1
The loose script
of American rituals 
C. Dallett Hemphill
wanted to find out what the "little rules"
of social life could show about social regulation,
the distribution of power, and the working out of the
larger rhythms of social, political, and economic
development in America. This led her to dig up and
study "works prescribing proper face-to-face
behavior" published from the time of the
Puritans' arrival in New England to the onset of the
Civil War. (5) Cotton Mather's pronouncements on
conduct (1690-1713) and Lord Chesterfield's letters
to his son (1775) understandably have prominent
places in her bibliography. The scores of less-famous
works cited include the following examples:
Youth's Behavior, or
Decencie in Conversation Amongst Men. Trans.
Francis Hawkins (London, 1661).
William Dover. Useful
Miscellanies Respecting Men's Duty to God and Towards
One Another (Philadelphia, 1753).
Madame Celnart. The
Gentleman and Lady's Book of Politeness and Propriety
of Deportment (Boston, 1833).
John Todd. The
Student's Manual, Designed by Specific Directions to
Aid in Forming and Strengthening the Intellectual and
Moral Character and Habits of the Student (Northampton,
MA, 1835).
Mrs. L. G. Abell. Woman
in Her Various Relations: Containing Practical Rules
for American Females (New York, 1851).
Hemphill systematically
scrutinized more than 200 such works (surely securing
her a place with the most diligent of scholarly
source hunters). This research gave her a new insight
into the changes in social rules of class, age, and
gender from 1620 to 1860 in America. In those old
code books she believes she found a "loose
script of rituals for face-to-face interaction in
various situations." (4) The internal
consistency of her many sources led her to believe
that this script is a dependable scholar's guide to
what actually took place.
end part 1 go to part 2
PARTS
OF THE ESSAY: 1 The loose script of
American rituals | 2 Different manners for different
periods | 3 "Ladies
first" was a great social trade-off | 4 "Ladies first" and I: a
dilemma revisited
|
2
Different manners
for different periods 
Although she was
studying codes of manners for Americans at
"street-level," her observations did indeed
illuminate the larger social and political movements
of those two and a half centuries. She found that
codes for individual behavior aimed to mediate the
oppositions and contradictions of social and
political values as they evolved through (and
presumably helped to define) three distinctive
periods: the colonial period (1620-1740), the
revolutionary period (1740-1820), and the ante-bellum
period (1820-1860).
Hemphill's book thus
affords us a look at the larger story of our nation's
birth and development. It does so, however, in terms
of the countless social acts that Americans were
expected to perform day by day--acts of the socially
high, middling, and low toward one another, acts of
the young and the old toward one another, acts of men
and women toward one another. Like so much newer
history, the book situates the excitement of its
findings in the details of ordinary existence rather
than in the drama of grand events. In doing so, it
does not ignore grand events but adds subtlety and
texture to the context in which historians show them
occurring.
Prescribed manners
differed significantly in the three periods, Hemphill
found. Not surprisingly, she also found a causative
connection between those manners and the political,
social, and economic tensions that characterized each
of the three periods.
In the earliest period
(1620-1740), the Puritans brought from England an
old-world commitment to rank's privilege, to an
assumed natural inequality of people. Colonists of
whatever rank were hard put to maintain this
commitment in the rawness of a new social setting,
where necessity pushed them toward social leveling in
spite of their convictions. Hemphill found that
prescribed manners mediated this tension. The code
books reinforced respect for rank and the importance
of social control.
In the revolutionary
period (1740-1820), the new commitment to
egalitarianism, especially among the rising middle
class, created a new tension. It conflicted with the
older colonial code of deference to people of rank.
New codes of manners, according to Hemphill, gave
revolutionary-era Americans the creative tools for
shaping their behavior for socially acceptable life
in the new national environment.
I found Hemphill's
treatment of manners in the ante-bellum period
(1820-1860) the most interesting, partly because some
conventions blazoned into American society in that
period continued to be relevant even into our
lifetime a century afterward.
end part 2 go to part 3
PARTS
OF THE ESSAY: 1 The loose script of
American rituals | 2 Different manners for different
periods | 3 "Ladies
first" was a great social trade-off | 4 "Ladies first" and I: a
dilemma revisited
|
3
"Ladies
first" was a great social trade-off 
The defining tension of
the ante-bellum period, Hemphill argues, arose out of
the conflict between the new revolutionary ideal of
political equality and growing social inequality. A
new code of manners enabled Americans to negotiate
this conflict. It allowed them to espouse democratic
values but to conform in their behavior to the new
social inequality fostered by growing middle class
wealth. The "genteel" tradition entered
usefully into the conflict by sanctioning social
inequality in the emerging democratic framework.
As Hemphill explains,
"ladies first" manners--the keystone of
gentility-- were the means for one of the great
social trade-offs in our social history, gaining
something and losing something for both women and
men.
Of the "ladies
first" code she says, "Advice to men
on behavior toward women reveals the most dramatic
change of the entire history of manners in America:
the inversion of the gender hierarchy. Early colonial
conduct writers had openly claimed that women were
inferior to men. Revolutionary-era authors were
sufficiently ambivalent on this issue to warrant our
continuing to treat the relationship between women
and men as one between inferiors and superiors.
Antebellum-era writers claimed that women were men's
social superiors, and thus compel us to reverse the
order." (194)
Women accordingly gained
a new position of social superiority and the respect
of men for their place in society and for their
personal security. This enabled women to enter the
rising middle class society with some measure of
freedom, circumscribed though it admittedly was. Many
rules for social intercourse now applied to women and
men indiscriminately. But in accepting these gains,
women traded off the possibility of acquiring
political and economic power and remained the
"weaker" sex.
Men retained their grip
on the political and economic levers. But they lost
the freedom from social constraint that marked the
earlier revolutionary period. The behavior of men,
particularly in urban settings, came under the
powerful discipline of "ladies first." The
middle class social space in the antebellum period
acquired a feminine overtone, with a newly gentrified
norm of behavior for men.
Hemphill insightfully
assesses why "ladies first" was so widely
sufficient for so many for so long. Acknowledging
that it masked women's political and economic
inequality, she argues that it facilitated the
integration of women and men in the social world.
"It is hardly a revelation to note," she
says, "that this system has been so hard to root
out simply because it was so cozy." (210)
The Gibson Girl at the
turn of the century, the newly enfranchised Flapper
in the 1920s, and Rosy the Riveter in World War II
symbolized the slow metamorphosing of the
"ladies first" code; but it took the social
revolution of the late 1960s and the concurrent rise
of women's studies finally to root it out. Even as
late as 1999, Hemphill still speaks of its
disappearance as a work in progress: "Around the
rituals of 'ladies first' milled men and women who
otherwise acted the same. That reminder should steady
us now, as we aim to kick away the pedestal once and
for all." (210)
end part 3 go to part 4
PARTS
OF THE ESSAY: 1 The loose script of
American rituals | 2 Different manners for different
periods | 3 "Ladies
first" was a great social trade-off | 4 "Ladies first" and I: a
dilemma revisited
|
4
"Ladies
first" and I: a dilemma revisited
In the late 1970s, I
found myself with a major administrative dilemma
caused by the survival of the code of "ladies
first." My memory of it confirms Hemphill's
sense of the code's persistence into our own time. As
a newly elected college president, I inherited a
student social rule book that prohibited dormitory
visitation by members of the opposite sex. It was a
surviving institutional iteration of "ladies
first." This and other rules--notably the
prohibition of alcoholic beverages from campus--had
been the center of contention for a decade between
students and the administration and faculty. Seeking
to position the college to the right of center while
other colleges changed with the changing times, the
board of directors expected me to uphold the
traditional rules. I became convinced that the
college had to yield some ground to the new climate
of gender equality that blew in with the late 1960s.
Not to do so, I felt, would perpetuate a negative
campus climate, impede the development of our
educational program, and erode our position in a
tightening market for private colleges.
My dilemma focused in
the person of the vice president of the board,
commonly assumed shortly to be its next head. He was
a loyal alumnus and had been a staunch supporter of
my candidacy for the presidency. He had all the marks
of the prototypical Philadelphia lawyer. His office
was in center city; he took luncheon guests like me
to the then all-male Union League, where the men who
ran things still congregated. He had done much good
for the college since his graduation before World War
II, raising funds, making friends, and supporting
presidents.
He also was the board's
leading voice for the established ways. He had
debated with students since the late 1960s in
knock-down arguments that always left them with no
ground gained. When he became suspicious of my
leaning toward modification of the rules, he warned
me. "Don't turn the college into a
whorehouse," he said over lunch at the League
one day. He equated the permission of men to enter
women's dorms with granting a license for
uncontrolled promiscuity. He passionately believed
that the "ladies first" code that we
inherited from our antebellum forebears was for the
ages. It was the right way to behave in the past; it
was right now, despite its growing unpopularity; and
it would be right, he said, "forever." If I
changed it, he promised that I would lose his
support.
He was true to his word.
When I placed a proposal to change the rules before
the board, he moved to table the motion for further
study. I had done my political homework with the
board members and no one seconded his motion. After
debate, the board approved the change. On my desk the
next working day was his one-sentence letter of
resignation. His dramatic withdrawal from a lifetime
of active support to his alma mater caused the stir
within the board that he hoped it would. I weathered
that aftermath, and he never returned.
My dilemma was thus
resolved. I always regretted, though, that it was at
the price of a relationship with a man who had worked
hard for the welfare of our college and who had
always been decent personally toward me, even when he
resigned.
Bowing
to Necessities has given me a better
perspective on that old experience. It helped me
understand better that the dorm rules were rooted in
a code of manners that flowered in the nineteenth
century to meet conditions of that time. It helped
confirm for me after all the passing years that the
changes I pushed made sense, in spite of the position
of my board leader. I instinctively felt then that
the old rules were not, in fact, right
"forever." With the evidence of her solid
scholarship, Hemphill has explained "the great
degree to which gender relations are culturally
malleable." (222)
I would bow to her in
gratitude, if only I had an etiquette book to show me
how.
end part 4 end of
essay
Disclosure: I had
the pleasure of hiring Dallett Hemphill at Ursinus
College after she completed her dissertation on
manners at Brandeis University. Her enthusiasm for
scholarship, combined with her civil and good-humored
take on life beyond books, has made an appreciable
impact on the quality of daily life in the Ursinus
community.
PARTS
OF THE ESSAY: 1 The loose script of
American rituals | 2 Different manners for different
periods | 3 "Ladies
first" was a great social trade-off | 4 "Ladies first" and I: a
dilemma revisited
|
Another
review: Frank Lambert. Rev. of Bowing
to Necessities, by C. Dallett
Hemphill. Pennsylvania Magazine of
History and Biography. Volume
CXXIV, 3, July 2000: 421-422. This is a
publication of The Historical
Society of Pennsylvania.
|
