines are quoted in Evell, Barbara C., Kate Chopin (New York: Ungar, 1986), p. 12.Google Scholar

20. Ade, George, More Fables in Slang (Chicago: Herbert S. Stone, 1900).Google Scholar Future references to Ade's story are given parenthetically in the text.

21. See Moers, Ellen, Two Dreisers (New York: Viking Press, 1969), pp. 30–31Google Scholar; and the “Textual Notes” in Sister Carrie (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), pp. 637–38.Google Scholar I have used the Norton Critical Edition of Dreiser's novel, edited by Pizer, Donald (New York: Norton, 1970)Google Scholar, and future references to it are cited parenthetically in the text.

22. Morton, , Etiquette, p. 200.Google Scholar

23. Ruth, John A., Decorum: A Practical Treatise on Etiquette…. (Chicago: J. A. Ruth and Co., 1877), p. 125.Google Scholar

24. “Judging from Appearances,” Life 6 (07 9, 1885): cover page.Google Scholar

25. Hale, , “Susan's Escort,” p. 909.Google Scholar

26. MrsHumphrey, , Manners for Men (London, 1897), pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

27. The cartoon “Ha, ha” appeared in Life (1893?), p. 274.Google Scholar “Ah, she sees me!” appeared in Life 8 (11 4, 1886): 274.Google Scholar

28. Anonymous, The Manners that Win (Minneapolis: Buckeye Publishing Co., 1880), p. 288.Google Scholar

29. Krausz, Sigmund, Street Types of Chicago with Literary Sketches by Well-Known Authors…. (Chicago: Max Stern and Co., 1892), pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

30. See Ferguson, George's entry on the “Dog” in Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 15.Google Scholar

31. I refer, of course, to Anton Chekov's much anthologized 1899 story “The Lady with the Dog” (sometimes translated, “The Lady with the Pet Dog”). See, for other illustrations associating “flirting” and “walking a dog,” the plate in White, 's Polite Society: “An Old-Time Belle” (facing p. 175)Google Scholar; two cover cartoons in Life: “Detail” (12 16, 1886)Google Scholar and the previously cited “Judging from Appearances” (07 9, 1885).Google Scholar Robert Twombly's biography of the architect Louis Sullivan records that Sullivan met his wife, by “feigning interest in her dog.” She was walking the dog on Chicago's Michigan Avenue (Louis Sullivan [New York: Viking Press, 1986], p. 356).Google Scholar

32. See Erenberg, Lewis, Steppin' Out (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and Peiss, Kathy, Cheap Amusements (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

33. Kasson, John H.'s discussion of “the etiquette of public places”Google Scholar and “ceremonial expressions of nineteenth century public life” has informed my article generally, and specifically where I have used the term “ceremonial expressions” and variants of it. See his “Civility and Rudeness: Urban Etiquette and the Bourgeois Social Order in Nineteenth Century America,” Prospects 9 (1984): 143–67.Google Scholar His definition of these terms is given on p. 145.