Bowing to necessities a history of manners in America, 1620-1860 - Hemphill, C. Dallett (Oxford University Press, 1999)
Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-300) and index
Part I -- Hierarchy: manners in a vertical social order, 1620-1740 - Manners for gentlemen - Manners over minors - Manners maketh men - Part II --Revolution: an opening of possibilities, 1740-1820 - Middle class rising - Youth rising - Women rising - Part III -- Resolution: manners for democrats, 1820-1860 - Manners for the middle class - Manners for adults - Ladies first?
Anglo-Americans wrestled with some profound cultural contradictions as they shifted from the hierarchical and patriarchal society of the seventeenth-century frontier to the modern and fluid class democracy of the mid-nineteenth century. How could traditional inequality be maintained in the socially leveling environment of the early colonial wilderness? And how could nineteenth-century Americans pretend to be equal in an increasingly unequal society? Bowing to Necessities argues that manners provided ritual solutions to these central cultural problems by allowing Americans to act out--and thus