Manners, Wives and Women of Homer

Considered one of the most influential authors in the history of the written word, Homer was an Ancient Greek poet and the credited author of two foundational works of ancient Greek literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey. – Public domain image of Homer

The Women of Homer

Although the women of Athens in the days of its glory had a position which is to-day believed to have been not merely inferior, but servile and debased, yet the earlier women, both of what may be called the period of the Homeric singer and of the Homeric listener, were evidently a very superior order, receiving respect and duty, and giving a high tone to their social life. 

There are but two ignoble women in all the pages of Homer, Helen and Clytemnestra; and even to them a certain sort of honor was awarded by those about them. All the other women of Homer’s song were dignified, gentle, noble, with lofty standards of morals and behavior, and exerting a wide and valuable influence. They are generally characterized by a sweet courtesy; they have a natural refinement; and in all the story that is told of them we recognize a warmth of family feeling, a lofty elegance of manners, a grace which is hardly excelled by the manners and habits of the ladies of today. 

It was evident this feeling about marriage in ancient days which made the position of women honorable, gave them safety, allowed them to cultivate the graces, lent them an authority and influence that were forceful, and, made the tale seem real to those who heard it sung, because there was nothing in it contrary to their own experience. We read of it all with a great sense of naturalness and kinship, feeling that what is right is so the world over, and realizing that it is with women to-day as it was three thousand years ago; their power and their protection lie in the obedience and the reverence that are given to the sanctity of marriage. 

It is interesting to find that years ago, when all the people who heard the Homeric songs first sung are dust blowing on the four winds of heaven, this institution of marriage, which had its happy exemplification in the lives, the singing of which touched all hearts with a kind and familiar finger, should remain as fixed and solid as the rock, and that, indeed, among those of our generation who think the highest and live the best it is regarded as sacramental in its nature, and not to be lightly considered, rudely spoken of, nor carelessly broken.—Harper's Bazar, 1898

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More on Manners vs Manner

Manners are acquired by association, by contact, by slow degrees, through several generations, and by laborious effort, line upon line, precept upon precept, in each generation. We observe a similarity in the manner and in the manners of certain families. Sometimes servants take on a likeness of manner to those with whom they live, as children do, personality being always a force and carrying with it impressiveness of some sort. Both children and servants need molding, training in manners, while manner comes to them, as it were, without their knowledge. 

Be Natural — Due Regard for the Rights of Others, Harks True Politeness

Manner and manners are not precisely synonymous. One may possess ceremonious manners and in conjunction with these have a manner which antagonizes the very people whom the elaborate manners are intended to please. A boorish person may, by dint of careful imitation, acquire a veneer of courtesy, good so far as it goes, but when all is said only veneer, not the solid, polish-bearing wood. A person ignorant of social usages and unskilled in the conventionalities of the period maybe distinguished by a manner essentially charming. Manner is what we are, so to speak, in the grain. It is individuality. It is the outshining of the soul.

Manners are acquired by association, by contact, by slow degrees, through several generations, and by laborious effort, line upon line, precept upon precept, in each generation. We observe a similarity in the manner and in the manners of certain families. Sometimes servants take on a likeness of manner to those with whom they live, as children do, personality being always a force and carrying with it impressiveness of some sort. Both children and servants need molding, training in manners, while manner comes to them, as it were, without their knowledge. 

Occasionally one meets a gently bred elderly person who has not adopted certain forms and modes which are at present in vogue, and who innocently fails to meet the requirements of good form— a thing to be regretted, because the greater should everywhere include the less, and a well-bred manner, should presuppose perfect manners. At all times the requirements of politeness are founded upon good sense, upon kindness of heart, upon due regard for the rights of others. The rude, the brusque, the abrupt, trample on the sensibilities of their friends, as well as invade propriety, sometimes defending themselves as natural, and declaring that they abhor affectation and adore sincerity. They appear not to recognize the fallacy in this. 

A natural manner should, of all manners in the world, be sincere. Sincerity does not imply brutality. Affectation is less heinous and offensive than cruelty, and cruelty exists wherever one person needlessly wounds another. Gentle manners do much to oil the machinery of life at home and in the community. It costs little effort to say, “I thank you” and “If you please,” to acknowledge every kindness as a favor worth appreciation ; but, were it otherwise, effort in this direction would be well repaid. Especially in our intercourse with children or with the aged, with those who are in any way at a disadvantage as compared with ourselves, should we be careful to exercise a cordial politeness. If this be the manner of our outlook in the world, it will influence our manners to all whom we meet. — Harper's Bazar, 1892

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

Marie Antoinette vs 19th C. Anglomania

If the ladies could only see how pretty is their gesture when their diaphanous forefinger and thumb grasps a leaf of delicate green lettuce and raises that leaf from the porcelain plate to their rosy lips, they would all immediately take to eating salad à la Marie Antoinette. 

—Photo source, Weheartit.com

Theodore Child writes in Harper’s Bazar: 

The Anglo-Saxons are afraid to use their fingers to eat with, especially the English. Thanks to this hesitation, I have seen in the course of my travels in the old world many distressing sights, I have seen a lady attempt to eat écrevisse with a knife and fork and abandon the attempt in despair. I have also seen men In the same fix. I have seen—oh, barbarous and cruel spectacle!- Anglo-Saxons, otherwise apparently civilised, cut off the points of asparagus and eat these points only with a fork, thus leaving the best part of the vegetable on their plates. As for artichokes they generally utterly defeat the attacks of those who trust only to the knife and fork. 

Fingers must he used for eating certain things notably asparagus, artichokes, fruit, olives, radishes, pastry, and even small fried fish; in short everything which will not dirty or grease the fingers, may be eaten with the fingers. For my own part, I prefer to eat lettuce salad with my fingers rather than a fork, and Queen Marie Antoinette and other ladies of the eighteenth century were of my way of thinking. If the ladies could only see how pretty is their gesture when their diaphanous forefinger and thumb grasps a leaf of delicate green lettuce and raises that leaf from the porcelain plate to their rosy lips, they would all immediately take to eating salad à la Marie Antoinette. Only bear in mind, good ladies, that if you do wish to eat lettuce salad with your fingers you must mix your salad with oil and vinegar, and not with that abominable ready-made white “salad dressing,” to look upon which is nauseating. 

May heaven preserve us from excessive Anglomania in matters of table service and eating. The English tend to complicate the eating tools far too much. They have too many forks for comfort, and the forms of them are too quaint for practical utility. Imitate Marie Antoinette, ladies: use your fingers more freely; eat decently, of course, but do not be the slaves of silly Anglomania or Newport crazes. To eat a pear or an apple conveniently, cut it into quarters, and peel each quarter in turn as you eat it. The peach, too, can be cut into quarters, if the eater is timid. Apricots do not need peeling, nor plums either. Who would be bold enough to peel a fresh fig or to touch such a delicate fruit, even with the purest silver instruments. — Marin Journal, 1890

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Etiquette in Victorian Babyland

“Anti-kissing societies grow and multiply in the land, and for this the babes have the greatest reason to be thankful. It is at last a breach of etiquette to offer a babe the unpleasant compliment of a kiss, unless you are his very near relative. In that case, you are still permitted to kiss the little unfortunate, but if you are thoughtful and wise you will at least refrain from encroaching upon the child's comfort and endangering his health by kissing him upon the mouth.” – 1895

In Babyland

A pretty fancy that is quite new is to choose a flower for the baby and embroider a single tiny blossom upon each article of the layette. A forget-me-not, a violet, a pink daisy or a buttercup may be embroidered with wash silks in the natural color of the flower; and the ivory brushes, the powder boxes and other articles that can not be embroidered have the flower inlaid or painted upon it.

Of course, every well regulated baby of to-day has a book in which the story of its life is recorded, and which ought to be the source of much pleasure in later years. A book of this sort is a charming present, and it may be plain and strong or as elaborate as may be. One made to order for a favorite babe in this city is of white leather, like a bride's book. The corners are of silver and the book is fastened with a silver clasp. Another, dainty fashion is to fold a parchment cover on the baby's book and paint upon it a spray of apple blossoms, or of the baby's own flower in water color. 

Inside, upon the blank pages, must be written the little stories of the baby's comings and goings, his illnesses and accidents, his first cunning lispings and all his young achievements. Those clever people who succeed with a camera at home will be sure to paste upon the pages of the book at least one new photograph each month. Baby in the bath, baby in the hammock, his first steps, all the story of his development may be told in pictures and be a joy forever to his mother at the very least. Later Mr. Baby ought to be able to take up the work himself; and if any one of us possessed a library of the scraps of literature we have meant to save, the pictures that have gone astray and all the flotsam and jetsam that should have been gathered into volumes, we should be rich in lore. 

Safety pins are to be had in gold and silver, and tiny ones for the backs of dresses are fastened together with slender gold chains. Little gold studs are strung together in groups of three in the same fashion and with all these and the pretty bib pins to choose from, it is not necessary to give the babies such absurd presents as bracelets and useless finger-rings. A writer in the Bazar says that the fact is now generally recognized that many children are born with some visual defect which can only be remedied by the use of glasses, and she adds that it is now no uncommon sight to see toddlers in Greenaway gowns with these useful articles upon their little faces. Doubtless by this means some trifling defect is often remedied, and by relieving the strain the eyes are saved from irretrievable injury. 

Anti-kissing societies grow and multiply in the land, and for this the babes have the greatest reason to be thankful. It is at last a breach of etiquette to offer a babe the unpleasant compliment of a kiss, unless you are his very near relative. In that case, you are still permitted to kiss the little unfortunate, but if you are thoughtful and wise you will at least refrain from encroaching upon the child's comfort and endangering his health by kissing him upon the mouth. – San Francisco Call, 1895

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

19th C. Japanese Etiquette

Table etiquette has elaborate rules, which high-bred ladies and gentlemen must strictly follow. A maid-servant always waits, kneeling, at a short distance, before a clean pan of boiled rice, with lacquered tray, on which she receives and delivers the bowls for replenishing them. Fragrant green tea is always used at the end of a meal, but sugar and cream never.

The Japanese Home:

The Dwellings and the Domestic Life of the Quaint People

If a man of taste should enter a Japanese parlor he would not fail to be surprised at the display of marvelous and exquisite taste. Yet I have often heard the sayings of foreigners that "the Japanese house has no furniture and is absolutely cheerless and empty." This is quite wrong. I must say that they have no taste of the Japanese art, for the men of taste are agreed in saying that the art of decoration in Japan is excellent. If anyone has some taste in this art, he will perceive that the hanging picture on the toko wall, elaborate arrangement of flowers, pictures on the framed partitions and all decoration, however trifling, reveal infinite taste.

The tastes of the Western people differ so much from ours that the decoration in the chambers seems almost childish to the Japanese eyes. The gorgeous display of colors in their rooms would please our children to look at. Drawingrooms piled up from corner to corner with toys, shells stones, dishes, spoons and different novel things always remind us of our curio-shops, a bunch of flowers is stuck in a vase without form and without order. The pictures in the rooms hang perpetually, though the face of nature and feeling of man chance from time to time. All these sights which we are accustomed to see in the European house excite in us nothing but wonder. Yet this is the taste of the Western people; we have no right to criticize it.

In Japan, the family never gathers around one table as the European or other Asiatic peoples do, but each person has his or her own separate small table, a foot square and a foot high, and always highly decorated. When they take their meals they kneel upon the mat, each taking his table before him. The little lacquered table generally contains a small porcelain bowl, heaped up with deliciously cooked rice, and several lacquered wooden bowls containing soup or meat, and numbers of little porcelain plates with fish, radishes and the like. The way of cooking, of course, is entirely different from the European. 

Two pretty chopsticks, made of lacquered bamboo or wood, silver or ivory, are used, instead of knife, fork and spoon, and all people use them with great skill. All foods are prepared in the kitchen so as to avoid any trouble to use knife and fork. Soup is to be drunk from the bowl by carrying it to the mouth by hand, in the same way as people drink tea or coffee. Table etiquette has elaborate rules, which high-bred ladies and gentlemen must strictly follow. A maid-servant always waits, kneeling, at a short distance, before a clean pan of boiled rice, with lacquered tray, on which she receives and delivers the bowls for replenishing them. Fragrant green tea is always used at the end of a meal, but sugar and cream never. — Harper's Bazar, 1895

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

Etiquette and Les Petits Soins

A man learns to be graceful and deferential, au fait in all small things, gentle and kindly, not after he has attained to six feet and evening clothes, but while he is young and under his mother’s and his father’s tutelage.

Small Attentions and 

Etiquette

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Grace and Tactful Deference to the Trifles of Everyday Intercourse

“Les Petits Soins” do much toward making life pass pleasantly, a point which Harper's Bazar illustrates as follows; 

The man who helps you on or off with your wrap, who lowers or raises a window for you, who interposes his ready strength between you and a crowd, who finds a seat for you and treats you as though you were a queen or a queen's mother, is a man for whom you entertain a genuine regard. 

"Thomas is a perfect Gibraltar for honesty and goodness,” remarked a lady of anacquaintance "but he stalks in front of you into the dining room and marches out of it before you; he talks to you with his hat on his head and puffs the smoke of his cigar into your face; he calmly takes the best chair in the room and leaves you the hardest; he never knows anything about paying little attentions; he is like a man who may have a twenty dollar bill in his pocketbook, but never by any chance carries any small change.”

Probably, if the truth were known, Thomas and men like him were not accustomed in their boyhood, either to receive or to pay small attentions. A man learns to be graceful and deferential, au fait in all small things, gentle and kindly, not after he has attained to six feet and evening clothes, but while he is young and under his mother’s and his father’s tutelage. Old people are apt to resent obtrusive attention, and to regard with pathetic irritability the offered help which accentuates the fact of their declining years. 

None the less they like tactful recognition of their claim upon the service of their juniors. A man may safely yield the easy chair and the window where the light lingers latest to the grandmother who likes her comfort, and who takes her knitting or her sewing where she can see most readily. The strong shoulder of youth is meant for the bearing of burdens, and unless an elderly person be exceptionally unreasonable he or she will not persist in carrying loads which ought to he borne by those who are able to assume them. —1893

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

Etiquette, Manners and Intellect

Einstein understood treating others with respect.

The scorn for manners and conventionalities manifested by a large contingent among our intellectual men and women is, according to a writer in Harper's Bazar, one of the unfortunate features of society as it is now constituted. She says:

It is only in leasure that manners can be brought to the pitch of art, but in any well ordered home, however humble, much may be accomplished in this direction by constant insistence upon the observance of the best known rules for outward conduct and by dwelling upon the importance of cultured manners when the morals and the mind are under training. 

Every opportunity should be seized for imparting to children ease and naturalness of bearing in company. The conductors of all kinds of institutions of learning should see to it that a certain ceremony is scrupulously kept up during all of their receptions and parties. 

It is impossible always to tell how much the intellect or the heart is profiting by instruction. Progress made in the culture of the manners, on the other hand, can be gauged by the commonest observer. It is true that the very finest kind of manners cannot exist without the highest development of the inner soul, but “society” manners are exclusive of such lofty standards, while conversely our good Dr. Holmes wittily, and not unjustly remarks, that “there are two virtues which Christians have found it very bard to exemplify in practice. These are modesty and civility.” It is high time that the real aristocracy of the earth —its learned men and its men of genius—should bear the outward signs of what the earth has always called its “best society.” 

No intellectual person can aspire to the position of a social “swell.” But if social usages were taught, as they might be, in intelligent homes—these “minor morals” which so much affect the future of our boys and girls—scholars would not lay themselves open, us they do now, to the too often deserved charge of “boorishness,” and would not be the victims of covert sneers from the gilded youth upon whom they may have an opportunity to impress perhaps the first worthy ideals." – Harper's Bazar, as published originally in The Red Bluff Daily News, 1893

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