Etiquette and a Bare Era of Arms

“Because a woman's arms must be kept well within the picture and backed against the person, it does not follow that she should move her arms, as most women do, only from the elbows. No gesture could be worse possibly. It expresses the little, the petty, the ungracious, the over anxious to enter the camp of the 400. It stamps a woman at once as nervous and awkward, an overgrown school girl.” —
— The most common image exhibited on the cover of the popular Delineator’s Women’s Magazine throughout the 1890’s, was a bare-armed woman reclining in Grecian style gown. Etiquipedia has no idea whether she was “over anxious to enter the camp of the 400.”
  — Photo from the Etiquipedia private photo library

We are going to have an era of arms. In a general way, arms are things we have with us always, but the chances we are we shall see more of them. The long glove has moderated its ambition: it stops as soon as it is turned the corner of the elbow. One woman in twenty has a prettily modeled elbow and she, you may be sure, does not cover it's dimples with either glove or sleeve. Glove etiquette seems to be a little more liberal than it was before we wore the Greek gown. There are daring spirits who regard its classic folds as a warrant for baring the arm from the finger-tip to shoulder. There are even those who maintain that by wearing the Récamier dress, the same dispensation from gloves may be obtained. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, for example, when she puts on a short wasted white silk is never shy about exposing her long, rounded arms.

The smoke of the fight about the decollete bodice has never enveloped the arm. Annie Jenness Miller says that if a woman's arm is pretty she should give its shapeliness frankly to the world; if it is not pretty she should study sleeves. The ideal arm has a beauty of wholesome, almost a pastoral order; it bears showing. It is clear skinned and rounded, and there is a gracious dimple just at the side of the elbow. The skin is soft, but the flesh is firm. Beneath it's smooth contour it is instinct with the strength that supports a tired child. It is a blemish if the lines are so full as to suggest the seraglio rather than the green fields.

Women who know anything about arms, have thrown their bracelets away. It is a mistaken policy to call attention to a poor arm, and a good one is never so beautiful as when naked. One often sees the value of a wrist absolutely destroyed by a bangle. Gloved or ungloved, sleeved or unsleeved, braceleted or without jewels, the arm grows in importance every day. Genevieve Stebbins Thompson and Madame Albertti and Henrietta Crane Russell and Mabel Jenness and the rest of the esthetes and physical culturists and Delsarteans have been teaching us all winter to pose, and the pity is we begin to “make” our arms before we have taken our degrees. The results are commonly ridiculous or harassing.

The arms of the woman who is not naturally graceful always look stiff and harsh as they lie in her lap motionless. If she is not bitten with any of the artistic fads, she makes an awkward hoop of them, with fingers interlaced. If she has been doing a little amateurish studying of classical collections, she extends them or lets them hang at full length, unflexed in hard, straight lines. The first piece of advice which a well-wisher would give such a woman would be that she allow both arms to fall in free, easy positions, slightly relaxed at the elbows or with the hand drooping a little at the wrist, but she should not allow her left arm to know what her right arm is doing. One ought usually take a somewhat different position from the other, else you overdo the bilateral and look like a jointed doll.

But it is when a woman moves that real difficulties arise. Many a girl makes capital out of handsome arms when she throws them into relief on the tennis ground, flaps like a seal if she shakes hands in a drawing room. The difference is partly in the environment; partly, sometimes in the gown. There's no getting a graceful motion if your dress has a French-fit at the shoulder seams. Most women think there's a fine reserve in restrained gesticulation, and it is true that the woman does not exist who can attitudinize in private life without considerable danger of making herself ridiculous. 

It is commonly assumed that the effect has been calculated if a pretty girl indulges in movement as charming and natural as that of raising her arms to adjust her hair. But because a woman's arms must be kept well within the picture and backed against the person, it does not follow that she should move her arms, as most women do, only from the elbows. No gesture could be worse possibly. It expresses the little, the petty, the ungracious, the over anxious to enter the camp of the 400. It stamps a woman at once as nervous and awkward, an overgrown school girl. Every dignified arm motion starts from the shoulder. In this way only can one get curve or swing. Elbow motion is mechanical, all angles.

You can tell much about a woman by the way in which she shakes hands. The pump-handle motion, fashionable this past winter, was distinctly vulgar, almost as much so as the present squaring of the shoulders, extensions of the elbows and swaggering clutch of the pocket which is sold to one girl in every four with her best spring jacket. Many a woman who is gracefully cordial with an intimate, falls back on a marionette-like wagging from the elbow if called upon to say, “How do you do?” to an important person of whom she stands somewhat in awe. The giving of the hand must be a whole arm motion, but the arm should not be extended full length, except in impulsive welcome; it may be kept rather near the body and the hand allowed to fall low. —San Francisco Call, 1890

Glove etiquette seems to be a little more liberal than it was before we wore the Greek gown. There are daring spirits who regard its classic folds as a warrant for baring the arm from the finger-tip to shoulder. There are even those who maintain that by wearing the Récamier dress, the same dispensation from gloves may be obtained. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, for example, when she puts on a short wasted white silk is never shy about exposing her long, rounded arms.   
— A public domain image of a Récamier dress in Portrait of Madame Récamier by Jacques Louis David, 1800

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