Gilded Age Efficiency in Table Manners

A gilded age, gilt and sterling “patty server” by Towle. It is often mistakenly identified as a “croquette server” – “As some newly rich Americans worked to appear at home in unfamiliar social circumstances by copying wealthy habits, sometimes exceeding old wealth in ostentation and display, a lively discussion played out about the relationship between upper-class consumption and identity. What was authentically fine and high? What was vulgar, ostentatious, and false? How could you tell the difference?”
– From the book, From “Food in the American Gilded Age”

Late nineteenth-century etiquette made an art form out of ignorance about and removal from the production of food. Good table manners meant demonstrating a tangible distance from the hard labor involved in all stages of getting food to the table: removal from the sweat and manure of the farmyard, from dusty miles of transportation, from the steam and splattering grease of the kitchen. In fact, middle-class Americans in all sorts of realms came to define themselves by this very distance from manual labor; one major class distinction that emerged during the nineteenth century was that middle class women and children did not work for wages.

Table etiquette replicated this distance in miniature in nearly every command, from orders about the way to spoon soup away from the body to the physical distance necessary between plates and laps to the necessity of seeming to be unconcerned about spills or accidents. Middle- and upper-class Americans at table worked hard to maintain attitudes of leisure and nonchalance.

In an era when many Americans enthusiastically associated progress with efficiency, table manners of the era were conspicuously antiefficient. While it would be more efficient to load up a fork while still chewing the previous mouthful, for instance, etiquette writers insisted that one should never put food on the fork until one had quietly swallowed. Likewise, writers warned it was rude to blow on or to stir soup or hot drinks. Instead, they advised, simply wait while the liquids slowly cooled.

Even the famous injunction against eating with the knife was antiefficient since it required American eaters to switch the fork and knife from right to left hand every time the eater wished to cut off a bite of food. Eating slowly and quietly not only de-emphasized the labor of eating, but it also visibly demonstrated physical self-restraint.

As some newly rich Americans worked to appear at home in unfamiliar social circumstances by copying wealthy habits, sometimes exceeding old wealth in ostentation and display, a lively discussion played out about the relationship between upper-class consumption and identity. What was authentically fine and high? What was vulgar, ostentatious, and false? How could you tell the difference? By the turn of the century, uncertainty on these points-and tensions surrounding them—would contribute to the decline of the most extravagant Gilded Age habits.— From “Food in the American Gilded Age,” Edited by Helen Zoe Veit

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