A “What’s Wrong” School of Etiquette

In the decade from 1920 to 1930, about a dozen books of etiquette were published and promoted, including those by Lillian Eichler, Emily Holt and Emily Post. One columnist thought etiquette’s popularity had waned by 1925, however, the 1920’s - 1930’s “Etiquette Era” was just taking a brief break, and would continue for over 10 more years. —Thousands and hundreds of thousands of assorted Americans are worrying over what is wrong with “this picture” and perspiring freely over the choice of forks at a banquet, or words at an introduction.

Frenzied Etiquette 

The latest great non-essential industry to occupy the attention of the American people appears to be a nation-wide concern for the manufacture, sale and use of a more strict etiquette. Led sheep-wise, by a publicity campaign comparable only to the merchandising effort that put Harold Bell Wright on the literary map of the universe, thousands and hundreds of thousands of assorted Americans are worrying over what is wrong with “this picture,” and perspiring freely over the choice of forks at a banquet, or words at an introduction. Like marathon dancing, this activity affords a somewhat painful picture to the observer, but brings with it the comforting thought that so much fruitless enthusiasm will soon burn itself out and be over with. 

The most painful aspect of the craze is the general tone of snobbishness and the laudation of ridicule and embarrassment as a means of teaching “good manners.” Knowledge of etiquette is, of course, nothing to become snobbish about, and the most casual thought will reveal the inadequacy of embarrassment as a preceptor. What the campaign would amount to if it amounted to anything, would be to make the American people a nation of self-conscious dummies, painfully eager to do the “right thing,” horribly fearful of doing the opposite, continually uncomfortable, gauche and ridiculous. There are as many don’ts in the average encyclopedia of cheap etiquette as there are symptoms in a patent medicine almanac. As the symptoms aim to catalogue every possible reaction of the reader’s sensory apparatus, so the admonitions of the etiquette books aim to interpose in every possible situation of daily conduct. 

The aim of the medicine man’s almanac was to make the reader acutely uncomfortable till he “falls for” the medicine man’s product and the aim of the etiquette books is the same. There’s no cause for alarm, of course, in the sudden rise of the “What’s Wrong” school of literature, because the craze for it is happily only a craze, and therefore impermanent. Its effects probably won’t endure long enough to stamp our national subconscious —we’re talking nonsense now —with an inferiority complex. We’ll get over it all right, but like the baby-talk stage of the flapper’s progress, it’s uncomfortable while it lasts. — San Diego Union, 1923

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia