Ladies' Street Etiquette

In large cities, street etiquette is well understood by ladies.

A Word to the Ladies

In large cities, street etiquette is well understood by ladies. In Santa Rosa there is a lamentable lack of knowledge on that subject. For instance, it is not considered ladylike for two ladies walking abreast to occupy both parallel walks on a street crossing and force a gentleman to take the mud. When by following one after the other, a person coming from the opposite direction has also the privilege of crossing dry shod. For this reason two parallel walks are provided. Keep to the right ladies and go single file over street crossings. — Sonoma Democrat, 1874

 

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

Edwardian Women's Etiquette

Tsk, tsk! Sprawling over the dinner table is neither graceful nor refined behavior for a young woman! She must be located in steerage. She certainly won't be found here in 1st Class.

The table manners of the twentieth century woman are being widely criticised and the worst thing said of them is this—they are not up to the standard of dress and cleverness exhibited by up-to-date femininity. It is true that women have made rapid strides in improvement, but there are those will declare that development has been one-sided. 

Women have learned to dress becomingly and take care of their bodies. They go about a good deal, which gives them self-possession, and read to give them a smattering that passes as smartness. But they are backward in real knowledge and lack the rudiments of politeness which every child used to learn. 

I have occasion to eat often in public places and there I meet instances of ill-breeding that are in marked contrast to the personal appearance of those responsible for them. It ought not to be necessary to be informed that is the first rule in eating and that small mouthfuls are better in more ways than that of comfort. 

Modern etiquette allows women to lean upon their elbows whenever they sit, but sprawling over the dinner table is neither graceful nor refined. The other night I saw a well-dressed woman powder her face with the addition of a tiny mirror before she left a public dining table. Another combed her front hair and others did things quite as baffling. 

It was at a fashionable restaurant where the bad manners were exhibited, and the young women were good-looking and well-dressed. Imagine their home life when they can be so careless in public! If mothers are careless—that is the first cause of bad breeding. They are too busy and too worried to consider the little things of life, they say, so girls grow up without any desire to remedy the maternal faults. 

Their only desire is to have pretty clothes. Generally they must earn them—and while as imitative as monkeys in matters pertaining to dress, they never attempt to copy the marks of good breeding which must come under their notice every day. 

It is so easy to teach little ones the simple manners of refined eating, and habits formed in youth remain so persistently with man or woman that it is unfair to deprive them of so valuable an equipment. One can never tell what piece of good fortune the future has in store, and being prepared to receive it saves both time and uneasiness. 

Good society is rather a stickler for forms, but the fine points of etiquette can easily be added to a bedrock of common rules, their manners should be as fine as our clothes, at least. — Betty Bradeen, Sacramento Union, 1911

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

Edwardian Women's Manners

Have we made our sweet women's voices shrill by overmuch shouting, and in our desire to be dogmatic, ceased to be persuasive? But these are questions one only dares to ask, with the bated breath of a generation hurrying to go to the polls.

According to the London Daily News
English Women Are Losing Manners

Are we losing our manners? Alas, for the answer to that question; we have but to look around us — in a world which has forgotten its manners, if indeed, it ever remembered them! The decay of manners is writ only too large on the face of our up to date life.

The decay of good manners is the tragedy of modern life — and what is the reason? Why are good manners practically extinct? To all such questions there must be an answer — and it is purely worth the seeking, says the London Daily News.

Is it the motor craze that leaves us no time to be polite? "The very word is like a bell" that tolls us back to early Victorian days, when our grandmothers learned etiquette out of prim manuals, and the making of a gentleman was voted the most important part of a liberal education. For our forbears believed that as good old William of Wyckham said it, "Manners makyth man"; how much more do they make woman!

Are "phones" at the bottom of the matter? One has an uneasy suspicion that the telephone has much to answer for in destroying the conversational ideal; "A voice soft, gentle and low, is," the poet assures us, "an excellent thing in woman." But when that same voice cries "Hello! are you there?" it does not "sound her ideal greeting." 

Or is the aeroplaning mania that in responsible for our rough and ready deportment? To came down to "terra firma" — for there must we ultimately alight — is it possible that women's clubs have anything to do with the disappearance of polite ideals? Has the subtle influence of the smoking room, with its "laissez-faire" atmosphere, and abrogation of once revered etiquette, tended to minimize those little courtesies? For there is distinct feeling abroad that it is a waste of time to stand on ceremony with one's neighbor, and a democratic age scoffs at what it deems the airs and graces of a courtlier era. 

Lastly, there is one other suggestion that may be hazarded — though the writer ventures to throw it out with the utmost diffidence, nay, hardly dare she whimper it — even though it be the "silly season." Has the suffrage anything to do with the decay of manners in our midst? Have we made our sweet women's voices shrill by overmuch shouting, and in our desire to be dogmatic, ceased to be persuasive? But these are questions one only dares to ask, with the bated breath of a generation hurrying to go to the polls. — San Francisco Call, 1910

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