#benet davetian

[dwellordream]

“The idea of the woman as a ‘submissive and pretty creature,’ put there to minister to her husband’s comfort and pleasure, is the simplified retrospective version of the Victorian conception of womanhood. In actuality, women were regarded as important socializing agents for their husbands as well as their children. John Ruskin’s 1865 lecture of Queens’ Gardens expressed very well the moral and emotional valuation of women as spiritual guides of their husbands: His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever conquest is necessary. But the woman’s power is for rule, not for battle – and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. (1902–12, 1:111–12) 

The suggestion that the woman possessed socializing powers beyond those of the male was quite a radical idea for the mid-nineteenth century. It was one thing to affirm that a woman lacked the talents of a man, but quite a different thing to suggest that she possessed qualities that a man did not. It was this idealization of a woman’s power to be a tempering force in the family that led to the myriad civility rituals intended to ‘protect’ women from ‘danger.’ Even feminist writers, such as George Eliot and Beatrice Potter Webb, who passionately argued for women’s suffrage, were careful to affirm the moral influence of women and the vital role they played in the family.

 A culture’s attitude towards sexuality is always noticeable in its courtesy practices. Since courtesy is a practice that involves contact between two or more people it also involves the human body and its subtle language. As soon as an act of courtesy is exchanged between two people there is awareness on the part of both that they have come into personalized contact with each other. A courtesy practice based on deference to propriety and a stiff gravity says as much about its practitioner’s attitude towards sensuality as it does about his or her relationship to morality. There may be a connection between sensual inhibition (or sensual privatism) and formalism. 

Certainly, what is kept unstated in conversations (of the verbal and bodily sort) points to what is considered inappropriate, or even shameful. The moral triumph of the Victorian middle class had important consequences on the practice of sexuality. What has come down to us as the ‘prudish’ Victorian attitude to sex was really the attitude of the middle class. The upper and lower classes initially followed their own freer and less shame-imbued codes (Porter and Hall 1995). But even they became influenced by Victorian sexual codes by the end of the nineteenth century. The education of the upper-middle-class and upper-class male became an arduous process, requiring segregation from girls within all-boys’ schools. 

Discipline was strict – the goals of these schools were not, as in the French system, to produce intellectuals, but men able to fit in and conform to the standards of ‘gentlemen of breeding.’ Paxman (1998) explains the aristocratic schoolboy attitude (something later imitated in public schools) as a particularly male mentality that fuelled patriarchal dominance:

 What the Breed represented was a certain ideal, a carefully selected number of the strengths and weaknesses of the male taken and raised to Platonic heights. They were bold, unreflective and crashingly pragmatic, men you could trust. It has been the misfortune of the English male that, just as he found himself living in a country different to the one he imagined himself to be living in, so the so-called English ideal excluded most of the population from the identity with which they had been born. (177–8) 

Building such a restrained character required considerable discipline. Eton’s reputation for forming young men of character was not built without pain: The champion flogger was the Reverend Dr. John Keates, appointed headmaster of Eton in 1809, who beat an average of ten boys each day (excluding his day of rest on Sundays). On 30 June 1832 came his greatest achievement, the thrashing of over eighty of his pupils. At the end of this marathon, the boys stood and cheered him. It says something about the spirit of these places that he was later able to tell some of the school’s old boys of his regret that he hadn’t flogged them more often ... In the circumstances, is it surprising that the products of these schools were skilled at hiding their emotions? (179) 

What was also being sought was a sexual ethic that would facilitate and preserve the strength and longevity of the family by restraining the sexual impulse. School sports, for example, were a means of keeping the minds of youth off sensual temptations by exhausting their libidinal urges through tiring physical exertion. Just as importantly, sports taught them fair conduct, discipline, and the understanding and respect of the ‘rules of the game,’ abilities that could be applied to the demanding area of diplomacy and commerce. The civility required of the English in sports – such as cricket – hearkened back to the early Christian values of justice, concern for the dignity and comfort of the other, and the avoidance of taking extreme cruel pleasure in victory. 

The English constitutional monarchy and the religious institutions of England helped bring forth a new civility philosophy: the right to enjoy personal liberty could not be achieved in a socially isolated setting; freedom required discipline of the kind acquired through sports such as golf, tennis, and cricket – sports requiring a civil submission to the referee and the ethic of fair play. While it was the objective of the player to win, he was not to do so at all cost nor fail to honour his or her opponents for courageous performances during the play. 

Thus, complex rituals of face-saving and ministering to others in victory and defeat made the English of the nineteenth-century world authorities in sports etiquette. It was an educational system that moved Ford Madox Ford (1907) to comment: ‘That a race should have trained itself to such a Spartan repression is none the less worthy of wonder’ (147–8). This high valuation of discipline at the best schools certainly appealed to many upper-middle-class and middle-class families who sent their children to boarding and finishing schools, hoping that they would emerge with good breeding. 

Certainly, this separation between parents and children placed in boarding schools created some additional reserve in parent– child relations. The development of an individualistic and disciplined young man or young lady required absence from home; the youth was in the tutelage of teachers who were not kin and less disposed to be informal. It was not surprising that by the late nineteenth century, kissing between fathers and sons had been prohibited because it was considered not manly enough. It was perhaps thought that too much physical affection would undo the discipline that had been instilled through great effort. 

Manliness required stoicism, and stoicism required a restraint of the emotions, even when one was experiencing a painful flogging. Paxman (1997) reminds us that social certainty fares better in England than in some other countries because England continued to possess an aristocracy: ‘Once such a master-class existed everyone else knew their place in the pecking order’ (265). And the values of the aristocracy did provide the rising middle classes with rationalizations for stoicism, discipline, and moderation, in sexual as well as domestic matters. 

No culture that does not hold the family as an ideal institution will seek to establish repressive sexual mores that prohibit premarital sex. The limitation of sexual experience outside marriage is a tool by which men and women are motivated to accept legalized co-habitation and its accompanying duties. Young men and women who are able to enjoy the emotional and physical rewards of marriage without limiting themselves to one partner may not be motivated to enter a contract meant for life; they certainly might be motivated to prolong their sexual experimentation and delay marriage before committing to it. 

So the connection between the rise of the middle-class nuclear family and the restriction of sexuality is profoundly deliberate. So are changes in fashion. Victorian fashion ensured that the entire body of a woman was covered without the accentuation of those parts considered provocative. The ‘hourglass’ figures of Victorian women were constructed to project the image of a sexually modest and morally conscientious gender. Similar standards were imposed on the male; the dressed-up ‘dandy’ was considered a dangerous exhibitionist, an irresponsible social parasite (Yeazell 1991). 

This high valuation placed on behavioural and sensual modesty, the precondition for marriage, was evident in the life of Queen Victoria. Unlike Elizabeth I, who had chosen to remain celibate despite her affections for one man, Queen Victoria had contracted a marriage that turned out to be quite affectionate. Prince Albert’s love letters to the queen reveal that they had a very loving relationship. The deep feelings that she held for him drove her into a protracted mourning following his death in 1861. 

Her withdrawal from social life left the middle classes in a quandary. What sort of sexual ethic were they to embrace when the queen herself was now celibate? She had already distinguished herself as a strict and efficient queen capable of obtaining extraordinary global success for her country – that she was imitated and respected went without saying. Her withdrawal into dour self-pity had its effects on middle-class attitudes towards sexuality. Her model marriage had acted as a confirmation of the middle-class idealization of marriage and the family. 

Her withdrawal now left a vacuum that was quickly filled by a Church that revived the Christian value of sexual moderation and abstinence. Frustrated with the queen’s protracted mourning and withdrawal from public life, the upper classes turned to Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, for leadership. And he provided it obligingly considering that he loved being in the company of beautiful women, many of them readily available singers and actresses. Using his lifestyle as justification, the upper classes adopted a liberal attitude towards sex, one more in keeping with that of their eighteenth-century predecessors. 

Sexual promiscuity in the upper classes was tolerated as long as it was not discussed outside aristocratic circles. As for the lower classes, they also lived relatively free from the sexual restraints of the middle class. In the East End of London, where adolescents slept as many as six or eight to a bed, there were plenty of opportunities for sexual intimacy. Incest was present, and no properly enforced legislation existed against it. The young girls selling matches in Trafalgar Square and around Piccadilly Circus were very often child prostitutes. Certain brothels even specialized in providing young virgins to men. 

The Victorian propensity to depict middle-class and aristocratic children in scenes of innocence stood in stark contrast to the lot of lower-class children left free to roam the streets at the mercy of strangers (Walkowitz 1980, Marcus 1966, Mason 1994, Porter and Hall 1995). Fyodor Dostoevsky ([1862] 1955) and Hippolyte Taine ([1863] 1957) were both horrified by the poverty and prostitution they witnessed in the Haymarket sector of London. 

Taine wrote: I recall Haymarket and the Strand at evening, where you cannot walk a hundred yards without knocking into twenty streetwalkers; some of them ask you for a glass of gin, others say ‘it’s for my rent, mister.’ The impression is not one of debauchery but of abject, miserable poverty. One is sickened and wounded by this deplorable procession in those monumental streets. (31) 

Despite the fact that London had no less than 50,000 prostitutes on the street, summary declarations regarding the Victorian middle-class family and its sexual mores need be tempered by recognitions of exceptions. There were enough deviations from the strict preservation of marriage and the social stigma attached to co-habitation to indicate that many were unpleased with the prudery of their own class (Jackson 1994, Hammerton 1992, Bland 1995, Johnson 1979). Charles Dickens, who supported the morality of his period, left his wife and co-habited with a young actress named Ellen Terman, who, in deference to Dickens’s reputation, agreed to remain virtually invisible. 

Mary Ann Evans, a well-known moralist who published under the male pseudonym of George Eliot, lived with a man who was unable to get a divorce. So to say that all middle-class Victorian men and women were hapless sexual partners would be almost like saying that they had managed to extinguish the sexual impulse. Even so, many Victorian men remained ignorant of a woman’s sexual needs. Some men reported in their personal journals that upon hearing their wife have an orgasm for the first time they concluded, with considerable alarm, that she was having a fit; some called in a physician (Hall 1991). 

This was not surprising considering that many women were conditioned into believing that a ‘good’ woman distracted her mind to non-sexual thoughts during the act of intercourse in order not to fall into the type of behaviour ascribed to a licentious woman. They certainly had frightening advice from Dr William Acton, who catalogued the many medical ills supposedly caused by sexual desire (1857 [1968]). Moreover, many Victorian husbands would have been sorely worried had they seen their wives actually enjoying sex, for that might have meant that a woman was sexual enough to be attracted to extra-marital adventures. 

The ideal that a good woman ‘does not move in bed’ was the unspoken rule in many Victorian families. A man ‘took his pleasure’ from a woman. Many women even considered the sexual act as an unpleasant experience and submitted to it in order to satisfy their husbands’ conjugal ‘rights’ or their mutual need to have children. This double standard originated from the ‘classical’ idea of sexuality which posited that men had a much more active sex drive than women. Nevertheless, a ‘moral’ man was expected to control his sensuality for the sake of ‘gentlemanly conduct’ (Comfort 1967). 

Yet, there were also bedrooms where these rules were being ignored and where men and women were constructing a romantic view of marriage that very much rejoined the words of the courtly writers who had advised that periodic abstinence and the development of a mind–heart spiritual affinity could only make sexual union that much better when it did occur. The frequency of sexual activity might have been lower compared with what it is in contemporary times, but there is no guarantee that passion was lacking. 

In fact, if one refers to the romantic love stories of the period, one is impressed with the heartfelt sensuality of Victorian love and its ideas of devotion and loyalty. So, ironically enough, paralleling the association of sexuality with shame and moral lassitude was a rise in the idealization of romantic courtship and love. Also paradoxical was the existence of so many prostitutes and brothels in a country in which the integrity of the family was being promoted as a non-negotiable social ethic. That there were so many prostitutes does not indicate how many married middle-class men visited them. 

The accusation made against the Victorians that they held a hypocritical double standard does not take into account that there existed different factions with varying sexual mores and thresholds of tolerance – so the practice of looking at the English of the period collectively as ‘the Victorians’ is misleading. One thing is certain: there was concern shown in middle-class circles as to how much vice should be tolerated. The middle-class Victorian matron who was passionately against prostitution and pornography was not hypocritical at all; she was found working on projects that were committed to rescuing ‘fallen women’ from their profession (Mahood 1990). Different social classes faced different problems and turned to different solutions.”

- Benet Davetian, “England and the Victorian Ethic.” in Civility: A Cultural History

[1writegirl]

A Civil Discourse on Civility

A Civil Discourse on Civility

ABC fires Roseanne Barr for tweeting a racist comment about an African-American former aid to Barak Obama. Samantha Bee on her show, Full Frontal, calls Ivanka Trump a fleckless [expletive] for not standing up to her father Donald Trump on immigration issues involving missing children separated from their parents. Add to that the vicious posts that fly around on social media from people all over…

[urchinmovement]

It does not take millions of people to change social reality. Salons of previous eras have shown that it takes only a handful of creative and concerned individuals to trigger large scale positive change. Many of the ideas of great thinkers and doers in previous eras were born in gatherings where others were willing to listen to them and provide sincere feedback. The contemporary salon offers similar opportunities. It facilitates our desire to heal the rifts that have been the unintended consequences of an overly-rationalized, bottom-line culture.

Benet Davetian

Read more about the 1st Ever Urchin Salon

[dwellordream]

“Members of the socially active middle class did not lack compassion for the ‘fallen woman.’ A woman seduced by a man who had proposed marriage to her and subsequently broken his promise to her was held in considerable sympathy (Frost 1995). The mid-eighteenth-century Foundling Hospital was already admitting illegitimate babies mothered by women who had good cases regarding the circumstances surrounding their impregnation (Barret-Ducrocq 1991). In The Making of Victorian Sexuality (1994), Michael Mason has calculated that there were nearly 300 institutions (asylums) for prostitutes by the end of the nineteenth century. 

Different institutions specialized in different levels of rehabilitation, ranging from those that took in girls who needed to be protected from resorting to prostitution to those that housed unrepentant prostitutes under guard. Yet, the existence of institutions should not in any way give the impression that the Victorian family washed its hands of an errant daughter and sent her away pregnant and destitute. The family’s honour counted as much as the girl’s virtue. In most cases, a stay away from home was arranged and the child subsequently disposed of. 

Even the staunch, sexually conservative moralist Dr Acton, who headed a commission investigating prostitution, was careful to distinguish between housemaids who had been seduced by a member of the household staff (or by a member of the employing family) and those women who charged for their services. He recommended that the unfortunate housemaids be employed as wet nurses ([1857] 1968). While from a retrospective position we may find these facilities as little else than places of incarceration that put citizens under the increased control and surveillance of the state, they were, nevertheless, a better alternative than condemnation to utter destitution in the streets. 

The moral worry over unwed mothers was related to two positions taken by middle-class Victorians: (1) a woman had to be a virgin upon marriage, and (2) marriage was the ideal state for a woman wishing to be protected from the dangers of society. These two positions, when put together, did not leave much of a middle-class future for either a single mother or a woman who remained single and experimented sexually. Middle-class feminists, for their part, were not struggling for sexual freedom outside marriage as much as they were seeking rights to equal education and work. They continued to uphold the values of the family even while arguing that women did possess sexual needs (Maynard 1993, Russet 1989, Dyhouse 1989). 

Those who were part of the ‘sex reform’ movement, although they argued against the idea of a ‘classical sexuality’ (which concurrently rationalized prostitution by stating that men’s and women’s sexual needs differed substantially), remained committed to the idea of a monogamous marriage, albeit one in which sexuality was not repressed (Bland 1995). This fear of the sexually active woman was reflected in the precarious status of the woman of marriage age who had no husband. 

In The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880–1930 (1985), Sheila Jeffreys describes the limited opportunities available to a woman without a husband. If she was at all attractive she had to live under the suspicious gaze of ‘respectable’ women who wondered if her celibacy was not an excuse for sexual promiscuity. She was either relegated to a position without status in her own family or had to accept a position as a governess or maid. The entry of women in the teaching and nursing professions in the latter part of the century was the first instance in which spinsters were able to meet their own subsistence needs while holding a relatively acceptable position in society.

Some of the Victorian rules of etiquette between men and women in public reveal this penchant for keeping the woman in an asexual role and decreasing the male’s opportunities for making sexual advances on her. They also reveal the extent to which the woman has been idealized as a sensitive being in need of protection. The following rules were embedded in the novels of the period, especially those of Jane Austen: • Walking along the street, the lady always walks along the wall. (This kept the lady away from the danger of the street and away from other men’s physical proximity.) 

 • Meeting a lady in the street whom a man knows only slightly, he must wait for her to acknowledge him. Only then may he tip his hat to her. A man never speaks to a lady unless she speaks to him first. (This excluded the possibility of a man verbally flirting with a strange woman on the street.) 

• If you meet a lady who is a good friend and who indicates that she wishes to talk to you, you must turn and walk with her if you wish to talk to her. You must not keep her standing on the street. (This was to prevent the woman from appearing as if she were habituated to being on the street along with ‘loose’ women.) 

• When they are going up a flight of stairs, the man must precede the lady. (This allowed the man to clear the way for the woman and defend her from all possible harm.) • If alone in a carriage, a man does not sit next to a woman unless he is her husband, brother, father, or son. (The privatization of body space was connected to an increasing distancing between men and women.) 

• If unmarried and under thirty, a woman is never to be seen without a chaperone in the company of a man. Except for a walk to church or a park in the early morning, she may not walk alone, but should always be accompanied by another lady, a man, or a servant. (The rule existed in order to diminish amorous encounters as well as vulnerability to crime.) 

• A woman must never call on a man when she is alone, unless she is consulting that man on a professional or business matter. (Again, the motive is sexual distancing and the exclusion of possibilities of damaging gossip.) • At a public exhibition or concert, the man is expected to go in first in order to find the lady a seat. Leaving a carriage, he is expected to help the lady out while making sure that her skirts do not become soiled. 

At a social function, it is always the man who is introduced to the lady and never the other way around – this, because it was considered an honour for a man to meet a woman who was considered the morally superior gender. Nor is a man allowed to cut someone verbally. This privilege is reserved for a woman who feels her dignity has been slighted or a moral imperative transgressed. 

The campaign against sexual enjoyment received the support of a considerable number of medical professionals. Themselves of middle-class backgrounds, they accelerated the middle-class project of chastity by publishing articles and books stating that frequent sexual enjoyment led to senility and an early death. Some of them, citing cases from the lunatic asylums, helped rationalize the denial of the natural drives of the body. Ornella Moscucci (1990), in The Science of Woman: Gynaecology and Gender in England, 1800–1929, and Cynthia Eagle Russett (1989), in Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood, have discussed the collusion of the medical sciences in the promotion of an asexual female. 

In the 1860s, Dr Isaac Baker Brown even suggested that many female medical problems were related to masturbation. He caused a scandal when he suggested that clitoridectomy be performed on such women. The public outrage was caused not only by the barbarity of his suggestion, but by the fact that many middle-class women took offence to the accusation that they were practising self-gratification in considerable numbers. Some companies even manufactured special corsets for men to wear so that they could not reach their sexual organs without undressing first. 

When medical practitioners announced that masturbation would have serious mental and physical consequences for men, some young men castrated themselves. Venereal disease was considered such a shame that many of those who contracted it avoided consulting a doctor. As for young women, many were taught that a single act of intercourse would produce a baby. That some young women committed suicide after succumbing to temptation was understandable. Predictably, sexual instruction of the young was almost non-existent. 

There was silence in the schools, and any sexual knowledge was acquired on the sly and shared in hushed voices. This led to a socialization process that taught that sex was a nasty necessity of life, best kept silent. In the upper classes young women servants were sometimes expected to provide sexual initiation to the young master of the house, but in middle-class circles, silence was often maintained regarding anything to do with sexuality. It was even forbidden to refer to a woman’s legs as legs – the word used was ‘underpinnings,’ the same words used for the legs of an armchair. 

In many of the conduct books, parents were advised to never speak of sexuality with their children. Such books warned that knowledge would lead to curiosity and curiosity to experimentation. This silence may partially explain Victorian art representations of children and youth in impossibly innocent surroundings and activities. Children were taught to see women as ‘angelic’ beings and to look upon women as they looked upon their sisters and mothers. The tendency in some Victorian literature to compare a beloved mate with the memory of a mother may be connected to this transference of love for the mother onto other women who are then idealized as pure reproductions of the uncorrupted feminine sex. 

That much of this literature was male-generated seems to indicate that sex was not a top priority for many ambitions men who were busy building the empire (Hyam 1990). It is understandable that Victorians, such as Hannah More, reacted indignantly to the popularity of a bold, sensual, and seductive French literature. Enough Continental works of literature argued against marital fidelity and in favour of passionate bonds consummated for the sake of passion alone that there arose a fear that English society was in danger of losing its moral centre because of the licentiousness of a growing part of the Continental population. 

This fear of sexual compromise was expressed by Tennyson in his epic poems Guinevere and The Passing of Arthur. Tennyson wrote that it was Guinevere’s infidelity towards the king that brought discord to the holy round table and caused a civil war that delivered the realm into the hands of the barbarians. Over-riding sexuality was a profound respect for romantic love. Mainstream Victorian romance novels did not emerge in order to sexually titillate their readers, but to express their authors’ belief in love as the ultimate grace. In his poems, Browning was not shy to suggest that if a person were to meet his or her true love and recoil for any worldly reason he or she would have turned life into a failure. 

It is easy to discount these writings as the musings of Romantic poets. But that would be an error, for English literature became a major force in the moulding of an English consciousness and lifestyle. In fact, one of the telling autobiographical writings of the period was Charles Kingsley’s (1877) Letters and Memoirs of His Life. Kingsley confessed to having lived a youth during which he was taken in by sexual proclivity only to awaken later in life and realize that he was beset by doubt. He solved his crisis by giving himself to love with childlike simplicity. And it was a woman who saved him from his disbelief by managing to promise him that eternity was love itself (164). 

The Victorian restraint on sexuality and the resulting high valuation of romantic love was a substantial return to the classic notions of chivalry and fin’ amour. By idealizing the woman as a romantic object it became possible to separate passion and virtue from outright expression of sensuality. This Romantic idealization of soul love – the idea that one must live one’s whole life in hopes of meeting that special soul mate – was ingrained in Western society long before the appearance of Romanticism in the nineteenth century. Perhaps influenced by classical writers, Victorian novels glorified love and the exciting passions of attraction, fear of rejection, and the joy of reciprocated love. 

A person ‘fell into love,’ which virtually meant falling out of a rational state. And, falling into love, he or she fell out of the body and its animalistic needs and into some realm that was poetic and tender. While marriages of convenience had been tolerated prior to the Victorian restraint of sexuality, there now developed a literature that denigrated arranged marriages because they did not fulfill the highest aspirations of men and women: the joining of two souls in a life-long relationship that had love at its central motive. For the Victorians, the love of home, the strict respect for family and the authority of that family, and the important roles accorded to the mother and father became legitimized and imbued with the cementing ideal of romance. 

That the parents rarely exhibited affection towards each other openly in front of their children does not indicate what took place during their private moments together, and we should hesitate before labelling the Romantic movement a hypocritical one. But we can safely say that the circumspection of sex must have had the opposing effect of stimulating the imagination of the young. The ideal of pure love is expressed in the lines of Tennyson’s poem ‘Guinevere’ (1898). 

King Arthur meditates over the type of love that prevents discord and corruption: I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base of man, But teach high thought, and amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man. (474–90) The campaign against sensuality affected all walks of life, including art, theatre, and dress. For a painting to include a nude it had to demonstrate that it had a good reason to do so, a reason that went beyond titillating its viewer. 

A play that contained a scene referring to sex was considered a threat to public decorum and good manners. The music halls were the only places that brazenly defi ed the Victorian censorship; naturally, attendance at these ribald shows was considered unfit for members of polite society. It was only at the end of the century that  some of the avant-garde began attending such shows for distraction, and, even then, they were careful to register moral dismay through nervous giggles. The restrictions placed on overt sexuality and the idealization of romance led to the adoption of circumspect and indirect codes of courtesy between men and woman. 

Many young men who took these moral codes seriously must have rationalized in their minds that attraction to a woman meant that they were feeling love for her. The erotic impulse and the romantic feeling became merged for many and love became a rationalization for sexual arousal. Guilt was avoided in this way, for love was considered noble while lust was not. As shown in some of the manners prescribed for men and women in public, the male related to the female in an ambivalent way when it came to being in her proximity without the presence of chaperones. 

Being a ‘gentleman’ in the presence of a woman meant not making overt sexual advances, not with a woman of ‘good breeding’ at least. That was the meaning of modern chivalry – the gentleman was expected to protect a lady not only from other men but from his own self. So ingrained became the middle-class notion of ‘gentlemanly conduct’ that it carried over into the twentieth century, and we see it practised in America right through the 1950s before the arrival of the ‘sexual liberation’ movement. 

So, what the Victorians made of sexuality is extremely important to our understanding of contemporary relations between men and women in Anglo-American cultures, for the sexual revolutions of the twentieth century were acts of resistance (and undoing) against these previous restraints. Victorian views of sexuality were not restricted to English society but managed to spread to many other countries, including those frequented by colonial missionaries. The preoccupation with ‘danger’ during the nineteenth century had a seminal influence on the manner in which people interacted with one another. 

Much of the ‘reserve’ of the Victorians may have been connected to such cautiousness. A person who deviated from the norms of propriety was considered a ‘danger to society.’ For middle-class Victorians seeking propriety, it was a comfort to know that ‘danger’ was being eradicated or, at least, being put out of view. Evasion of the unpleasant and concern for public spaces became connected. Silence stepped in to ‘hush up’ disconcerting realizations. Indeed, anything that did not confirm with their cultural and political ideals might have been considered dangerous by zealous upholders of middle-class values. 

The woman who lit a cigarette when most women did not was dangerous. The spinster was dangerous. Street boys were dangerous. Authors writing in favour of free love were dangerous. Meetings without chaperons between young men and women who might become lovers were dangerous. This pervasive obsession with danger was the result of a society attempting to place itself within the boundaries of a set of practices that it could believe in and replay to itself as the best of all possible worlds. Having first restrained their own selves, middle-class Victorians set out to restrain their social environment.”

- Benet Davetian, “England and the Victorian Ethic.” in Civility: A Cultural History

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“To understand the incertitude facing the Victorians one has only to visualize a society in which, on one hand, great wealth was being created, while, on the other hand, a massive displacement was making survival nearly impossible for hundreds of thousands. The streets of London were disturbing reminders to the middle classes that their comfortable lifestyles were being won at a price. By the 1850s there were nearly 750,000 women working as servants in middle- and upper-class homes and a further 25,000 employed as governesses. These women helped remind more fortunate women that the most satisfactory career was that of a married woman. 

Work became the great ‘protector,’ whether it was the work of a husband or the work of a woman thrown back on her own means. And work accelerated the pace of life. In the 1860s, Frances Cobbe (1864) made the following comment about her own era compared with the early decades of the nineteenth century: That constant sense of being-driven – not precisely like ‘dumb’ cattle, but cattle who must read, write, and talk more in twenty-four hours than twenty-four hours will permit, can never been known to them [the people of 1800–30]. (482) Indeed, the ‘reserve’ of the middle class was partially motivated by a desire not to be associated with the uncleanness and misery of the poor, who were living in terrible accommodations or no accommodations at all.

In Democracy in America ([1884] 1994), Alexis de Tocqueville explained this English reserve as a particularly aristocratic defence mechanism against the dangers of social mixing: Aristocratic pride still being a very strong force with the English, and the boundaries of aristocracy having become doubtful, each man is constantly afraid lest advantage be taken of his familiarity. Not being able to judge at first sight the social position of the people he meets, he prudently avoids contact with them. He is afraid that some slight service rendered may draw him into an unsuitable friendship. He dreads civility and is as much anxious to avoid the demonstrative gratitude of a stranger as his hostility. (566) 

One cannot stress enough the brilliance of Tocqueville’s insight, for it demonstrates how a practice can become uncoupled from its original cause and take on a shape and purpose of its own long after it has outgrown its purposes. To understand the force of habituation is to realize that a sociology of culture needs to take two histories into account: the conscious and the forgotten. It was within this climate of anxiety and worry that the Victorians turned to the idea of ‘self-help,’ the notion that a person was responsible for improving himself through whatever means were available. 

Overpowered by the contingency of industrial life, with its multiple seductions and displacements, a family had to exercise its duty: to work honestly, to never give up hope, and to press for the manifestation of an ideal culture governed by principled behaviour. This social idealism accorded with the idealism of the Victorian scientists and engineers who saw a future blessed with technical progress. It was as if there were a concentrated effort to come up with reliable general laws in both the social and natural realms. Even Mill ([1865] 1961), who came to mistrust the mechanization of rationalism, wondered if the natural laws of science could be applied to human action and produce a set of universal laws capable of guiding social behaviour. 

Influenced by Auguste Comte, whom he introduced to England, he searched for a balance between optimism and anxiety, hope and disappointment, for he believed that even the more painful realizations of life could lead to a renewed commitment to duty and a revitalized practical morality. That Victorian writers often communicated with a partially educated public experiencing the anxieties of uncertainty should not be overlooked. There were as many prophets as newspapers and journals. What mattered less than what a man believed in was whether he was able to adopt a belief and stand by it. 

This penchant for ‘volitional action’ had been a central theme of British literature and Evangelical Anglicanism. As literature was made popular and accessible to the middle class, themes of self-realization and personal responsibility emerged and supplemented the romances. English literature during the midnineteenth century played an important role in the creation of a public English personality (Taylor 1997:125). Samuel Smiles’s ‘Self-Help’ ([1859] 1958) became the behavioural bible of the period. Smiles believed that a man should be able to make something worthy of himself regardless of his social position. ‘Perseverance’ and ‘energy’ were sources of wealth in self-improvement. 

Smiles legitimized this optimistic view of a person’s options in life by citing the biographies of successful men who had come from humble beginnings. In defence of the ambitious individual he wrote: It is energetic individualism which produces the most powerful effects upon the life and action of others, and really constitutes the best practical education. Schools, academies, and colleges, give but the merest beginnings of culture in comparison with it. Far more influential is the life education daily given in our homes, in the streets, behind the counters, in workshops, at the loom and the plough, in counting-houses and manufactories, and in the busy haunts of men. This is the finishing instruction as markers of society, which Schiller designated ‘the education of the human race,’ consisting of action, conduct, self-culture, self-control. (39) 

Smiles was championing a respect for work, any type of work, provided a person did his best to arrive at his utmost potential. He even considered easy riches a hindrance to self-realization: ‘Riches are so great a temptation to ease and self-indulgence to which men are by nature prone, that the glory is all the greater of those who, born to ample fortunes, nevertheless take an active part in the work of their generation’ (51). He swept aside the idea that failure can come to good, hardworking people: ‘Men who are constantly lamenting their luck are in some way or other reaping the consequences of their neglect, mismanagement, improvidence, or want of application’ (267). 

To further his argument, he quoted Dr Johnson, who had declared: ‘All the complaints which are made of the world are unjust. I never knew a man of Merit neglected; it was generally his own fault that he failed at success’ (266). Smiles, however, did not address the fact that the jobs that were being created in the new industrial state were being made possible precisely by individuals who were spending their money on products without which they had managed quite well before. Like many moralists of the Victorian era he did not consider what Mandeville had realized in his Fable of the Bees ([1715] 1962) that virtue and vice were part of a system that required both for its economic survival, that for every miser a wastrel was needed to balance the available supply of cash. 

The Victorian ethos attempted to connect personal health and virtue with public health and order. This was a key period in Western history because it transformed conceptions of the body. As Anthony Synnott (1993) explains in The Body Social, the end of the nineteenth century brought forth an acute ‘medicalization of society.’ Vaccination legislation and public health laws controlled the bodily freedom of individuals in the name of public welfare (26). So did the poorhouses, the shelters for unwed mothers, and the placement of illegitimate infants in the care of wet nurses far from the eyes and minds of the unfortunate child’s family. 

The ‘breach of promise’ clause in marriage laws further ensured that a man who proposed marriage, seduced the potential bride, and then broke his promise of marriage would face consequences. Smiles embodied the Victorian association between self-regulation and public welfare. He was also (intentionally or not) legitimizing the inequalities that had emerged as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Echoing the Victorians’ horror of the idle pauper, he wrote, ‘Labour is not only a necessity and a duty, but a blessing: only the idler feels it to be a curse’ ([1859] 1958:59), and, again, ‘There is no reason why the condition of the average workman should not be a useful honourable, respectable, and happy one’ (284). 

On the poverty of the English labourer, he pronounced ‘that this class would be otherwise than frugal, contented, intelligent, and happy is not the design of providence’ (284). According to Smiles, a wise man should exhibit thrift and live below his means, regardless of his income. For a man barely able to put food on the table of his family it meant missing even more meals than were already being missed. In Thrift ([1875] 1958), Smiles criticized the working class for spending all its earnings and thereby limiting its opportunities for self-advancement. 

He was one of the earliest modern proponents of a ‘culture of poverty’ theory: ‘The greater number of workmen possess little capital save their labour; and, as we have already seen, many of them uselessly and wastefully spend most of their earnings, instead of saving them and becoming capitalists’ (99). Explaining the formula for wealth creation, he advised: ‘It is the savings of individuals which compose the wealth – in other words, the well-being – of every nation ... every thrifty person may be regarded as a public benefactor, and every thriftless person as a public enemy’ (2). 

The Victorian uneasiness with hedonism is echoed in Smiles’s advice regarding the socialization of youth: ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; but all play and no work makes him something greatly worse. Nothing can be more hurtful to a youth than to have his world sodden with pleasure’ ([1859] 1958:318). Elsewhere in the book, he asserts: ‘The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honour ... The school of Difficulty is the best school of moral discipline’ (325). Regarding character, he states: ‘That character is power is true in a much higher sense that knowledge is power. Mind without heart, intelligence with out conduct, cleverness without goodness, are powers in their way, but they may be powers only for mischief’ (362). 

Objecting to the cult of appearance and fashion, he declares: ‘There is a dreadful ambition abroad for being “genteel.” We keep up appearances, too often at the expense of honesty; and though we may not be rich, yet we must seem to be so. We must be “respectable” though only in the meanest sense – in mere vulgar outward show’ (290). Smiles’s unwavering faith in the individual also reflected a growing disillusionment with government in the mid-Victorian era. Thrown back on their own resources to formulate some workable collective ethic, the Victorians came to value ‘personal enthusiasm’ as a socially cohesive force. It was this unwavering belief in the power of the person to improve himself that led to what has since become known as Victorian ‘earnestness.’ 

Such earnestness, however, had consequences. Christopher Lane (2003) has observed in Hatred and Civility: The Antisocial Life in Victorian England – a perceptive psychoanalytical critique of Victorian evangelism – that one of the consequences of this single-minded commitment to ‘social progress’ was the censoring and mistrust of ‘misanthropy.’ While withdrawal from a corruptive society had been tolerated and even admired in the eighteenth century, the Victorian ethic of ‘enthusiasm’ rendered those who criticized from the margins highly suspect. Civility and the benevolent associations it produced were equated with social responsibility. 

The misanthrope was now seen as someone who stood in the way of cheerful progress, a mental aberration rather than a credible conscientious objector. Such obligatory sociability further contributed to the suppression of ‘dangerous’ emotions, leaving successive generations with the onerous task of reversing this code of enforced silence. Smiles’s enthusiasm found a large audience in America. His republican non-aristocratic presentation of self-worth and self-improvement appealed to Americans seeking a republican representation of ideal behaviour. 

Writing of authentic politeness, he stated: ‘The inbred politeness which springs from right-heartedness and kindly feelings is of no exclusive rank or station. The mechanic who works at the bench may possess it, as well as the clergyman or the peer’ ([1859] 1958:369). In support of the English practice of tact, he wrote: ‘The gentlemen is eminently distinguished for his self-respect. He values his character ... as he respects himself, so, by the same law, does he respect others’ (372). We see in Smiles’s writing the non-negotiability of the English conception of ‘gentle’ behaviour: ‘Gentleness is indeed the best test of gentlemanliness. A consideration for the feelings of others, for his inferiors are dependents as well as his equals, and respect for their self-respect, will pervade the true gentleman’s whole conduct’ (380). 

This ethic of ‘earnestness’ restrained by ‘decorum’ became embodied in the British Victorian monarchy. The new courtesy practices and the idealization of family and propriety had created an aura of perfection in Victorian England, one shared by the Queen herself. Victoria and her husband Albert had maintained a model middle-class marriage, setting an example for the rest of the population. The Queen was not averse to publicizing the domestic side of her life – it was perhaps the first time that the British monarchy had taken middle-class values and replayed them to the public. 

This confirmation had a profound influence on the working classes, giving them access to a collective morale that transcended issues of wealth and title. Ironically, this common social denominator was made possible precisely by the fact that class differentiation had been accepted as a given. Paralleling ‘tact’ and an appreciation of ‘gentleness’ was a very strong belief in the efficacy of rules. Rules helped define an orderly way to achieve personal and civilizational competence. John Stuart Mill and Harriette Taylor ([1869] 1912), worrying about the spirit of the times, wrote that the English were alienating themselves from emotion by adhering to so many rules. They warned that Victorian values were alienating the English from nature. 

Despite their warnings, work, thrift, and a steadfast observance of rules became the hallmarks of a ‘reputable family.’ That Victorians had such a horror of deviance, non-conformity, and bad reputation is understandable when viewed from the perspective of rules and the manner they were equated to social harmony and social health. Despite the self-help movement, the certainties of nineteenth-century rationalizations of science were being shaken by a growing sense of futility at the end of the 1800s. A series of bad harvests created social unrest, precipitating the second Reform Bill of 1867. 

The bill gave the working classes of the towns voting privileges and forced upper- and middle-class Victorians to face the fact that a new class was emerging, one that had already demonstrated its power through a series of strikes and riots. By adopting ideal values and categorical explanations of reality, the Victorians had set themselves up for disappointment – observable reality did not conform to the ideals of the self-help movement. The social optimism of a writer like Smiles and the moral fury of a Wilberforce were based on a mono-directional view of social economics. An ethical and disciplined life was seen as the best path to individual happiness. 

Yet, what was not sufficiently considered was that varying motivations could produce the same beneficial results. A man buying a dog for his wife was contributing to the creation of jobs no more and no less than another buying the same dog for his illicit mistress. There are echoes of Kant’s thinking in the Victorian attempt to establish a categorical moral imperative. Yet, the times required a commercialism unshackled by conservative restrictions. Confronted with these dilemmas, Victorians took to doubting the viability of their moral project. 

If there seems to be any hypocrisy in the Victorian era, as has been retrospectively suggested by many historians, novelists, and cultural critics, this hypocrisy does not lie as much in an act of bad faith or a consciously adopted double standard as it does in the fact that conservative Victorians were trying to make ideal declarations in spite of an economic juggernaut that required a tempering of social idealism. Certainly, the old art of gentlemanly conduct went through a transformation during this period. In 1935, Henry Dwight Sedgwick was already mourning the passing of the gentleman in his book In Praise of Gentlemen ([1935] 1970). 

Yet, Sedgwick was ignoring a very important development in English courtesy. Certainly, the formality of aristocratic gentlemanly behaviour was suffering with the demise of the British Empire, but England had preserved Smiles’s ideal of gentleness, the ministering to the comfort of the other. Both mechanic and lord had somehow managed to internalize the functional properties of Hume’s and Smith’s conceptions of sympathy. This very important development in English civility should inform current observations of English interaction style.”

- Benet Davetian, “England and the Victorian Ethic.” in Civility: A Cultural History

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“...Evangelists appear only when there is social incertitude. Industrialization had created large urban areas in which anonymity was rampant – new products, new fashions and habits, all threatened to undermine the fixity and permanence of previous religious standards. The reaction of the aristocracy and the middle class towards the anxieties unleashed by the Industrial Revolution was to turn inwards to their homes and their own social circles. Family and close friends henceforth represented the social network that would stand against the influences of an increasingly complex and corrupt public world fraught with crime, fraud, poverty, and violence. 

The aristocrats mistrusted the new world because they feared the threat of a future rise in the power of the lower classes. The growing middle class mistrusted the new industrialization because it threatened its desire to remain free of bad influence and the deviance that came in its wake. Withdrawal from the streets was partially a way of establishing a zone of safety as well as differentiation in social rank. By not consorting with the working classes, who were much more at ease with street culture, the middle classes distanced themselves and found self-esteem in such separatism. 

The theory that people take to public places when their housing is poor does not take into account the reverse of that process: the well-off do not remain off the streets because they have superior housing, but, rather, because they do not wish to be associated with those who are on the street. In fact, the upper and middle classes were not homebound; they practised selective sociability and invited their guests to private functions at exclusive clubs (Houghton 1957, Briggs 1954). A further interesting phenomenon occurred in connection with the home. Middle-class families reclaimed their children from the old apprentice system and took upon themselves the role of socializing them and instilling them with moral virtues intended to protect them from anonymous corruptive public influences. 

Although nannies and governesses were employed in the more affluent homes where children were sent off to boarding schools, parents more often than not kept a close watch on the moral development of their children. The middle class family used its new freedom and status to make the conduct of family members the hallmark of the family’s reputation. The lower working classes, whose families were often dispersed in separate quarters due to their work as domestics or apprentices, did not yet have this privilege. This tendency to consider the behaviour of the child as the signature of the family was already a nascent idea in the seventeenth century. John Locke ([1693] 1892) had written in How to Bring Up Your Children, Being Some Thoughts on Health Education and Health Care that meticulous attention paid to the raising of a child would produce grown children who would later on have respect and affection for their parents. 

At a time when only one-fourth to one-third of infants survived to their first birthday and only half of children reached their fifteenth birthday, the child was becoming a precious commodity. Adopting some of the practices of the past while rejecting others, Victorians sought a reliable moral culture capable of transcending the uncertainties of the new industrial society. The entire era should be remembered not only for its Victorian code of family morality but also for the environment in which this code came into being: an increasingly dense urban world in which many lived in terrible conditions. The child labour factories, workhouses, and the poorhouses so eloquently described in the works of Charles Dickens, together with the smog-filled streets of London, where thousands died every year from coal fumes, made for an urban setting in which those who could afford it began sequestering themselves from the streets. 

The countless scams and tricks of the street hucksters who preyed upon a gullible population unaccustomed to the new machines and concoctions coming off the industrial lines further justified the arguments of those calling for restraint and caution. Yet, standing in stark contrast to the conduct books that warned of moral perils were the etiquette books. The original French use of the word étiquette refers to a processing of labelling or codifying. It literally means something that is attached or affixed to something. Historically, it referred to the announcements and rules that were nailed onto posts and walls in towns announcing new decisions and laws. 

They were, therefore, as changeable as the policies of the authorities who affixed them. It is no coincidence that the word eventually came to be applied in connection with ‘fashions’ of behaviour that were subject to change. So there were important variations between early courtesy books intended for courtiers, conduct books intended for people seeking moral guidance in response to a changing environment, and etiquette books listing the rules of fashionable and proper social behaviour. Conduct books sought the development of a virtuous mentality capable of resisting bad influence by remaining true to Christian principles. 

Etiquette books, on the other hand, were content to describe how a person could appear socially distinguished through certain mannerisms and adherence to pre-established rituals of interaction. The rules of etiquette (e.g., which type of visit warranted which type of introduction, which type of calling card was to be left under which circumstances, and which corner of the card was to be folded to signify which message) were already in existence within aristocratic circles. These guides were meant as much to inform a high society increasingly receiving merchants in its folds of the long-standing practices of the aristocracy as they were to provide aristocrats with encyclopedic replays of their own culture. 

Etiquette, the art of knowing how to conduct oneself in polite society in order to be in tandem with that society’s rules of propriety and membership, was already part of an aristocrat’s upbringing. Yet, for someone moving up in society, who had grown up in less auspicious social circles, the how-to book of etiquette allowed the learning of what may have not been known or observed before. So, when it first appeared, etiquette was a replay of the mannerisms already practised by those of higher social rank. Its basis was imitation rather than personal development. It was only later that moral issues were in some measure integrated in the etiquette manuals in a bid to arrive at a compromise with the moralists. 

By their very nature, etiquette books were the means by which the  upper classes colonized the social behaviour of the rising middle classes. Through such colonization the aristocracy reserved the right at any given moment to raise the stakes in upward mobility by changing the rules of etiquette. Generally, however, as pointed out by Leanore Davidoff (1973) in The Best Circles: Society Etiquette and the Season, mobility was allowed from the middle class into the upper echelons to accommodate a changing technology requiring cooperative links between a land economy and a machine economy. 

So, while conduct books tried to instill in their readers a sense of social duty and honour, qualities that were considerably needed during a period in which many had taken to questionable conduct due to the lure of the new industrial economy, the etiquette book contented itself with listing the protocols that needed following and the decorum that needed preserving in different social situations involving people of varying ranks. Thus, two etiquette books published a few years apart could contain many discrepancies, depending on the changing whims of whichever group was socially ascendant. 

Although these etiquette books did not preoccupy themselves with moral issues, they nevertheless taught protocols of behaviour designed to create the appearance that the feelings of the other were being taken into consideration. In the English etiquette books considerable pains were taken to describe rules of behaviour that were specifically meant not to cause emotional discomfort to the other. One rule of etiquette was to conceal one’s own emotional suffering so as not to create uneasiness in another. ‘Propriety’ included the avoidance of the ‘horror’ of emotional embarrassment. 

This remains a central component in English courtesy practices, and we shall discuss its full contemporary connotations in a later chapter, where we analyse the social psychology of varying politeness rituals. It is interesting to note, meanwhile, that some writers, such as Tim Newton (1998), have suggested that emotional restraint was not only a civility practice in England but a means by which the requirements of a market economy could be rationalized and detached from personal sentiment (69–80).”

- Benet Davetian, “England and the Victorian Ethic.” in Civility: A Cultural History

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“...While the gender-definition project was similar to the one undertaken in England, there was a marked difference due to the manner in which early American communities were organized. An American household was a work unit contributing to the prosperity of the community. An exaggerated need for privacy would have weakened the community. Faced with an undeveloped frontier, Americans always needed to maintain a communal sense of town and village organization to provide security in a vast land in which towns and cities were separated by considerable stretches of wilderness. 

The church and town hall were places of worship as well as assembly. Many important decisions regarding legislative changes were made in these halls with the participation of families that had equal rights to speak and vote. The work of women was not private but even subject to admiration and criticism by other women. Privacy was a luxury being acquired on the industrializing eastern coast; in more agricultural parts of the country, communal cooperation was the essence of survival. This ethos of cooperation and mutual reliance accorded a special status to women. 

While the early settlers believed in the Puritan tradition of the male’s dominance in all matters pertaining to the family, a shortage of women in the new colonies eventually allowed women to obtain advantages that they might not have possessed in the Old World. Dowries were made obsolete and women acquired the right to choose a husband for themselves. Moreover, following the violence and disorder experienced in the all-male Jamestown settlement, women became highly regarded as stabilizing forces, for it was observed that their presence in a community helped establish order and decorum. 

In a frontier settlement, where disease was rampant and medical aid scarce, women became front-line participants standing alongside men, facing the dangers of early colonial life. Women also acquired considerable importance and status during the Civil War, when they not only took care of estates left unmanaged by men who had gone off to war, but also became prolific commentators on the social issues emerging in postwar America. This gave women in America a special status of ‘partnership’ with the male, for they were, in effect, co-creators of a new nation (Wertenbaker 1927:280–90). Conduct book writers first set about trying to secure agreement from women to play specifically defined roles within the community. 

Predictably, this was originally accomplished through the citing of religious scripture. Cotton Mather’s (1692) Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion was perhaps the first women’s conduct book to appear in America. Mather used Biblical references to justify his advice that a woman should accept her role as keeper of the house and remain a devoted wife, desisting from using ornaments of beauty or passing time reading romances. Mather advised his female reader to submit to the will of her husband as she would to the will of God. 

Citing Biblical precedents, he explained that acceptance of God meant acceptance of the husband’s authority and wisdom. Idleness and a quarrelsome disposition were deemed to be the habits of an ungodly woman. A woman who sought to please God was industrious and capable of bringing comfort and harmony to her family by turning away from vanity and fashion. Such a woman would read the Bible every day and avoid all frivolous activities. She would reject dancing and idle gossip and devote her time to the study of ‘housewifery.’ Mather also encouraged women to learn arithmetic and accounting to help in the management of the household. 

Noteworthy about Mather’s writing is that he is asking the woman to obey her husband yet expecting her to be ready to reason with him should he be on the verge of making unwise decisions. She is supposed to submit to his will but also have influence over him and keep him pious and virtuous. She is to apply God’s will – first to herself and then to her family. She is, in a manner, being given the role of moral caretaker. By the middle of the eighteenth century, there was a marked change in the manner in which religious belief was used to convince women to restrict themselves to domestic duties. 

God was no longer presented as a wrathful being whom a woman had to fear but a benevolent protector who would reward her plentifully if she did not stray from her path. The benefits of housewifery, although still couched in the religious language of ‘virtue,’ were presented as rational outcomes of a well-adjusted family capable of taking advantage of the natural gifts bestowed on the American people. Benjamin Franklin, in Reflections on Courtship and Marriage (1746), even argued against the encouragement of weakness in women. He attributed these weaknesses to faulty education as well as the negative influence of men who encouraged women to be vain and pleasure-seeking. 

Franklin was proposing an education for females that went beyond housewifery, perhaps hoping that a woman who was educated in worldly subjects would rise above the supposed ‘weakness’ of her sex. By the late eighteenth century, conduct books, such as John Bennett’s (1788, published in England) Strictures on Female Education, were going beyond religious scriptures and using examples from nature to rationalize women’s duties. Bennett explained that, like the animal species, the human species had its superior members. According to him a woman was considered to be physically and emotionally inferior to her mate and needed to control her emotions and desires. 

On one hand, the woman’s superior ability to keep harmony in the home was being praised while, at the same time, that same virtue was being attributed to her inability to take on manly tasks requiring sustained thought and emotional restraint. There was a further change in tone in American women’s conduct books published after the eighteenth century. While prior to the Industrial Revolution they had focused on keeping the woman within very limited duties, they now responded to the improved education of women and rising calls for women’s suffrage by taking the side of the new woman and affirming her rights to an educational and political voice. 

Just as had the books addressed to men, women’s conduct manuals began fervently addressing the dangers that confronted a woman who might become affected by the wrong public influences in the emerging urban centres. A.J. Graves’s Girlhood and Womanhood (1844) and Daniel C. Eddy’s Lectures to Young Ladies on Matters of Practical Importance (1848) provided specific warnings to women regarding the dangers of the city and how they were to protect their reputations when surrounded by temptation. Eddy meticulously differentiated between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ companions, warning his readers to learn to distinguish between the two. 

For Eddy, even attendance at an amusement park was risky. Graves lectured that a woman’s character had to be properly formed in girlhood – such a strong foundation would help protect her from the ‘dangers’ faced by women in a mobile society. But he also warned that such protection would evaporate and be replaced by corruption were the woman to begin idealizing some of her learning and to forget that she was being influenced by other mortals capable of writing convincing prose favouring vice. Romantic fiction was singled out as a dangerous genre capable of making a woman live in a fantasy world at the expense of her real identity.

Despite the use of natural and religious explanations to justify women as the ‘weaker sex,’ some conduct book writers began arguing for improved education for women. The subjects suggested as ‘appropriate’ reading for women were history, religion, geography, biography, and a limited number of classical authors. Many conduct book writers warned that too much reading could lead to a pedantic woman no longer able to infuse her home with warmth and simple joy. Rev. John S.C. Abbott’s The Mother at Home: Or The Principles of Maternal Duty, Familiarly Described (1833) provided mothers with a long and detailed explanation of how they were to raise socially conscientious children. 

Abbott addressed many difficulties that a mother could encounter with her children and then proceeded to remind the reader that it is ‘maternal care’ that determines whether a child will grow up to have a good or weak character (13–14): ‘Never give a command which you do not intend shall be obeyed (29). Never punish when the child has not intentionally done wrong (53). Guard against too much severity (61). One great obstacle is the want of self-control on the part of the parent (64). Parents must have deep devotional feelings themselves’ (113). 

What is noteworthy about this particular tract is that the mother is being warned to maintain a rational control of her children in order to be able to maintain her credibility and influence when her husband is away. The task of dispensing a moral education is now being assigned to the woman, in tandem with the dislocations of industrial society and the frequent absences of the father. What was the reward offered to women if not a place in heaven? T.S. Arthur, in Advice to Young Ladies on Their Duties and Conduct in Life (1848), suggested that a woman’s duty was to be fulfilled through a sharing of a non-deistic love for others. 

Through the use of rationality a new proposition was being presented to women: that their duties were their ‘rights.’ It was their ‘right’ to make a paradise of their homes, comfort the sad, heal the sick, save others from vice, and teach the young. That this was a deft manipulation borrowing catchy terms from the literature on women’s rights is evident. Yet, this framing of duty as a ‘right’ gave women considerable authority over those functions that were assigned to them. In The Young Woman’s Guide (1840) William Alcott reminds women that, although they are the ‘weaker’ sex, they should remember that the weak govern the strong, provided they remember to remain modest  and wise (98–9). In The Young Wife (1842) 

Alcott advises his reader to ‘do everything for your husband which your strength and a due regard to your health will admit’ (76). He presents a sustained explanation for why a woman should do everything possible to avoid conflict with her husband, going far enough to suggest that the best way to bring back an erring husband into the folds of the family is to remain stoic and allow him to realize the errors of his ways. To accomplish this, the woman is to make her home as agreeable as possible, rise early (142), and take complete responsibility for her children, never leaving infants in the care of another (7). 

In matters of her own education she is to remain independent of her husband’s personality but not become arrogant and pedantic; she must even be ready to drop a topic of study that does not interest her husband and adopt one that does. According to Alcott, education is not meant to give pleasure regarding a specific topic but is intended to help the development of the mind (301). While he encourages independence he does so within the limitations of a womanly ‘sphere of influence’ in which the management of the stability of the household is given prime importance (358–60). 

A philosophy of consensus between genders was being presented here and would have substantial effects on twentieth-century American gender relations and civility between men and women, especially during the 1940s and 1950s. So, by the arrival of the nineteenth century, conduct writers had assigned a particular ‘mission’ to the American woman. It was a mission very much based on the original American democratic patriotic promise. She was to play an active role in the creation of a strong and stable America by properly raising and instructing morally aware children capable of responding to the challenges of a rapidly developing American society. 

The woman was no longer just the maker of the home but, in a manner of speaking, also the moral caretaker of the nation. Despite her important role as a primary agent of socialization, she continued to be asked to restrain her intellectual interests. In The Young Bride’s Book (1849), Arthur Freeling stressed the powerful influence of a woman on her husband, while exhorting her to select her reading material with great care: While proper reading furnishes the mind and matures the judgment, there is a class of books which has a tendency directly to the contrary; I refer to works of imagination, novels and the like ... The indiscriminate reading of novels is one of the most injurious habits to which a married woman can be subject ... it produces contempt for ordinary realities. (57) 

Like Alcott, Freeling believed that men had a deep appreciation for modest women with endearing qualities and that they would be motivated to treat a woman with respect and love provided the woman took care to project the proper qualities of ‘amiable temper’ and a ‘cheerful smile.’ Freeling remained convinced that a woman possessed stronger resistance against worldly corruption than did the male (16). He also advised his readers to remember that ‘a woman may be of great assistance to her husband in business, by wearing a cheerful smile and continually weave her countenance’ (6). 

Two anonymous books written by women dispersed similar advice regarding the importance of sacrifice for the sake of family cohesion: Young Wife’s Book; A Manual of Moral, Religious and Domestic Duties (1838) and The Young Lady’s Book: A Manual of Elegant Recreations, Exercises, and Pursuits (1830). The author of the first book reminds women that once they have vowed to obey, serve, love, and honour their husband, they should stick to these vows as ‘inalienable’ conditions of their family life. ‘No longer seeking individual enjoyment, her pleasures must spring from participation, and her [happiness] be the reflected bliss arising from the peace of another’ (1838:12). 

Thus, the matrimonial duties are to be based on reciprocal understanding: ‘They consist of mutual forbearance and mutual offices of love and kindness’ (12). And what is to be the education of a woman? The author warns against acquiring knowledge and then turning it into pedantry (206). The reader is cautioned that a man enjoys a rational companion able to speak of a variety of topics without appearing vain. The woman is encouraged to read, but also exhorted to evaluate the ultimate function and use of what she is studying. As in most conduct books of the era, the ‘domestic duties’ of the household are given into the charge of the woman, and she is to ensure that they stay in her charge if she is to take responsibility for pleasing her husband (210). 

In addition to taking care of household matters, she is to remain ‘industrious’ at all times and avoid all idle moments. The benefit of such constant action is no longer rationalized as an act that pleases God but as a pleasant personal sensation: ‘Activity of body produces activity of mind; and again, activity of the mind quickens the feelings of the heart, and makes us more alive to happiness; while slothfulness of body causes sluggishness of mind and heart’ (221). The author of the second anonymously penned book, The Young Lady’s Book (1830), preaches a similar combination of fortitude and obedience, strong-mindedness and agreeability, moral development and intellectual humility. 

The author presents an interesting conception of the mental capacities of the ideal American woman: Mental improvement should always be made conducive to moral advancement: to render a young woman wise and good, to prepare her mind for the duties and trials of life, is the great purpose of education. Accomplishments, however desirable and attractive, must always be considered secondary objects, when compared with those virtues which form the character and influence the power of woman in society. (23–4) Needless to say, many dissenting responses appeared in the wake of such literature.

An anonymous woman published the following lyric in Harper’s Weekly: Useless, aimlessly, drifting through life, What was I born for? ‘For somebody’s wife, I am told by my mother. Well, that being true, ‘Somebody’ keeps himself strangely from view. ... My brothers are, all of them, younger than I, Yet they thrive in the world, and why not let me try? (29 August 1863) Thus, both men and women were being solicited to fulfill their particular ‘callings’ within a larger national project that spanned a 4,000-milewide country. The male was entrusted with the outside world and the woman with the inner world of the family. They were both being enlisted in the service of a common American society in which work and prosperity were to be considered the ultimate good. 

It was this common project and its division of labour that transformed the original American promise of ‘equality’ and ‘liberty’ into a project of ‘collective conformity’ that problematized the pure application of the idea of ‘liberty.’ The ‘All-American Boy’ and the ‘All-American Girl’ were prototypes that emerged from early specifications of what it meant to be an ‘American’ male or female. And the meanings were very gender-specific: James Bean (1856) writing in Advice to a Married Couple took great care to remind both partners that they were to excel in what they did best but not encroach on the domain of the other (14).”

- Benet Davetian, “The American Experience: Democracy and Informal Civility.” in Civility: A Cultural Experience

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“In Propriety and Position (1987), M. Curtin explains that the etiquette books that flooded the publishing market in England after the 1830s concentrated heavily on the manners to be used in the drawing rooms of families. Victorian architects now planned houses with separate rooms, each with its own separate functions: the drawing room, the smoking room, the reading room, the bedroom, the servant’s room; all had protocols of behaviour. What might have been discussed in one room was considered inappropriate conversation in another. Middle-class men were busy working in an industrial and commercial complex that increasingly made demands on their time, yet their wives, who were encouraged to remain idle and in charge of their homes, were left taking on an active moral and social position in Victorian society. 

Propriety and a peaceful comportment became the rule of the home, and it was left to the woman of the house to protect these values. The Victorian family gathered and behaved with propriety whether a stranger was present or not. Much of this propriety was meant to teach children the manners and codes of conduct that were expected of them. Undoubtedly, this ongoing attention to manners and propriety between parents and their children established the foundation for an English ethic of politeness based on emotional restraint and deference, for opposition to the parent was considered a sign of ill-breeding. 

While they now contained token sections on morality, the etiquette books of the period continued to primarily focus on the manners and protocols to be used within the family and during visits paid to other families. How and when a calling card was to be used, the precise manner in which tea was to be served, and times appropriate for different types of visits were all noted in detail. Curtin suggests that many of these books were also intended to build a moral image for the women of the household and preserve them from gossip that might have compromised their reputation. The Victorian woman was expected to possess infinite tact, be kind with her family as well as strangers, and remain generally responsible for the happiness of her household. This, of course, put her in a position of considerable power as well as saddling her with an overall social responsibility bordering on self-denial. 

It is not coincidental that most etiquette books of the period had a strong female orientation. This idealization of the female as a duty-bound agent of domestic and sexual purity – in considerable contrast to late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century sexual mores – became entrenched in mainstream Victorian thought. Considered to be members of the weaker sex, and supposedly given to welcoming chastity as proof of personal breeding and honour, women were expected to be gracious and social but not possess intellectual ambitions that might act to the detriment of the comfort of their family. What occurred here – as had in Della Casa’s relegation of physical functions to the backstage of social life ��� was that overt sexuality became associated with moral corruption. 

In previous epochs, wedding rituals had required the guests to accompany the bride and groom to their bedroom, then undress them and put them to bed. Such public displays of nudity or sexuality would have been totally horrifying to those Victorians who now came to equate sexual conservatism with ethics and sensible family values. While conformity to the opinions of others continued to be important within the smaller circles of family and friends within urban settings, the anonymity of urban life gave rise to a second standard, driving underground many of the sexual improprieties forbidden to Victorian families of ‘good standing.’ 

Prostitution increased and a lucrative pornography market came into being. This does not at all mean that a sizeable number of Victorians partook of these illicit pleasures, but it allowed a minority who needed them to avail themselves of them. Those who stood against these practices were quick to form private and public groups that tried to rehabilitate ‘fallen women.’ So the accusation that the Victorians practised a double standard is misleading in our opinion. A more useful assessment would recognize that contrasting ideologies vied for control of public morality. Nor was dress any longer an indicator of actual moral worth. Increased spending power permitted even people of low social rank (and those of questionable moral practice) to acquire the latest fashions. 

A person could dress ‘up’ or ‘down’ in relation to their social rank and gain access to public places which might otherwise have been forbidden them in a smaller community where their identity and status were known. Manners and fashion allowed a person to hide their actual moral identity and create a favourable impression. The products and frivolities that arrived in the wake of industrialization generated great excitement. This celebration of the new created a spirit of contagion and imitation which sorely worried conduct writers. Their fears were partially justified. The rise of the industrial wage earner considerably weakened existing patterns of familial moral authority. Wage earning took people away from their communities and decreased the influence of parents, parish elders, and clergy. 

While morals had previously been taught within the closed circle of the family and the town community, a new breed of moralizers and trendsetters appeared in the hundreds of newspapers and journals that became readily available in all areas due to the railway system. News from one city could reach another within a matter of hours and be purchased and read by anyone. Journalists became the new priesthood. They could write whatever they believed in and whatever suited the purpose of profit motivated publishers increasingly beholden to corporate advertisers. Sometimes, the resulting editorial content contradicted the values held by parents and educators. And with the flooding of the market with body care and luxury items, the printed journal became a guide to the new joys of spending. 

So pervasive became the habit of imitative spending that cartoonists began satirizing the new conspicuous consumption. John Leech’s (1:1886) Pictures of Life and Character poignantly shows the growing dominance of taste and trend and the pretentious competitiveness provoked in people of all classes. And fashion journals, such as La Belle Assemblée, showed the public the latest ‘fashionable looks.’ English fashion designers had managed to design clothes, which unlike the products of expensive Parisian haute couture, were elegant as well as affordable. Increasing numbers of women of modest means fell under the spell of fashion. 

Lady Palmerston, a leading trendsetter, writing in La Belle Assemblée (1807), summarized the new fashion ethic with brutal candour: It is not the good taste of a dress that constitutes its merit, but solely the fancy of the moment. You are thought exceedingly handsome in a very ugly fashion, if it be but new, and you are thought ridiculous in a very handsome fashion, if it be out of date. (2:125) Being out of date became a major fear of the rising classes, much to the dismay of moralists, who understood that constant change could undermine fixed notions of right and wrong; the danger of the love of novelty lay precisely in the fact that novelty, by definition, was a tradition-breaker. 

As early as 1781, Reverend V. Knox, a prominent writer on education, had complained that ‘the too high estimation of the ornamental qualification is injurious to the individual, and to [the] continuity’ (158). And, indeed, the Regency period had produced a wealth of ornamental luxury products that were avidly collected by the idle rich. It was not ornament and fashion, per se, to which the nineteenth-century moralists objected but to the deception made possible by the new premium placed on appearance and commercial success (McKendrick and Plumb 1979). 

As for ‘politeness,’ it was a by-product of appearance management; it did not necessarily reveal the actual sentiments of a person. Even though it could very well include authentic emotions of friendliness and respect, sincerity was not required in all polite reactions. Politeness had a double edge. On one hand it permitted civil contact between strangers, assuring a certain amiability that diminished the possibility of discord and embarrassment. On the other hand, it acted as a mark of distinction and created distancing without abrasive unpleasantness. ‘Privacy,’ a word used reverently in England ever since the rise of the Victorians, now helped rationalize the need for keeping certain aspects of one’s life hidden from public view. 

The polite person was considered to at least understand the meaning of propriety and privacy. Being civilized in the English manner came to mean being amiable, fair, and avoiding unpleasantness, even in situations of potential conflict or suffering. This was quite different from the raffinement (refinement) espoused by French courtesy. English politeness was not simply a matter of personal style. Aesthetic embellishment took second place to a cult of cautious amiability bordering on reserve. What we see occurring here is a progression from courtesy as virtue, to conduct as moral discipline, to politeness and etiquette as marks of a civic distinction reminiscent of aristocratic sensibility, and, finally, to the development of a public politeness ethos. 

That there was a middleclass moral reaction to the deceptions of a society increasingly given to valuing appearance is understandable. So a certain compromise was struck between the moralists who stood against deception and the pragmatists who considered it an unavoidable by-product of a socially coherent civilized society. Both sides realized that neither total sincerity nor total pretense could have served in the new English industrial society. The moralists had believed that the best defence against deception was loyalty to virtue, resistance to vice, and a total sincerity in relations with others. This search for authenticity had been a major theme in the literature of the period (Guilhamet 1974). 

But sincerity, if applied without restriction, would have required individuals to reveal all their thoughts and emotions, even those that were offensively critical of others. A sincerity practised without discrimination would have led to social dissonance. Reacting to the single-mindedness of both camps, cartoonists were quick to portray individuals telling one another exactly what they thought: the promoter admitting to his client that he would like nothing better than to trick him, the guest telling his hostess that he was leaving the party not because of a painful attack of gout but because he was totally bored and then her replying that she was glad to be rid of him because he was indeed a total bore. The cartoons showed how impossible would be the adoption of sincerity in all social situations. 

Satire became a means for critiquing social insincerity, providing some relief from the formally established politeness ethos (Browning 1983). The evangelical moralists also presented ‘sincerity’ as a means by which a person could reveal his true intentions in the perilously anonymous urban society. Yet, as Morgan (1994) astutely points out, a sincere person could not count on his own sincerity to reveal the intentions of others. Lacking knowledge of the background and activities of another person left everyone, sincere or not, with the problem of never being sure of public dealings (130). Loving thy brother as you would have him love you did not work very well in streets populated by hucksters and promoters, for these types were more interested in their potential victim’s wallet than in his fraternity. 

Quacks and salesmen of dubious products (including health elixirs) had duped many, charging much but delivering little. Even evangelists realized that measures stronger than personal sincerity were needed. This came in the form of professionalization. Medical doctors, lawyers, and accountants formed professional associations to control quackery and build an image based on sincere service. Professional bodies also began exercising a moral control over their memberships. The educational qualifications of a potential medical doctor or lawyer had to be accompanied by attestations of his personal integrity. In this way, professional bodies legitimized the personal ambitions of their members and reassured the public that membership was a sign of competence and honesty. 

In effect, a type of aristocratic honour became conferred on professionals and set them apart from merchants. Unlike the merchant whose main motive was the creation of maximum profit, the professional became perceived as someone who not only practised his profession for the public good but upheld high ideals of morality. Alexander Carr-Saunders and P.A. Wilson’s The Professions (1933), W.J. Reader’s Professional Men (1966), and Magali Sarfatti-Larson’s The Rise of Professionalism (1977) locate the nineteenth century as the starting point for the modern professional spirit. Of course, professions existed prior to the industrial age. Yet, the manner in which ‘professionalism’ was now presented implied a disinterested and expert practitioner enlisted in the service of public welfare. 

By the end of the nineteenth century, actors, clergymen, journalists, artists, writers, musicians, and engineers were included in the list of professions. This professional legitimacy brought about a formalization of integrity. The integral professional paid attention to form as well as substance, to manners as well as morals. This formalism gave professionals considerable social authority, producing a kind of aristocracy of ‘experts.’ In effect, the English dealt with the insecurities of industrial life by arriving at a compromise between the aristocracy and the middle class. Elias ([1939] 1982) points to this compromise as a distinctly English quality, one which eliminated the need for a revolution and contributed to the establishment of a culture of restraint in which politeness was of paramount importance (309–10). 

The middle classes realized that they could with great difficulty remain a distinct social order without some measure of pretense. The aristocracy, for its part, accepted to temper its former amoralism and hedonism with a concern for public welfare and ethics. This commonality explains why, although there still continue to be great differences between the upper classes and the rest of the population (financial as well as educational and cultural), there remains a common citizenship felt by all classes that seems to resist the dislocations of advanced technology and the increasing infl uence of American media. The common denominator was and continues to be the democratization of politeness and the practice of a very special behavioural tool called ‘tact.’ 

Tact required putting some distance between oneself and others. It was based on an agreement not to be overly direct with another, nor unduly impose on the privacy of the other. And tact did require some emotional reserve. Lord Chesterfield ([1774] 1969), in his letters to his son, cautions against the folly of being emotionally transparent: Beware, therefore, now that you are coming into the world, of these proferred friendships. Receive them with great civility, but with great incredulity too; and pay them with compliments but not with confidence. (32) Like politeness, tact was a behavioural mechanism not dependent on wealth or title. 

It became a means by which a certain distance could be maintained in social contacts. It was a refinement of politeness, a conscious application of it. Anyone could practise tact if he or she understood its basic purpose. And in the urban setting where people did not know each other and were wary of the influence of strangers, tact became a way of preserving a public demeanour that permitted a sharing of civic space with a minimum of personal involvement or conflict. Retaining one’s poise became a means by which both the other and the self could be treated with non-invasive deference and reserve. 

The Duke of Wellington was practising tremendous restraint on the battlefield of Waterloo when he leafed through a fashion magazine while making jovial comments to his officers during the height of battle. This was not insensitivity but the desire to appear unruffled and display ‘emotional steadiness’ to officers who might have been sorely worried. It would have been quite tactless to openly admit the danger of the situation. Such loss of restraint would have also entailed a loss of nerve. The entire English notion of keeping a stiff upper lip refers not only to emotional restraint but the keeping of a stoic demeanour in face of adversity, suffering, and danger. 

Extolling the virtues of tact, Lord Chesterfield cautioned against excessive self-revelation and considered it a dangerous practice that could irritate the neutral civil space between subjects. He advised: Of all things, banish the egotism out of your conversation, and never think of entertaining people with your own personal concerns or private affairs; though they are interesting to you, they are tedious and impertinent to everybody else; besides that, one cannot keep one’s private affairs too secret. (34) Tact also involved a consideration for the other’s dignity, whether the other was of a higher or lower class than one’s own. 

It required a certain ‘depersonalization’ of both interactants; it required identification with the other through common humanity rather than specific biography. Before tact could be exercised the other had to be recognized as someone to be protected from direct, discomforting observations. This did not mean that the desire to compete with, surpass, or even defraud others was eliminated. Nor did it put an end to razor-sharp conceit. Rather, it meant that a common agreement was established between citizens of various ranks to maintain a public spirit based on an active, uncompromisingly polite interactive style that, above all, sought to pacify potential aggression and emotion. 

Tact and subtlety ensured that nothing would be said that might create unease in the other. It also somehow gave rise to a cheery disposition buoyed by optimistic faith. That anger was frowned upon during this period is understandable. Children had to desist from expressing anger towards their parents because respect had to be maintained at all times – anger signified that the authority of the parent was being discounted and disrespected. When anger did need expressing in polite society, it was done through irony and icy comments; a cheery disposition could even mask anger. 

Essayist Roger Rosenblatt shows this particularly English mix of courtesy, kindness, and compassion when discussing a scene from the film of Jane Austen’s Emma: The pivotal scene in the film of Jane Austen’s Emma occurs when Emma flings a witty insult in the direction of Miss Bates, a sweet-natured, simpleminded thing, by pointing out how boring the lady is ... But Knightly, Emma’s severely critical friend, who loves her, tears into Emma later for her uncharacteristic act of cruelty ... Emma is shaken to the roots with shame. She knows how wrong she was. What Knightly and Austen are asserting is a connection between courtesy, kindness, and compassion. All the apparently superficial manners that propel Emma’s small English universe are, when one probes to the roots, instruments of compassion. (1996) 

Politeness and tact, therefore, as conceived in England, came to rest on a quasi-moral belief that public comfort was sacrosanct enough for individuals to desist from any extravagant homage to self that might be socially embarrassing, irritating, or hurtful to others. It is not surprising then that a citizen getting off a bus in England (outside the large cities, at least) turns to thank the driver; the act is performed to communicate to the driver that he or she is not taken for granted. It is the ultimate expression of ‘modesty.’ It is hardly surprising that Della Casa’s utilitarian treatment of manners and tact was very popular in England. Thus, a mutual colonization took place between the aristocracy and the middle class. 

The middle class accepted the premium placed by the aristocracy on manners and the aristocracy began moulding itself to middle-class concern with morals. While it is true that manners are usually transmissed from the upper to the lower classes, the melding of etiquette and morality created a two-directional flow of influence. While the etiquette books of the early nineteenth century dispensed the rules of manners with disregard for moral qualities such as sincerity, authenticity, and integrity, the etiquette books which appeared in the latter half of the century took special care to affirm the importance of character as well as mannerism. 

A series of books written anonymously revealed this compromise reached between manners and morals: Talking and Debating: or Fluency of Speech Attained (1856), General Usage in Modern Polite Society (1867), Talk and Talkers (1859), and Modern Etiquette in Private and Public (1871). These conduct books reflected the growing influence and power of the middle classes and an aristocracy in process of renewal and reform. A certain complicity between classes was created, and this complicity was made possible by the fact that England had distinguished itself on the international front through the practice of a distinctly English respect for rationality and order. 

Yet, this respect for order and privacy did not mean that the Victorians were not given to favouring the imaginary regions of the mind and heart. In fact, the ‘romanticizing’ of life became a direct consequence of a civility system that needed some life-giving escape valve. This resistance against an overly rationalized industrial order had already begun in the eighteenth century when a ‘cult of sensibility’ had challenged the English preference for emotional reserve.”

- Benet Davetian, “England and the Victorian Ethic.” in Civility: A Secular History

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“The Industrial Revolution created a dilemma for many Europeans who continued to remain obliged to the influences of a pious Protestantism founded on a high valuation of asceticism. Increased prosperity required justification for the use of products not previously considered essential. Such justification was especially needed for the consumption of ornamental products. Ministering to personal pleasure required some rational justification of pleasurable consumption if Protestant’s high valuation of deep piety was not to be embarrassingly debunked. Victorians were faced with the need to decide what role should be played by desire and emotion in the new society. 

Ironically, however, the ideologies of ascetic Protestantism had already helped create the conditions necessary for the acceptance of hedonism long before the Victorians were faced with their dilemma. Weber’s focus on ‘asceticism’ as the foundation of capitalism underplays the later role played by personal imagination in the creation of sensuous consumption. Protestantism had in some measure already sanctioned individualism when Protestant theologians had consigned to the individual the singularly personal act of moral self-evaluation; the elimination of the priest as an intermediary (and witness of the inner conscience of the individual) had the effect of separating the world of action (governed by communal standards and judgments) and the world of personal conscience (a realm considerably open to a person’s sentimental and imaginative intervention).

Although Protestant theologians specified that there should be no contradictions between the world of action and the realm of personal sentiment, there did develop a heightened private relationship between a person and his inner sentimental self. A further justification for sentiment appeared during the eighteenth century when a ‘cult of sensibility’ mounted a considerable resistance towards the aesthetic barrenness of the governance of reason and the emotional stoicism of an aristocracy considered patently arrogant and corrupt. Sentimentality allowed a person to provide others with outward indications of the benevolence, sincerity, and compassion of his inner self despite the emotional limitations of a social dialogue based on reason and social propriety. 

Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury ([1714] 1964), rationalized the virtue and aesthetics of sentiments in An Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit: Of this even the wickedest Creature living must have a Sense. So that if there be any further meaning in this Sense of Right and Wrong; if in reality there be any Sense of this kind ... it must consist in real Antipathy or Aversion to Injustice or Wrong, and in a real Affection or Love towards Equity and Right, for its own sake, and on the account of its own natural Beauty and Worth. (42) Shaftesbury’s vindication of human goodness (and the ability to experience it as a sensory or emotional reality) stood in stark contrast to Bernard de Mandeville’s amoral rationalization of a free-market economy in which both vice and virtue led to economic benefits. 

Shaftesbury’s attack on utilitarianism struck a cord in the rising middle classes. While he did not attack mercantilism, he reassured that benevolence would limit its excesses. A potent argument in favour of an innate sense of right and wrong had also been made by Adam Smith ([1759] 1982) in The Theory of the Moral Sentiments. Moral goodness had previously been rationalized in one of two ways: as a rule to be legislated or as a value that could be argued through reasonable dialogue. Neither argument took into account the possibility of an innate human moral sense. Smith, however, argued that people were born with this moral sense. Just as they possessed a natural preference for beauty and harmony, so did they sense right from wrong.

Their conscience, a faculty that went beyond the law and rational argument, informed them of the morality of their actions. And sympathy (the recognition that different persons shared a natural fellowship of sentiment) motivated humans to seek order and cooperation. Shaftesbury’s and Smith’s works had a profound (and lasting) influence on intellectual and artistic thought in England. Poets were enlisted to sing the praises of the ultimate benevolence of human nature. Sir William Jones, a member of Dr Johnson’s Literary Club, concurred with Shaftesbury’s optimistic faith in human goodness. In an essay entitled ‘On the Arts Commonly Called Imitative’ (1772), Jones called for a poetic tradition that would not content itself on imitating manners but be passionately evocative. 

The underlying belief of these calls for sensibility was the certainty that the heart contained its own rational moral principles and that a return to feeling would assure the expression of innate goodness (Mullan 1988). Such abiding faith in the ennobling effects of sentiments, even the melancholic kinds, moved the anonymous writer of a 1755 essay – aptly entitled ‘Moral Weeping’ – to state:

  Moral weeping is the sign of so noble a passion, that it may be questioned whether those are properly men, who never weep upon any occasion. They may pretend to be as heroical as they please, and pride themselves in a stoical insensibility; but this will never pass for virtue with the true judges of human nature. What can be more noble human than to have a tender sentimental feeling of our own and other’s [sic] misfortunes? This degree of sensibility every man ought to wish to have for his own sake, as it disposes him to, and renders him more capable of practising [sic] all the virtues that promote his own welfare and own happiness. 

Widely popular when it first appeared, Henry Mackenzie’s ([1771] 1967) A Man of Feeling became the leading text of the new cult of sentimentality. Mackenzie merged sentiment and sensibility, considering them mutually reinforcing virtues. In his story, the hero, Harley, is made to suffer a series of episodes in which he remains benevolent despite the uncaring reactions of others. He helps the disadvantaged, suffers the pain of lost love, and, although he does not succeed according to worldly measures of success, he manages to remain of good heart. Mackenzie asked a profound question in his work: is unbending benevolence the mark of a virtuous man or simply the behaviour of a fool? What are to be the limits of disinterested altruistic behaviour? 

If Harley was indeed not a fool, then what was to be said about those who remained unresponsive to him? Was their preoccupation with their own interests to be judged as immoral? Were they to be held accountable for not responding to Harley with a warmness of heart equal to his own? Undoubtedly, readers of varying persuasions reached those conclusions that best suited their dispositions. The call for sensibility should not predispose us to conclude that a major revolution in feeling occurred in the eighteenth century. Sentimentalism did not require self-affirmative, confrontational emotionalism. 

Although some writers worried about the increasing attention paid to sentimental friendships, and wondered whether this would decrease parental influence and the unity of the family, no major intergenerational conflict occurred. The distinction between sentiments and primary emotions is an important one if we are to understand why the Victorians ended up mistrusting strong displays of emotion while maintaining a considerable respect for compassion. A sensible person had access to some of his senses if not his primal emotional repertoire. He was able and willing to shed tears and show mortification when confronted with the plight of other individuals and the discomforting aspects of a rapidly changing world. 

Certainly, sentimentalism did begin reversing a process of emotional restraint that had been centuries in the making. And the cult of sensibility was supported by many mainstream writers known for their impetuous personalities (Jones 1993, Brissenden 1974). But, by and large, it did not cause an emotional uprising of the magnitude witnessed in the mid-twentieth century. Sentimentality did not successfully bridge the boundary between social rituals and a sincere benevolent morality because it remained trapped in its own web of exaggeration and artifice. In retrospect, the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics defines sentimentality as the presence of exaggerated emotion in a situation that does not warrant such a show of sentiment (Preminger 1974). 

Being a dramatized show of feeling, sensibility could not successfully provide a guarantee of sustained communal solidarity. The fact that the sentimental person was ‘demonstrating’ his sensibility (as opposed to expressing an uncontrollable primary emotion) rendered the act suspect or, at least, tinged with self-love. Eleanor Sickels (1969) similarly observes, in The Gloomy Egoist: Moods and Themes of Melancholy from Gray to Keats, that sentimentality often involved indulging in emotions for their own sake (195). Many even experienced a distinct pleasure in feeling melancholic, for their melancholy confirmed to them that they were of a gentle and innocent disposition and, consequently, unsuited to the brutal utilitarianism of an uncaring world. 

Regardless of its potential egoism, many in the eighteenth century came to consider sentimentality as a mark of sincerity. A person of natural sentimentality was considered honourable and emotionally responsive to the predicaments of others. As for those given to being sentimental, they rationalized their lack of stoicism as a moral resistance against the utilitarianism of reason and the amoralism of the old stoic aristocracy (Bredvold 1962). Ironically, the justification of emotional exhibitionism as a moral quality established a credible link between Protestant ideology and the new cult of feeling. Although there was ‘pleasure in pity,’ pity itself was a moral act that was completely in keeping with the Protestant requirement of compassion (Aldridge 1949:139). 

And, although sentimentalists questioned the highly rational outcomes of Protestantism, their search for purity betrayed a particularly Protestant disposition towards idealism. It is difficult for us living in a culture in which a sudden outburst of tears (especially in public) is considered a sign of ‘unresolved emotional issues’ to imagine that members of parliament in the eighteenth century were given to openly weeping to demonstrate their sincerity, especially when a favoured bill was defeated by the opposition. 

The cult of sensibility accorded moral approval to people who allowed themselves to ‘indulge in all the virtuousness of sorrow’ and even ‘a pleasing kind of distress’ (Sickels 1969:103) because the alternative, emotional stoicism, became considered a sign of heartlessness. The open display of sentiments was some proof that the feeling capacities of the gentle classes had survived after centuries of restraints and controls imposed by political and ideological change, the last and least favoured of these being the rising influence of the industrialists and scientists.”

- Benet Davetian, “England and the Victorian Ethic.” in Civilty: A Cultural History

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“...High society in Regency England, led by the prince regent, who was notorious for his gluttony and love of lavish entertainment, favoured a toil-free pleasure-filled life (Priestley 1969). The regent’s banquets made culinary history. At one feast prepared in the Brighton Pavilion, his French chef, Carème, served more than a hundred dishes (Murray 1998:179–85). The quantity and variety of food in the prince’s own daily diet was astounding – when he died, he was so obese that his belly hung below his knees. Equally opulent was the Brighton Pavilion in which these sumptuous feasts were served. Although a tour of the pavilion today reveals a palace much more modest than the one at Versailles, what catches the eye is the impressive kitchen, which, during the life of the prince regent, contained every conceivable cooking convenience of the time. 

The high society forming outside the Regency court was equally given to an energetic search for pleasure. French aristocrats who visited England were astounded by the amount of French dishes consumed during a single sitting in the houses of the wealthy. While the poor had to manage with frugal meals that rarely included meat, the nobility and the nouveaux riches followed a lifestyle that defined a good hostess by how much food she could waste when throwing a party. Gluttony became a sign of distinction for the aristocracy and the wealthy merchant class. Nor was the ideal of marital fidelity as pervasive during the Regency as it was in the middle and late Victorian periods. 

Melville (1908, 1926) and Murray (1998) document that the keeping of mistresses was common in aristocratic circles, and no secret was made of such extra-marital liaisons. In fact, a mistress often enjoyed more favour than did a wife and was encouraged to develop her wit and charm. The candid writings of Harriette Wilson (1929), the most famous courtesan of the Regency, show the off-hand manner in which extra-marital relations were contracted and lived. Murray (1998) qualifies, however, that, in spite of the common acceptance of these liaisons among the upper classes, the Regency period was a transitional time between the ‘licentious formality’ of the eighteenth century and the ‘Puritanism’ of the nineteenth. 

Although adultery was assumed to always be present in certain aristocratic families, in which marriages were often still being contracted for political and economic ends, adultery was beginning to be considered a sin, especially in middle-class circles (146). Some historians have attributed the reckless pursuit of pleasure and the new exhibitionism of the upper classes to a style set by the prince regent himself, who had little interest in economy, a partial interest in politics, and a total obsession with parties. Yet, one person cannot set the tone of an epoch or a social class; there were other forces influencing the behaviour of the aristocracy. There was a general denial of reality within the aristocracy during the reign of the prince regent that might help explain the quasi-desperate pursuit of pleasure and status. 

The colourful costumes worn at Regency functions, the gluttony, the maintenance of elaborate country mansions, the keeping of mistresses in plain view, the penchant for masked balls where anonymity facilitated promiscuous behaviour – all this stood in stark contrast to the violence, crime, and poverty that were afflicting the majority of the population. It was as if the upper classes were having one last fling before letting their successors settle down to the formulation of a workable and more sober society. Middle-class Victorians took up the challenge with considerable ardour. 

They were faced with a dilemma. They could not sanction the immorality of the Regency’s open celebration of pleasure and the aristocracy’s withdrawal from reality; nor could they revert to a nonprogressive ideology founded on medieval Christian virtues. The discipline and commercialism required by industrialization complicated the adoption of either solution. Once again, the English had to opt for the ‘middle ground.’ A plethora of moral books and movements emerged in response to the numerous massive social displacements of industrialization. 

Hannah More’s widely influential books – Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society (1788) and Christian Morals (1813) – together with William Wilberforce’s Practical View (1797), addressed issues particular to a rapidly industrializing nation that possessed a dominant aristocracy substantially preoccupied with the goings on of its own exclusive social circles. Aristocrats were encouraged to improve themselves and act as an example to the rest of the nation. This idea of ‘improvement’ through moral rectitude was to become a central theme of the early Victorian epoch. 

It helped link manners with ethical comportment, echoing Edmund Burke’s ([1796] 1991) passionate argument regarding the importance of manners in moral development: Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refi ne us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them. (242) 

Moralists suggested that the middle and lower classes were in need of leadership from the aristocracy and would improve by applying the principles of self-betterment. They did not call for a revolt against the aristocracy but encouraged members of the upper class to reform themselves and stand as examples. Concurrently, they called for a return to religious virtue. Hannah More favoured Sunday schools as a means of controlling rising delinquency. The Methodist and anti-conformist movements had already awakened interest in social activism when More sounded her alarm. According to these movements, being a nominal Christian was not sufficient. 

Going to church only to fall asleep there was considered by reformers as an unfortunate left-over from a previous epoch of ‘leisure’ during which most men worried only about the pennies in their pockets and the food in their bellies. The Church of England responded to this moral revival by forming pious societies and charity groups designed to provide spiritual and material relief to the poor. In a bid to promote the integrity and stability of the family, it also began preaching against sexual libertinism, something that had been of less concern in the eighteenth century. 

Associating the ruling classes with the notion of a ‘public good’ was unique to England and facilitated a later cooperative, non-revolutionary venture between the aristocracy and the middle classes, a venture that eventually drew in the working classes. In France, the aristocracy had bitterly withdrawn from the monarchy’s bungling attempts at integrating the bourgeoisie within the administration of the state. As a consequence of this, the French did not view the aristocracy as a class to be emulated but one whose habits could lead to further subjugation. They adopted some of its stylistic and aesthetic mannerisms but rejected its downward condescension with their own brand of upwardly reactive publican pride. 

In England, however, although the aristocracy was considered suspect due to its proverbial sensual libertinism, the upper classes managed to extricate themselves from their bad reputation at the eleventh hour. The early Victorian saying ‘A place for each, and to each his place’ was the social compromise reached between the aristocracy and the rest of the nation in exchange for social certainty, order, and stability. 

A fitting example of the moral literature that appeared in response to the gluttony and ornamentalism of the Regency period was Reverend Thomas Gisborne’s (1794) Enquiry into the Duties of Men in the Higher and Middle Classes. He insisted that morality, manners, and honour were equally required for the development of a complete gentleman or gentlewoman capable of functioning in a society in which social mobility and mercantilism were on the rise. Gisborne espoused a moral imperative that would protect people against the corruptive influences of a fickle marketplace. 

Such warnings against the dangers of commercialism were also present in Lord Chesterfield’s Letters (1774). Chesterfield made every effort to encourage the preservation of the persona of the traditional English gentleman despite the mercantilism of the period. Hugely popular at the time of its publication, the work advised its reader that, although he might end up as a merchant, he would morally prosper as long as he took care to acquire all the qualities and ‘polite behaviour of a gentleman.’ Thus, the qualities attributed to the well-bred gentleman were being filtered down to the commercial classes and being presented as a national ideal. 

England was acquiring a national courtesy tradition no longer dependent on continental imports. A similar democratization was observable in English usage. The colloquialisms of the working-classes were increasingly integrated into the novels and works of nonfiction, thereby creating a distinctly English publican language that was neither aristocratic nor bound by the lowest common linguistic denominator. 

This rapprochement between the aristocracy and the lower classes was accomplished in great part through the inclusion in novels of protagonists who had been in the service of the aristocracy and, having learned the language of the nobility, were now using their own version of genteel speech (McIntosh 1986:9–10, 82–3). The traditional English butler was such a personage, able to converse equally with his titled employers and his working-class staff. What continued, however, to keep classes distinctly separate from one another was the matter of ‘accent.’ To this day, a person’s accent in England can limit his social mobility. 

Travel abroad now became a fashion rather than a search for knowledge and education in Continental mannerisms, as had been the custom during the grand tours of the previous century. The same foreigners who had previously acted as models of perfect etiquette for the youth of the upper English classes were now considered as anomalies. So, the influence of the Italians and the French decreased in direct relation to the rising wealth of the English aristocracy and upper middle classes. Literature even appeared exposing the ‘superficial’ side of the Continental cult of elegance. The anonymously published The Man of Manners (c. 1735) observed that many of the elegant lacked proper manners and could scarcely conceal their crudity with their fine clothes.”

- Benet Davetian, “England and the Victorian Ethic.” in Civility: A Cultural History

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“...As Norbert Elias has convincingly argued in Court Society ([1969] 1983), a growing body of literature promoting the logical imperatives of reason had altered the awareness of many literate individuals and placed their minds above blind obedience. The absolutist French state, however, was unable to change its core practices and adapt to France’s need for institutions that favoured and facilitated free trade. Put simply, the ancien régime had outdated itself. The government’s mounting national debt (a partial consequence of its support of the American Revolution), continuing censorship of the press, administrative ineptitude, and stultifying social inequalities robbed the monarchy of its credibility, despite its numerous attempts to reach compromises with dissatisfied factions. 

Although the bourgeoisie, nobility, and working class may have had incompatible desires and goals, they all had to face the fact that the French monarchy’s claims to infallibility could no longer be justified on moral, political, or economic grounds. All three groups understood that when the monarch spoke of le peuple (the people) he was mainly referring to those aristocrats and functionaries who supported the monarchy and for whom were reserved the principal benefits of state. Louis XIV’s categorical warning (quoted above) was not only addressed to the general population, but, equally, to dissenting nobles. 

The declaration made by Louis XV was equally absolute: To attempt to establish such pernicious innovations as principles is to affront the magistrature, to betray its interests and to ignore the true, fundamental laws of the state, as if it were permissible to disregard the fact that in my person alone lies the sovereign power whose very nature is the spirit of counsel, justice and reason ... Legislative power is mine alone, without subordination or division ... Public order in its entirety emanates from me. I am its supreme guardian. My people are one with me, and the rights and interests of the nation ��� which some dare to make into a body separate from the monarch – are of necessity united with my own and rest entirely in my hands. (Furet 1988:5–6) 

When the aristocratic elites belatedly spoke in favour of the interests of the common population they spoke of it as some outside, untouchable periphery tucked safely away from the centre of power and social influence. The aristocracy had not gone through the transformation needed for it to acquire a new identity and credibility with the population. By the time the powder keg of the French Revolution exploded, every effort had been made to break down the social barricades erected by the aristocracy; few of the efforts had succeeded. Even compromise on the part of all parties might not have sufficed. France was in sore need of social and economic changes and it required new systems of political administration capable of accommodating such changes. 

So, it was not dissatisfaction with ancien régime feudalism as such that triggered the revolution but the fact that the regime had been transformed into a lax form of its original version. In the old feudal system, the lord of an estate had considerable judicial and administrative rights over the estate and was, consequently, responsible for providing protection to those placed in his care. In a manner of speaking, he earned his keep. But this system of allegiance had been transformed when lands had been divided into small parcels and then further sectioned through inheritance. Sons of working serfs now owned plots that were too small to produce enough for their own families as well as for the lords who continued to exact payments over and beyond the taxes levied by the state. 

Moreover, the lord’s own function had changed. He had lost much of his judicial authority as a result of the king’s expansion of the state’s judiciary powers. Many judicial issues were now regulated by court-appointed officials selected from the rising bourgeois sector. The feudal lord had become simply another citizen of the town, even though, out of respect, he was referred to as the ‘first citizen.’ Certainly, his military functions were for all practical purposes obsolete. The rise of money economies had decreased the power of the nobles by facilitating the king’s amalgamation of economic and military power: He pays no longer for the services he needs, military, courtly, or administrative, by giving away parts of his property as the hereditary property of his servants ... At most he gives land or salaries for life, and then withdraws them so that the crown possessions are not reduced. (Elias [1939] 1978:221) 

 Such transformations in the power ratio between the nobility and the monarch created marked social differentiations within the French nobility. The court at Versailles had to accommodate a variety of interests: the noblesse d’épée (nobility of the sword), consisting of high nobles who had previously held considerable political influence at court due to the military achievements of their families, but who were now less influential than newcomers possessing astute political sense; the nobility of the robe, composed of newly appointed functionaries to whom were awarded (or sold) a noble title much to the consternation of the old nobility; and, finally, the rural nobility, which, being far from court, was left on the fringes with little or no political influence. The royal court had become the centre of le monde (the world). 

What mattered more than anything else was the social prestige of those who circulated in the corridors of that privileged world. One was either part of le monde or excluded from it. By the seventeenth century, many of the lords had left the countryside out of sheer boredom and the need to secure prestige at the royal court; they returned to the countryside only to exact the rents owed to them or take an occasional rest from the rigours of life at court. Not being part of the daily life of the rural estate and the problems of its workers, they were more exacting and less personable. 

Alienated peasants began seeing their lords as uncaring predators tolerated by an inept state that lacked the coherence of the feudal order to which they had been habituated. The bourgeoisie was similarly ill at ease. Although it had made significant gains in wealth and status, it remained cut off from the social privileges reserved for the high nobility. It might have accepted a tradeoff between courtly prestige and the power it held in the state bureaucracy had the old nobility not demanded that the king cut back on his appointments of bourgeois functionaries. The continuing resistance of the nobility of the sword demonstrated to the bourgeoisie that it might not be any worse off following a massive political change (Rudé 1972). 

The rising critical (and emotional) awareness of the French population also played a major role in the French Revolution. Absolute monarchy no longer seemed reasonable. François Furet (1988) notes the ironic fact that public criticism of the monarchy increased precisely when the state was making significant moves to curtail the feudal system: It mattered little that France was the last feudal country in Western Europe, as a result of the very activities of the administrative state, and that it was also the country where criticism of the state by reason was the most systematic: suddenly the remains of feudalism – for example seigniorial rights, or the last serfs of the kingdom – were perceived as all the more oppressive precisely because they were residual. (16) 

Along with the enfeeblement of the monarchy came haggling between aristocrats at court: The king no longer reigned over them – he obeyed them: in this telescoping of absolute monarchy and aristocracy was forged the overall rejection of what was no longer, in actual fact, either absolute monarchy or aristocracy, but some thing born of the decadence of the two principles and still surviving on their complicity, at the expense of the people. (30) The combined effect of the above-mentioned factors led to a series of swift developments causing the transformation of the Estates General into a National Assembly. 

By 1791, the newly formed Assembly had nationalized all Church lands, abolished the feudal system, put an end to censorship, ended the old divisions between provincial and local administrations, instituted legislation holding all citizens equal before the law, and created a strongly centralized government system that has survived to this day. The French Revolution had a double effect that would play an important role in French modern governance and civil interactions. Having accomplished the political goals of the revolution, it then legitimized human action that remained independent of religious doctrine. 

If there is an important point of origin to Western secularism – better defined as the ‘sovereignty of the people’ – it is probably located in two separate events: the day when Martin Luther denied Catholic doctrine and the day when French revolutionaries took over the General Assembly of France and announced the start of a new era not at all dependent on the ideology of divine rights (Wallerstein 1996:56–7). Elias has repeatedly explained that the rise of the central state played a key role in the limitation of violence. One cannot argue with this conclusion. 

Anthony Giddens (1985) has similarly described the state as a ‘set of institutional forms of governance maintaining an administrative monopoly over a territory with demarcated boundaries (borders), its rule being sanctioned by law and direct control of the means of internal and external violence’ (120). This heightened control of opposition and deviance was made possible by increasing ‘internal pacification’ (312). By the time Louis XVI was forced to concede that the absolutist monarchy was no longer viable, an extensive state bureaucracy and policing force was fully operational and capable of centralizing information and surveillance in such a way as not only to control ongoing political protest but to anticipate possible future protests and make provision for their repression (Tilly 1986). 

As Jack Goody has argued in his seminal work on the connection between the development of writing and the organization of strong-state bureaucratic societies (1989), writing was as important to the formation of the central state as was the restraint of violence; it also played a seminal role in the organization and communications needed (i.e., pamphlets, letters) for the French Revolution (Markoff 1986:323–49). Both Elias and Foucault have managed to produce books that are some of the finest explanations of changes in practice over long periods (Spierenburg 2004).”

- Benet Davetian, “French Court Society, the French Revolution, and the Paradoxes of French Civility.” in Civility: A Secular History

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“There is a substantial connection between the social and religious philosophy of an epoch, its political, economic, and moral conditions, and the manner in which individuals treat one another. Belief or disbelief in man’s accountability to a supernatural force plays an important role in the formation of courtesy practices and standards. Citizens of a community, in which most people strongly believe that the world is created by a living God who holds individuals accountable for their actions, exhibit a double-edged deference towards one another: their treatment of one another is based on a recognition of their personal worth as well as a personification of their placement within a divine system managed by an active supreme being. 

Relations within such theological societies could be said to be doubly deferential or triune. The ‘other’ is not only a fellow citizen but also a spiritual sister or brother (a ‘thou’) who acts as a reminder of one’s religious identity and duties. Members of a community are, therefore, in a relationship of mutual witnessing and considerable mutual surveillance for they feel themselves to be in the presence of a third all-seeing supernatural being. The Protestant Reformation had a seminal influence on human relations and civility practices because it placed considerable spiritual responsibility on the individual. 

The removal of the Catholic confessional and the priest’s power to speak to God on behalf of a person created a community in which citizens had to take over the ministerial functions previously reserved for the clergy. This assumption of personal responsibility undoubtedly made for less artifice and a more grave interactive style. Protestantism insisted on deep self-reflection on the matter of behaviour and salvation. It, therefore, favoured ‘sincerity’ of thought and feeling. This movement away from the performance aspect of courtesy and towards the sincerity and authenticity of personally managed moral behaviour created a certain amount of resistance and criticism towards books such as Castiglione’s Il Corteganio (Trilling 1971). Some Protestant works even ridiculed the medieval courtesy books (Starkey 1982:232–9). 

It is difficult to gauge how much of this resistance was connected to the waning of the ideal of courtliness and its implied aesthetics and how much of it was a defensive reaction to the invasion of Italian style and language in northern Europe. On the whole, however, those nations that were progressing towards absolute monarchies, such as Russia and France, continued to consider style and etiquette vital indicators of personal worth. Unarguably, Protestantism had a new and important long-term influence on standing conceptions of propriety and impropriety. 

The Catholic Church had used the Augustinian dualistic conception of life to argue that the secular world was unreliable and that only devotion to the Church and its rituals could act as an effective insurance policy against the wiles of the devil. Man had been stuck between two formidable forces that were at odds: Good and Evil. When Martin Luther reacted against the Church’s abuse of power, he realized that the central question that needed to be answered was the question of man’s ‘justification’ in the eyes of God. Was God’s gift of grace given a priori due to God’s love of mankind, or was it to be earned on a case-by-case basis? 

By extension, had Christ died to set in motion an absolution of the sins of all Christians – an absolution that became effective upon the demonstration of total faith – or had Christ simply set an example that now needed to be replicated within an active and self-directed journey towards salvation? How was a sinner to earn God’s favour without the confessional and the availability of absolutions and prayers administrated by priests who were supposedly capable of speaking to God on man’s behalf? These were not trifling questions for a society that was passionately (and anxiously) obsessed with discovering and understanding God’s purpose for mankind. 

This intense questioning of self would have an important effect on the reformation of social mores and citizenship ideals for it put tremendous pressure on the individual to map out a personal life that would be in accord with God’s wishes. It would be an understatement to say that the Protestant ideal was anything less than a strict mission entrusted to each member of the faith. John Calvin, who was far stricter than Martin Luther, denied the idea that salvation was a ‘reward.’ Since God stood outside humankind, God’s decisions regarding human fate could not be analysed by human means nor tied to human covenants. 

Calvin ([Latin: 1536, French: 1541] 2001) found it ridiculous that a person would count on salvation simply because he had asked for it and been reassured by a cleric that it would be his. A person’s decision to be faithful to God did not automatically put God in a contractual obligation to dispense salvation. God himself willed the fate of those He intended to save as well as those He meant to damn. If He chose to redeem a sinner or damn a righteous man it was a decision that was beyond human understanding, to be accepted as divine will. 

Such acceptance was the ultimate test of faith. In the absence of guarantees of salvation, man had to map out a pious and sincere life for himself. No ecclesiastical intermediaries could speak on his behalf, not for any price. Man was the sole arbiter of his relationship with God and, consequently, fully responsible for the outcome of his life. Thus, according to Protestant doctrine, individuals could not possess foreknowledge of that for which they were predestined; all they could do was to perform at their best in order to increase their chances of salvation. 

It is hard to tell which came first, the desire for prosperity and a consequent break with Catholic ideology or the Protestant ascetic convictions which unintentionally (or intentionally) facilitated progress in the material world. At the outset, the main effect of Protestantism’s removal of absolutions and indulgences was the rise of a strong introspective individualism, at times hopeful and at other times mired in morbid self-blame. Calvin’s theology also reunited God with the world. Although God was located outside the world, He remained its creator. So, accepting God was also an act of worldly acceptance. 

There was no longer any need for the monastic denigration of secular life. Protestants rejected the medieval Augustinian distinction between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular,’ believing, instead, that a person actually honoured God’s creation by committing himself to good worldly works. Every person was, therefore, a potential member of God’s priesthood. And God did not evaluate individuals by the grandeur of their work but by the sincerity of their motives. Godliness could be experienced in the most mundane tasks provided they were performed with God in mind and heart. 

This communally grounded theology had a twofold effect. It liberated individuals to consider every secular activity that did not contravene Biblical prohibitions as potentially worthy of God’s approval. It also placed secular activity under the scrutiny of religious ethics. In this manner, Protestantism imbued temporal life with a new mystic meaning. Calvin had declared that every person occupied a ‘calling’ chosen for him by God. Human dissatisfaction resulted from a person’s nonacceptance of that which God wished him to do and where He wished him to be socially. 

If God assigned all men’s callings, then no one calling could be considered superior to the next. This promoted a type of social equality that required courtesy practices based on a broad standard of tolerance, applicable to the interactions of individuals of varying social ranks. The courtesy a person gave and received was no longer a refection of inherited privilege but of actual worldly involvement. And it could not be determined by the aesthetics of style. More important than mannerisms was the character of a person and the severity/sincerity of his religious intentions and practices. 

Calvin even warned against the superficiality of conversational competence when he stated: ‘I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.’ Emotional restraint had already been increasing during the Renaissance. The motive for this increase was the need to control aggression and also to provide courtiers, merchants, and republican politicians with the opportunity of observing the behaviour of their adversaries without revealing their own positions. This guardedness became transformed into an emotional reserve that went hand in hand with rational calculation. 

The Protestant movement furthered such restraint of emotions through its insistence on a serious and methodical relationship between personal conscience and divine guidance. There was a self-absorption that accompanied this continual search for the proper ways of seeking God’s favour. This affected personal as well as communal relationships. A certain ‘serious’ (or perhaps ‘dignified’) Puritanism became embedded in even the most intimate personal relationships. Any comparison of Catholic and Protestant communities needs to take this transformation into account, for the varying emotional thresholds of Protestant and Catholic cultures and ideologies have important effects on the degree to which artifice and the aggrandizement of self and others become part of habitual civility rituals. 

Wit, in the Protestant sense, becomes the ‘irony’ of self-critique, a modified and tamer version of medieval ‘moral anger.’ Protestant insistence on personal accountability also encouraged believers to think critically of one another. This ‘mutual surveillance’ cannot be suffi ciently stressed, for it achieves its most radical form in the Puritan teachings in England and America. Undoubtedly, the self-reflection of the Protestant doctrine facilitated the work of the Enlightenment thinkers, even though the Enlightenment occurred much later. In the interim, what did increase were the restraints put on the body and the mind, for Calvinistic Protestantism did not take kindly to sloth or the enjoyment of pleasure for its own sake. 

Whereas the Renaissance had attempted to free the human body from the domination of medieval theology, Protestantism delivered it back into servility, this time in the service of communal salvation. Although Calvin had asked in all irony, ‘Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?’ he also warned that ‘God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.’ 

Delivered from the monastics of Catholicism, the Protestant was now required to be his own monk. It should not surprise us that a certain ‘bodily hesitancy’ (and even mistrust) entered into social relations and the relationship between a person and his physical body wherein lay his desires. So, what has been termed ‘Protestant guilt’ in the popular literature might be better referred to as ‘emotional hesitancy,’ almost bordering on mistrust. After all, how could an individual fully trust his contemporaries when he remained painfully aware that any one of them could be damned without his being aware of it?”

- Benet Davetian, “Shifts in Identity and Awareness: Protestantism and the Enlightenment?” in Civility: A Cultural History

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“...With the loosening of feudal ties, individuals of different social origins began having increased contact with one another. A new aristocracy was in formation, and specific codes of conduct were required to ensure that the old aristocracy did not become easily colonized by the behaviour of those moving up into its ranks. An additional explanation can be constructed by examining the use of private and public urban space during the Renaissance. With the waning of feudal estates, many individuals became travelling artisans, coming into more frequent contact with strangers and occupying common cramped quarters in inns and congested towns. 

It was not unusual for two individuals who had never met to be assigned the same bed in an inn. This new proximity between strangers must have required new rules regarding bodily functions, for what could be tolerated from a neighbour or family member might have proven irritating when practised by a stranger. Elias states that this heightened sensitivity towards what was considered distasteful and disgusting had a strong effect on social conformity, for a person had to continuously survey himself to ensure that he was in line with whatever standard was in place in his social group: 

The question of uniform good behaviour becomes increasingly acute, particularly as the changed structure of the new upper class exposes each individual member to an unprecedented extent to the pressures of others and of social control ... Not abruptly but very gradually the code of behaviour becomes stricter and the degree of consideration expected of others becomes greater. The sense of what to do and what not to do in order not to offend or shock others becomes subtler, and in conjunction with the new power relationships the social imperative not to offend others becomes more binding, as compared to the preceding phase. (80) 

Elias’s general listing of the predominant areas of concern indicates this raising of the threshold of shame: Again and again we find the injunction to take one’s allotted place and not to touch nose and ears at table. Do not put your elbow on the table, they often say. Show a cheerful countenance. Do not talk too much. There are frequent reminders not to scratch oneself or fall greedily on the food. Nor should one put a piece that one has had in one’s mouth back into the communal dish; this, too, is often repeated. Not less frequent is the instruction to wash one’s hands before eating, or not to dip food into the saltcellar. Then it is repeated over and over again: do not clean your teeth with your knife. 

Do not spit on or over the table. Do not ask for more from a dish that has already been taken away. Do not let yourself go at table is a frequent command. Wipe your lips before you drink. Say nothing disparaging about the meal, nor anything that might irritate others. If you have dropped bread into the wine, drink it up or pour the rest away. Do not clean your teeth with the tablecloth. Do not offer others the remainder of your soup or the bread you have already bitten into. Do not blow your nose too noisily. Do not fall asleep at table. And so on. (65–6) 

Thus, the reaction of personal embarrassment and shame required a public standard of behaviour, applied to the other as well as to one’s self; disgust with the other was the flip side of self-restraint. Which behaviours were to be considered unacceptable in the other were in large part determined by those behaviours one had learned to accept as prohibitions applied to one’s own self. Moreover, the maintenance of restraints on physical functions required considerable mental presence. A well-mannered person had to remain conscious of how his behaviour was affecting the responses of others. 

It is in this self-awareness that we find the common denominator of all courtesy and civility traditions: in order to consider the feelings and reactions of another towards one’s own behaviour one has to be conscious of how one is behaving at any given instant. Such forethought allows an actor to collect information from a given experience and then use it to predict the reactions he may receive during future encounters. Of course, there must be some consistency of reaction if a person is to have a reliable indication of which of his behaviours are welcomed and which are not. And conduct manuals provided such consistency by informing large numbers of the population of changes in the behavioural code. 

So, ironically, what Elias calls ‘conformity’ was facilitated by the new individualism of Renaissance culture. Without the self-awareness that accompanied self-interest, a person would have had a difficult time gauging the effects of his actions on others. The degree to which repression determines civility is a contentious issue, therefore. Surely, the bodily functions were being repressed out of view, but, concurrently, a great deal of human self-awareness, previously limited and censored by monastic ideology, was being given a new voice. An important change thus occurred in the art and practice of courtesy during the Renaissance. 

Medieval courtesy codes were intended to decrease violence as well as legitimize a social order dependent on ascribed inequality. While such ideals of humility and loyalty contributed to the socialization of potential military rivals, there concurrently occurred a rationalization of temporal rule, positing the monarch as the earthly representation of divine will. The courtesy ideals of the Renaissance, on the other hand, were of a more secular and less absolutist nature. While belief in a deity was not abandoned, there appeared a new respect for personal agency. 

This personalizing of ethics was a bold move in the direction of a modern secular society. It certainly proved inoffensive to the Protestants of the north, who insisted that personal salvation was not guaranteed by God and, consequently, needed to be earned through a continuing ethical relationship with other citizens who were similarly no longer able to count on the easy forgiveness of the Catholic confessional. In the Protestant communities, civility now acquired a religious function: to regulate the civic relationships of men and women so that the community might appear better in the eyes of a demanding God unwilling to provide easy assurances of salvation. 

While Catholic Italy and France managed to integrate the conservatism of the Church and the secularism of Renaissance civility and its high valuation of style, the severity of Protestant doctrine required a civility ethic particularly suited to the rigours of Protestant doctrine. Scholars and students of cross-cultural communication who minimize this seminal parting of ways between Protestant and Catholic civility rituals, and their underlying meanings and symbols, leave the origins and long-term effects of Catholic and Protestant civility unexplained.”

- Benet Davetian, “Secular Civility in the Renaissance.” in Civility: A Cultural History

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“The Book of the Courtier is an excellent example of ideal discourse between men and women of honour. As impressive as the content of the dialogues is the fact that the speakers have found a pleasant and fair way of relating to one another. The tone of the work is in itself an important part of the author’s message to the reader, who is given a double opportunity: to see courtiers in pleasant and meaningful discourse with one another and to hear each of them speak of the personal qualities necessary for the formation of an ideal courtier. There is something original here. Ideal mannerisms are not denied, but added to them now is the ideal of an opinionated and intelligent conversation that is not at all limited by ecclesiastical dogma or the artifice of aristocratic pretension. 

The dialogues begin when one of the guests suggests that in order to pass the time in some meaningful way the guests converse with one another and arrive at a consensus regarding what it means to be an ‘ideal courtier.’ The dialogues continue over a span of four evenings in the frequent presence of the Duchesse Elisabetta Gonzaga. The predominant theme that repeatedly appears in the four books of The Book of the Courtier is the theme of ‘honour.’ The acceptance of virtue and honour is no longer a duty to God, but a responsibility towards the person’s own self and the selves of those he or she encounters. This dual loyalty to self and others is noticeable in the manner in which the participants take great pains not to appear pedantic or insult one another with corrosive statements. 

There is an effort to reconcile the potentially incompatible motivations of duty towards the community at court and the need to be true to one’s own self. The book was an important milestone in the personalizing (as opposed to theologizing) of communal duty. Castiglione’s treatment of courtesy differs considerably from that of his predecessors. Neither brute force nor the mixing of force and piety, qualities favoured by the medieval romances, are considered sufficient for the making of a courtier. The ideal courtier has to blend the graceful and the secular so as to become a courageous individual committed to justice, truth, and wise counsel. Certainly, he or she must not boast about his accomplishments or appear greedy for rewards. Discretion and self-dismissal, even in the presence of great personal worth and accomplishments, are the principal virtues of Castiglione’s courtier. 

Grazia (grace) and gravitas (dignity) assure a courtier that his speech will not seem affected or forced. The art of personality presentation is to remain unnoticeable, not because of deceitful motives but because of the natural ‘bearing’ appropriate to a refined courtier, a bearing designed not to cause offence to others. Castiglione admonishes his courtier to ‘avoid affectation in every way possible ... so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it’ (Book I, 43). There is a strong affinity between Castiglione’s preference for lack of ostentation (sprezzatura) and the Aristotelian ideal of the golden mean, an ideal that was the basis of Cicero’s Orator, a work that urged men of proper bearing to exhibit a ‘purposeful negligence’ (neglegentia diligens) so as to give off the impression that ideas interested them more than the artifice of style (Burke 1969:11). 

This studied spontaneity (all’improviso) was also a cherished theme in Ovid, who advised young men at court to cultivate a casual look of neglect (forma viros neglecta decet) in order to exude self-confidence. Petrarch and Alberti had affirmed their faith in the human will; Castiglione furthered their humanism by arguing that only through a disciplined application of wilful intent could the ideal courtier manage to consistently speak the type of truths that would allow him to become a trusted and useful adviser of the court. The questioning of self that appears later in the Protestant and Puritan writings is already present here in Castiglione’s work, although it is remarkably free of religious references. Like Machiavelli, Castiglione is not speaking of the prescribed Christian ‘virtues’ but of ‘virtue’ as a state of being. 

He defines men of honour as ‘those men who, even when they think they will not be observed or seen or recognized by anyone, show courage and are not careless of anything, however slight, for which they could be blamed’ (Book I, 33). What is particularly noteworthy about the courtiers quoted by Castiglione is their views on gender. Castiglione accords men and women of court similar responsibilities. The donna di palazzo is encouraged to share in her husband’s interests in culture and the arts; she is identified as a gentle moderating force capable of bringing harmony and a pleasant disposition to the ambience of the court. As a tempering force in the court she is to be without equal, as was the Duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga, who occasionally stepped in to gently calm discussions whenever they risked becoming heated. 

An important section of the book involves dialogues between two women moderators and the men in the group during which participants discuss the role played by women in courtly power and intellectual debates. Only two of the men in the gathering believe that women occupy too powerful a position in court circles. The majority of the discussants agree that women and men have equal talents and deserve equal amounts of recognition. Castiglione’s political preferences are also evident in the dialogues. While he did not sanction the despotic regimes that were emerging in Italy, he did favour a monarchical system that would limit greed and administer equitable public policy through democratic assemblies. 

He explained that virtue could not exist without vice, nor justice without injustice, and considered the truly competent courtier as a stabilizing force in an imperfect world: I hold that the principal and true profession of the Courtier must be that of arms; which I wish him to exercise with vigor; and let him be known among the others as bold, energetic, and faithful to whomever he serves. (Book I, 32) Let the man we are seeking be exceedingly fierce, harsh, and always among the first, wherever the enemy is; and in every other place, humane, modest, reserved, avoiding ostentation above all things as well as that impudent praise of himself by which a man always arouses hatred and disgust in all who hear him. (33–4) 

Like the earlier medieval writers, he considered the style of presentation as important as content: ‘To separate thoughts from words is to separate soul from body: in neither case can it be done without destruction’ (54). Form and content could not be separated: ‘All this would be empty and of little moment if the thoughts expressed by the words were not fine, witty, acute, elegant, and solemn, according to the need’ (55). Thus, for Castiglione wit is not to be developed through artificial manners or rigorous studies of conversational tactics, since it is the property of an intelligent mind and the outcome of discipline and commitment. In Castiglione’s ideal court, the courtier forms his self in conjunction with others who have influence over his behaviour. Even witty dialogue is a means by which the courtier can read the personality of others while developing and adjusting his own persona (Book II, 172–5). 

The ideal courtier must always proceed from some inner standard that protects him from being forced to act against his own conscience and self-interest. In effect, Castiglione is speaking of a ‘quiet’ confi dence that needs not prove itself in every case. The Book of the Courtier was presenting a new standard for courtly life. In addition to the respect and deference shown by courtiers towards their prince, all members of the court were to show mutual deference towards one another. Castiglione did not hold the ruler free from such a requirement: ‘Among the many faults that we see in many of our princes nowadays, the greatest are ignorance and self-conceit’ (Book IV, 290). He did not speak out against monarchy itself, but against the type of monarch whose rashness would make him unworthy of his position (303).

As for the role of the courtier in court, he saw it as a delicate undertaking. The courtier was to be effortlessly discreet and affable while consciously ensuring that the ruler did not make decisions opposed to the welfare of the realm: ‘You ought to obey your lord in all things profitable and honourable for him, not in those that will bring him harm and shame’ (Book II, 117). And any opposition registered against the ruler had to be delivered with utmost tact: ‘When he [the courtier] sees the mind of his prince inclined to a wrong action, he may dare to oppose him and in a gentle manner avail himself of the favor acquired by his good accomplishments, so as to dissuade him of every evil intent and bring him to the path of virtue’ (Book IV, 289). 

As for the courtier’s family pedigree, it was best that he come from a noble family, mainly because someone of common rank might not be sufficiently motivated to develop the many qualities required of a competent courtier: ‘The lowly born, they lack that spur, as well as that fear of dishonour, nor do they think themselves obliged to go beyond what was done by their forebears; whereas to the wellborn it seems a reproach not to attain at least to the mark set them by their ancestors’ (Book 1, 28) It is noteworthy that the Church is almost never mentioned in the entire text of The Book of the Courtier. When the publisher’s censor examined the book, he removed the word fortuna (fortune or luck) because of its secular undertones and replaced it with the word ‘God.’ There is a remarkable degree of self-determination in Castiglione’s text. 

Although he encourages the individual to learn from a master, he qualifies the master as someone of deservedly superior knowledge rather than someone who speaks in the name of authority. The relevance of the work is best appreciated if we remember that Renaissance Italians were intensely involved in a dialogue between extremes. In art, for example, there was a tension between naturalism and idealism, order versus grace, and opulence versus simplicity. What distinguished the personages who appeared in Castiglione’s work was their ability to understand the qualities of each extreme and their willingness to build a composite of an ideal courtier able to avoid excesses while being refined, discerning, and influential. 

This avoidance of extreme positions helped the courtier deal with a variety of rulers. He was able to remain unwavering when faced with two totally different rulers: one who only wished compliments, and another so arrogant and haughty as to reject both compliments and advice. The courtier was admonished not to forget his real task: to guide the undecided prince towards firm and realistic governance while encouraging the inflexible ruler to adopt a just and dialogical relationship with his subjects. Castiglione’s courtier was, therefore, not only a servant of the state, but a prime mover capable of influencing the course of history. 

Repeatedly, the notions of ‘discipline’ and ‘honour’ come up in the various passages of the book. Honour is presented not as unquestioning loyalty towards a lord or church, but as a ‘sensible’ attitude held by the courtier towards himself. ‘Discipline’ is not force over others, but a tempering influence on self. Here we have the emergence of an individuality that is quite different from the ‘all for one’ mentality of the Arthurian legends. The ideal Renaissance courtier recognizes that he is bound by codes of deference towards whomever he is serving; yet, at the same time, he remains loyal to his own sense of right and wrong and respects his own values during his interactions with his equals and superiors.

Peter Burke (1995), who has written a seminal book regarding the reception given to The Book of the Courtier, has discussed the ambiguity of the original work and the positive manner in which it was received in Italy and abroad precisely because of this ambiguity. Burke explains that Castiglione tried to show his readers how to act gracefully, some thing that is nearly impossible to teach through the dispensation of a set of rules; he did this by conveying the sentiment of grace through the manner in which he organized the content and tone of the dialogues of his characters. And he managed to do so without offending those at court who presumed to already know what he was teaching – the playful tone of the book kept it from sounding like a patronizing tome (32). 

It also softened the book’s underlying purpose: to promote a model of rational and intellectual debate that excluded the need for violence. Thus, due to his tactful writing style, Castiglione’s book was widely welcomed and found its way into most European courts precisely because it presented a composite of a courtier that could be adapted to the particular court systems of different European monarchies. Not only was the book a treatise on the behaviour of an ideal courtier, it was also a meditation on the meaning of a graceful life, something of relevance to aristocrats. It was this idealization of ‘grace’ (grazià) and unaffected self-confidence that attracted members of the nobility, who began using the book as a behavioural guide. 

The ability to seem unaffected became the new measure of distinction. Unlike Capellanus, who had written of a very distinct personality suited to a theologically governed knightly culture, Castiglione managed to write a work which was in many ways urbane, universal, and not limited to a particular epoch or region. In effect, he managed to build a bridge between the world of humanism and the world of courtly intrigue, finding some meeting point that could render the process of membership in court elites morally and aesthetically satisfying despite the rampant injustices of the rising absolutist monarchies. 

A series of works in Spain, Poland, Portugal, and France imitated the format of The Book of the Courtier, and the themes of honourable behaviour and a studied natural demeanour appeared frequently in the courtesy literature that followed Castiglione’s work. By 1625, there were more than 900 courtesy works published in Europe and more than 800 written regarding the ideal Renaissance lady (Kelso 1929).”

- Benet Davetian, “Secular Civility in the Renaissance.” in Civility: A Cultural History

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“Niccolò di Bernardo die Machiavelli ([1513] 1940) understood the unique spirit of his times when he wrote The Prince, a precise meditation on the opportunities and limitations of power in a secular society. Courtesy is not simply a practice composed of ideals and mannerisms. Implicit in any system of courtesy are political elements that regulate civil behaviour for the specific purpose of producing desired results. Many civility rituals are intended to increase the power and prestige of the practitioner or of those prescribing the rituals. 

Paralleling the Christian conception of courtesy as a celebration of mutual dignity and equality of spirit is a more utilitarian conception of civility, one that puts it in the service of power acquisition. Since Machiavelli attempted to provide advice on the ideal comportment of a prince, his work does qualify as conduct literature because it provided a set of behavioural guidelines intended to help an ambitious politician maintain his power and reputation while serving the state. Moreover, his work is an excellent treatise on ‘self-interest’ and its limitations, for Machiavelli does not argue for unbridled self-interest but tries to show how the desire for self-gratification is one of the founding blocks of civil society and a means by which order (and civil discourse) can be preserved. 

His theory of a socially functional self-restraint is similar to the ideas contained in the conduct books that followed later as well as the theories of moral sentiments embedded in the writings of the Enlightenment social philosophers. His argument demonstrates how the desire for freedom from restraint will (if it is to be successful) demand that the beneficiary impose considerable restraints on himself in order to maintain the privilege of living with minimal restraints. It was Machiavelli’s recognition of this paradox that makes The Prince such a difficult book to interpret. It is not only a book on power but also a treatise cautioning against the abuse of power. 

 Machiavelli speculated on what was ‘possible’ in human action and did it with a near total disregard for ecclesiastical dogma. It is surprising that The Prince did not provoke the hostility of the Church when it first appeared in print. The pope authorized its publication in 1531, and twenty-five more editions appeared over the next twenty years. It was not until the Inquisition of 1559 that the secular implications of the book were fully understood by the papal curia, and it was banned at the Council of Trent in 1564. In a way, Machiavelli was one of the first ‘utilitarians.’ Trying to show the opportunities (and limitations) of self-interest, he reminded a potential ruler that, in the end, he would be constrained by the human nature of his subjects: ‘Men will always be false to you unless they are compelled by necessity to be true’ (chap. 23).

According to Machiavelli, the selfishness of a person will see to it that there exists an ordered environment in which to satisfy his needs. A man may wish to be the head of an institution, but he must first assure, by adjusting his reactions, that the society in which he lives does not fall into chaos, for chaos would mean the end of all institutions. It is this element of self-adjustment and self-restraint that distinguished Machiavelli’s theory of socialization and interaction. Because the desire of the self and the will are limitless, individuals find means by which they impose limits on themselves in order to be able to enjoy a certain amount of satisfaction rather than none at all. By limiting desire one limits resistance from others against one’s desires. 

So, in Machiavelli’s scheme of things, self-restraint is not entirely imposed by outside ideologies and interests but is a natural occurrence in human relations. Regardless of whether a society supports or forbids outright violence, there is a point at which humans restrain their ambitions in the interests of individual and collective survival. Herein lies our understanding of the rise of a secular ‘courteous’ citizen during the Renaissance. He is an individual who must balance self-interest, the interest of others, and the vicissitudes of unintended consequences. 

For Machiavelli, a ‘publican civility’ can flourish according to the realities of necessity; it need not be tied to an a priori religious conviction. He tries to demonstrate how a humanity burdened by infinite desire can actually develop spheres of thought, emotion, and action that even include public service. The regulation of personal desire becomes the process out of which emerges a dialogical and democratic public discourse. Machiavelli’s prince, therefore, becomes princely precisely because he accepts the inevitability of the fact that his own survival and happiness are connected to the public’s acceptance of him. 

Flexibility becomes an adaptive mechanism and tempers the arrogance of ascribed privilege. Although, during his discussion of fortuna, Machiavelli admits that societies lose their flexibility and become self-destructive over time, he recognizes that, in the long run, a society’s ultimate need is self-preservation. Surviving requires a compromising nature. It is when a culture can no longer accommodate compromise in the interests of survival that it goes into decline with leadership passing on to another culture – but the whole of humanity manages to survive due to cyclical regeneration and the indomitable human need for continuity. 

This acceptance of ‘contingency’ was something quite new because it presented an alternative to providential assistance from the divine. Market and political forces complicated the concept of a divinely ordained reality – surprises and contradictions abounded everywhere. Like Hobbes, Machiavelli remained aware that beneath the surface of civilized behaviour remained the possibility of chaos and destruction. The admission of this contingency obscured the facile adoption of a perfect and stable conception of the human spirit, as was done in the earlier Christian and ecclesiastical courtly traditions. It required, instead, a citizen who possessed enough awareness to be able to turn back to himself in order to deal with his own imperfections. 

We see here the roots of a social code that requires particularly stringent restraints of impulse in the favour of foresight. Unlike the courtesy literature of the Middle Ages, which coupled virtue with the search for divine salvation, the literature of the Renaissance increasingly tried to encourage the individual to deal with reality and social relations from the perspective of a personal honour that did not deny utilitarian realities. Honour required much more than obedience to prescribed virtues. 

It required a considerable amount of self reflection. If a person was to be honourable in his dealings with others he had to continually practise a self-critique that would reveal his own desires, limitations, and weaknesses to himself. Thus, the increasing self-reflexivity of Renaissance culture was considerably responsible for the development of a consciousness that required self-regulation without substantial dependence on ecclesiastical directives. This self-reflexivity may have had a direct influence on the raising of the threshold of shame and embarrassment, powerful emotions in the controlling of social interaction. Yet, it would be an exaggeration to say that this raising of the shame threshold was based on increased repression of awareness.”

- Benet Davetian, “Secular Civility in the Renaissance.” in Civility: A Cultural History

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“An important distinction needs be made between medieval aggression and anger, for while one was being discouraged the other was being accepted as a noble virtue. One of the shortcomings of Norbert Elias’s magisterial review of the connection between violence restraint and the civilizing process is that he bases his theory on a broad definition of aggression. According to Elias, the civilizing process begins with the control of violence and aggression and the monopolization of military ordinance in the hands of a central state. This is accomplished through the social construction of mannerisms and rituals that restrain primary affects. 

Yet, by giving considerable attention to the growth of manners and rituals intended to decrease the possibilities of violent outcomes, Elias underemphasizes an important parallel development in which anger was becoming legitimized, recognized, and expressed. Certainly, no quarrel can be struck with the sensible conclusion that rational society required a limitation of armed confrontations. Yet, while violence and outright carnage were being curtailed through the authority of central courts, the emotion of anger was being refined and linked to honour. 

In certain situations, the expression of anger was even considered a useful and necessary virtue, proof of a noble spirit. So, the ‘civilizing process’ involved not only the curtailment of violence, but the development of purposive anger, an acceptable replacement to outright violence. In fact, the monastics who took upon themselves the task of recivilizing Europe were faced with a dilemma. They could not categorically speak out against anger because anger was rationalized in the Bible. God’s wrath descends upon humanity in numerous passages of the Holy Book, through direct intervention or through the zealous anger of the Biblical prophets. The virtuous man is allowed (maybe even expected) to be an angry man, considering the fact that he lives in a world of sins that insults his virtue. 

Psalms 4:5 advised: ‘Grow angry, and do not sin.’ Numerous other passages of both the Old and New Testaments value righteous anger (Psalms 139:21–2, Isaiah 13:9, Romans 2:5, Revelations 6:17). So, what the clerics needed to do in order to harmonize Christian theology with the emergence of a territorial aristocracy was to differentiate between anger that was a deadly sin and the type of anger that was divinely justified and socially useful. Even here, class  distinctions played a major normative role. Just as courtesy rituals became reserved for those of noble birth, so did moral anger become the property of the nobility. Anger against enemies had already been legitimized in the canonical writings and town charters. The practice of clamour (ritual anger), monastic maledictions, and the inclusion of curse clauses sealing tenth century charters (e.g., ‘whoever breaks this agreement will be cursed by God’) legitimized purposive and religiously motivated anger (Little 1993). 

Similar representations of virtuous anger are found between the eighth and eleventh centuries in the Celtic tradition. Curses and maledictions were drafted to protect the virtuous from the ruses of those who would play unfairly and without honour. The killing of a priest, the stealing or desecration of church property, and the robbery and murder of travellers were some of the ‘acts of disrespect’ that justified personal and communal displays of anger and the drafting up of curses. Thus, while patience and compassion were presented as virtues that would limit the use of vengeful anger, they were not in and of themselves prohibitions of the anger emotion. In fact, anger was considered a means by which outright violence could be avoided and honour maintained. 

Anger could signal to a transgressor that a revised social relationship was required and bring about reparatory behaviour that prevented outright physical violence. And, when practised by a ruler in response to quarrelsome parties in court, it could help restore harmony and reaffirm the authority and legitimacy of the monarch. What the monastics did speak out against with considerable fervour was a self-interested anger bound neither to love of justice nor religious fervour. The trait of debonereté (debonair) does not initially appear as a body mannerism signifying elegance, but as a moral quality that restrains the noble individual from proceeding to vengeful acts once his anger has been satisfactorily expressed. 

The civilizing process here is not one of prohibition and complete repression but one of refinement and containment. In light of this earliest historical function, debonereté would be better explained as goodness, perhaps even mercy. And, indeed, great care was taken in the literature to distinguish between uncompromising self-interested anger and the anger that was motivated by commitment to virtue and honour within specified moral limits. The epic of Raoul de Cambrai (c. 1180) demonstrates the impasse created by an infernal circle of self-interested anger – deprived of all venues of compromise, the protagonist dies in the end, a victim of his own character flaw (Kay 1992)  

Thus, anger expressed with measure was regarded as a sign of a lofty mind and worthy of great praise. The defending of honour through elaborate and public expressions of anger became a property of the aristocracy throughout the high Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Miller 1993). It placed potential opponents in a sort of ‘trial by ordeal’ that led to compromise and settlement. It also helped define and preserve ties of dependence in the feudal system (Bloch 1961). The displeasure (ire, ira) of the lord towards the vassal acted as a powerful socializing emotion that not only helped clarify the obligations of the feudal relationship, but also preserved it from degenerating into chaotic confrontations. 

Similarly, the fear of incurring royal displeasure had a powerful socializing effect on members at court who were increasingly dependent on the monarch’s favour for their own survival (Head and Landes 1992). And, here, once again, while the noble person was considered to possess the discernment required for distinguishing between free-floating and purposive honour-bound anger, the peasant was accused of remaining incapable of experiencing righteous or zealous anger. His anger was represented as animal-like rage, useless in terms of preserving social order and highly inefficient in times of war. He was neither an honourable citizen nor a useful warrior. When he did experience anger it was in the form of disorganized rage, driving him to pillage, rape, and mindless slaughter (Greenblatt 1983:1–29). 

Just as the peasant was considered incapable of feeling the nobler emotion of courtly love and the lovesickness that was a consequence of it (Wack 1990:60–70), so was he considered incapable of experiencing any morally legitimate emotion. Peasant fury in the 1200s and 1300s was likened to bestial rage, devoid of moral legitimacy. The Jacquerie peasant rebellion of 1358 was frequently referred to in the literature of the period as the doings of a murderous mob, incompetent militarily because of its lack of restraint and forethought (De Medeiros 1979:30–3). The peasantry was ridiculed even when some of it members attempted to emulate the behaviour of chivalric society. 

It was thought that a peasant trying to act like a knight would only end up terrorizing the countryside, for he would remain fundamentally ignorant of the meaning of honour and true bravery. Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval ([1180–?] 1967) is written as a caution against coarse interpretations of noble motives. Perceval, the son of a peasant, has to undergo many tests before developing the spiritual maturity and restraint required of the knightly position he has chosen for himself. He must transcend his ‘first’ nature in order to comprehend the meaning of authentic service.  

So, ‘respect’ and ‘disrespect’ in the medieval world have to be understood in context of feudal social relations and contracts and oaths of fealty and dependence (Bloch [1939–40] 1961). Codes of loyalty and specifications of duties prohibited people from attempting to compete with their superiors. A person’s status had a definite place and price in the social order, and any insult directed at that status could require considerable sums to be paid in reparation; this was especially so in Celtic culture (Davies 1988:86–7). Thus, the ‘civilizing process’ of which Elias speaks required not only a limitation of violence but also the appropriative act of defining what was acceptable and unacceptable anger. 

Had the medieval Christian courtesy literature required a complete repression of aggression it would have been very difficult to legitimize the emerging state’s control of violence and the socialization of the knight as a pious servant ready to take up arms when required. Although the early courtesy writers referred to Christian canon to legitimize their claims, they struck a compromise between the earliest Christian call for a philosophy of ‘neighbourly’ love and a moral philosophy that elevated certain types of anger to the level of desired virtues. Coincidentally or intentionally, this allowed the emerging absolutist monarchs to dampen revolutionary rage while rationalizing their own aggressive campaigns as moral crusades. It also allowed, just as importantly, for subjects to use violence as a political tool. 

As Tilly (1986, [1995] 2005, 2003b, 2004, 2005a, 2005b) has amply documented in his various studies of collective violence and ‘contention,’ the restraint of free-ranging violence was itself a crucial step in the formation of political groups that used violence in purposive ways. So, while Elias focuses on the monopoly of violence on the part of the state, he underplays the continuing balancing relationship between the state which does give itself authority to exercise violence in order to prevent its occurrence (keeping order) and a citizenry which remains in a contentious relationship with the state in order to ensure that its interests are accommodated. Tilly notes this ongoing relationship and defines collective violence as a form of ‘contentious politics’ because it always involves ‘relations of participants to governments’ (2003b:26).”

- Benet Davetian, “From Barbarism to Courtly Manners.” in Civility: A Cultural History