Etiquette
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#1: Etiquette Author: jenniferLocation: Taiwan PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 6:15 am
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http://www.bartleby.com/95/index.html

Emily Post from 1922 - American etiquette from the same time as the start of the Chalet Series. The chapter on chaperones is particularly interesting.

#2:  Author: ArielLocation: Hither Green, London PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 12:35 pm
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Quote:
No young girl may live alone. Even though she has a father, unless he devotes his entire time to her, she must also have a resident chaperon who protects her reputation until she is married or old enough to protect it herself—which is not until she has reached a fairly advanced age, of perhaps thirty years or over if she is alone, or twenty-six or so if she lives in her father’s house and behaves with such irreproachable circumspection that Mrs. Grundy is given no chance to set tongues wagging.


Shocked

Quote:
A young girl may not, even with her fiancé, lunch in a road house without a chaperon, or go on a journey that can by any possibility last over night. To go out with him in a small sail-boat sounds harmless enough, but might result in a questionable situation if they are becalmed, or if they are left helpless in a sudden fog. The Maine coast, for example, is particularly subject to fogs that often shut down without warning and no one going out on the water can tell whether he will be able to get back within a reasonable time or not. A man and a girl went out from Bar Harbor and did not get back until next day. Everyone knew the fog had come in as thick as pea-soup and that it was impossible to get home; but to the end of time her reputation will suffer for the experience.


Shocked Shocked

#3:  Author: SaffronyaLocation: Oxford, England but hail from Glasgow, Scotland PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 12:57 pm
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Blimey. My reputation must be in absolute tatters! Twenty seven and living on my own since eighteen, and for the last five years with a chap who isn't my husband and my father 400 miles away. I love eating out in 'road houses' and I stay out overnight a lot!

I am a fallen woman I think. What action can be taken, or must I just live a quiet life with my shame for company?

#4:  Author: KatherineLocation: London, UK PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 1:07 pm
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Saffronya wrote:

I am a fallen woman I think. What action can be taken, or must I just live a quiet life with my shame for company?

Saffronya, a woman’s reputation once lost is lost forever. I fear there is little hope for you.

Looking on the bright side, the rest of us are probably in the same boat so you can associate with us – we’ve no reputation to lose.

#5:  Author: SaffronyaLocation: Oxford, England but hail from Glasgow, Scotland PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 1:25 pm
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Indeed, we can all be immoral together - what fun!

We must be careful however. When I visited North Carolina I was told of a law that was still on the books: that over a certain amount of women, something like 5 or 7, were not allowed to live in a house together as such a gathering would be presumed to be a house of ill repute! Us women are obviously prone to such fallen ways, and with out a chaperone we seem to be doomed Crying or Very sad ...

#6:  Author: SunglassLocation: Usually London PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:01 pm
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Ariel wrote:


Quote:
A young girl may not, even with her fiancé, lunch in a road house without a chaperon, or go on a journey that can by any possibility last over night. To go out with him in a small sail-boat sounds harmless enough, but might result in a questionable situation if they are becalmed, or if they are left helpless in a sudden fog. The Maine coast, for example, is particularly subject to fogs that often shut down without warning and no one going out on the water can tell whether he will be able to get back within a reasonable time or not. A man and a girl went out from Bar Harbor and did not get back until next day. Everyone knew the fog had come in as thick as pea-soup and that it was impossible to get home; but to the end of time her reputation will suffer for the experience.




This for some reason is cracking me up - both the idea of a CS girl hanging out at a road-house on the Gornetz Platz (Joan Baker, anyone?), and also the way in which EBD has always carefully provided chaperonage for the girls on any of the dozens of occasions when they get caught in blizzards/floods/fogs and are rescued by doctors who have a habit of stripping people and rubbing them with brandy. (When you think of this kind of rescue usually leading to a wet-clothed Romantic Interlude in millions of Mills and Boon novels, or even Hardy!)

Although - by Emily Post's terms - the CS mistresses are not really chaperone material, being both unmarried and young (and in most cases very pretty), and so potentially in need of chaperonage themselves - and look how many of the mistresses actually meet the doctors they marry through the girls getting into some kind of crisis! (Seems as though the girls are actually chaperoning the mistresses quite often...) Although she allows a certain amount of leeway for the 'bachelor girl' with a profession, so maybe the mistresses squeak in there.

But would Bill, for instance, have counted as an adequately middle-aged chaperone for Joey and Jack as they escaped from the Nazis? Should Joey's reputation have 'suffered till the end of time'?

#7:  Author: MonaLocation: Hertfordshire PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 4:56 pm
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Ah, but your reputation can be restored if the man with whom you were unchaperoned promptly marries you, so the question doesn't arise!

#8:  Author: MiriamLocation: Jerusalem, Israel PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 6:54 pm
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I inherited a copy of thi book recently, and had a fascinating few days reading it. She has uite definate opinions about some things which seem very amusing now, and is often quite severly critical of anyone who is fat (a word you were still allowed to use in the 1920's) doing anything that makes them look even more inelegant. She doesn't much like short sirts either. THere are quite a few disaproving refernces to 'ballet short' skirts.

I just wish there was an opportunity for me to deonstrate my perfect knowledge of how to behave...

#9:  Author: JayBLocation: SE England PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 7:04 pm
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It's fortunate that Gottfried was already married, otherwise he might have had to marry Hilary Burn, who was proaoably just about old enough to have a reputation to lose.

Quote:
No young girl may live alone. Even though she has a father, unless he devotes his entire time to her, she must also have a resident chaperon who protects her reputation until she is married or old enough to protect it herself—which is not until she has reached a fairly advanced age, of perhaps thirty years or over if she is alone, or twenty-six or so if she lives in her father’s house


Of course, all these rules of etiquette can apply to only a relatively small proportion of girls and women. There were thousands, maybe millions, of women like EJO's Mary Devine, who had no parents living, lived in rented rooms, and had to earn their own living in mixed sex offices, schools, shops, factories etc.

#10:  Author: SunglassLocation: Usually London PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 12:29 pm
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JayB wrote:

Of course, all these rules of etiquette can apply to only a relatively small proportion of girls and women. There were thousands, maybe millions, of women like EJO's Mary Devine, who had no parents living, lived in rented rooms, and had to earn their own living in mixed sex offices, schools, shops, factories etc.


Absolutely - it's clear that EP at least is writing primarily for social climbers or the nouveaux riches looking for an entree into upper-class US society.

Though it occurred to me while reading EP's thoughts on the well-appointed house and the proper behaviour and responsibilities of servants, that part of the life-style-ish effect EBD is going for (which got talked about a bit in the Jo to the Rescue thread) depends on being read against a kind of ideal upper-middle class formality, which we as modern readers tend not to notice. You know, all that delightful informality at Freudesheim and elsewhere - Joey rushing to the door to meet and greet, Anna being given an unexpected afternoon off and being treated (kind of) as a member of the family, dogs and children emerging from all corners, a lot of informal wicker furniture and flowers - is meant to strike a reader familiar with etiquette-book notions of 'correct' behaviour at home as very charming and unusual. We probably lose some of the effect of that.

Another place we might tend to overlook is in Exile when Joey meets (I think) Janey Lucy for the first time and they get on like a house on fire and use each other's first names immediately. Either Joey or Janey says something along the lines of 'I must go, I've overstayed and I meant this to be such a proper twenty minute visit!' It's only since re-reading as an adult I realise that this is a not just 'talk' - formal calls, especially formal post-wedding calls (which is essentially what Joey is at in the early Guernsey months, even with the war on), had all these inflexilble rules about duration and when you had to repay them. Joey is already not behaving like a proper young married woman.

#11:  Author: KatherineLocation: London, UK PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 12:52 pm
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I agree with Sunglass about the informality. It’s hard to tell how much of the effect is lost on us though. Even as an 80s child I could see that the young adult Joey doesn’t behave in the way proper adults are meant to and that’s half her charm; as a child you like her not growing up and being stuffy. Even with Freudesheim’s informality though I felt the older Joey did calm down a lot and became a proper adult; for me she lost something there. And in terms of the usual Joey bashing that’s interesting. We knock her for not growing up; remaining attached to the school, not being allowed to be upset so having things kept from her but in manner I feel she does grow up. Maybe that’s a good thing (or she’d be even more annoying) but I’d got the idea from Joey as a young adult that she would always be like that and later on she’s not. See for example her comments about beatniks needing a good wash in Summer Term.

#12:  Author: JennieLocation: Cambridgeshire PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 2:49 pm
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Well, we can all go to North Carolina and have fun. Patmac and I are both old enough to count as chaperones.

Whether we will set a good or bad example is open to debate, mind you.

#13:  Author: LesleyLocation: Allhallows, Kent PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 3:32 pm
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Oh bad example please! Laughing

#14:  Author: PatLocation: Doncaster PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:05 pm
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I hate to point out that you're old enough to be a chaperone too Lesley! Twisted Evil Twisted Evil
What sort of example would you set?

#15:  Author: abbeybufoLocation: in a world of her own PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:14 pm
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As another ageing reprobate . . .






I think we've got the country pretty well covered Laughing Twisted Evil Rolling Eyes Twisted Evil

#16:  Author: KatherineLocation: London, UK PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:17 pm
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Ah, but are you respectable enough to chaperone? Smile

#17:  Author: abbeybufoLocation: in a world of her own PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:48 pm
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Probably not Sad
. . . But I look as if I am Rolling Eyes

#18:  Author: ShanderLocation: New Scotland in Latin PostPosted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 3:41 am
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Quote:
On returning home from a party, she must not invite or allow a man to “come in for a while.” Even her fiancé must bid her good night at the door if the hour is late, and some one ought always to sit up, or get up, to let her in. No young girl ought to let herself in with a latch-key. 16
In old-fashioned days no lady had a latch-key. And it is still fitting and proper for a servant to open the door for her.


I'm not sure what my parents would have thought of that! And awfully hard on the poor servant who had to stay up.
Still, given that my parents are 2000 kms away, I'm another whose reputation is hopelessly in tatters Very Happy
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#19:  Author: TorLocation: London PostPosted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 6:14 pm
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I agree with Sunglass and Katherine about losing the impact of the 'informal' homelife in the CS, but what is interesting, is that I do find it very easy to slip into the social mores of, say, a Victorian novel (or more often nowadays a screen adaptation Embarassed ), and will hold my breath at a breach of social etiquette...

I guess I came to those novels at a more advanced age, and the social set up was so very alien. Still, i never did think of the CS in that way, or question why that was. Thanks Sunglass for pointing that out!

#20:  Author: SunglassLocation: Usually London PostPosted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:41 pm
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I was just reading 'Joey Goes to the Oberland' for the first time in a long time with ideas of proper behaviour in the home etc in my mind from this thread. This time around. what struck me was how, despite the informality of Plas Gwyn and later Freudesheim, (and Joey falling melodramatically into a packing crate in the first line), there are still strongly traditional, post-Victorian elements to the Maynard family.

For instance, no Maynard child eats any meal outside the nursery until, at the age of four, they are 'promoted' to breakfast with the family IF they can eat 'properly' - we see Mike in danger of being sent back to the nursery. (This is perfectly in line with the Emily Post etiquette manual.) Ditto the fact that when Mike and Charles turn themselves black, Jack chokes back his desire to laugh and says sternly that he'll see them in the study when they're clean. The decision to hire Beth Chester untilm the younger boys can go to prep school is also presented as solely Jack's decision. Distinctly Victorian paterfamilias!

The other thing is servant trustworthiness. While we often see Joey being likeably informal with her trusty servant Anna, urging her to take longer to say goodbye to her village friends as they leave Plas Gwyn etc. she doesn't appear to be allowed to have the key to the store-cupboard in which all household supplies were kept. Robin tells the triplets (who are going to wash dolls' clothes and want soap) to come to her in the store-cupboard after breakfast as she has 'promised Anna the scrubbing-soap then'. Victorian household management books always warned the mistress of the house to keep all supplies locked away, and to make the servant (always constructed as potentially dishonest) come to her daily for dry goods and cleaning products as needed, as she was likely to sell the surplus for money if given free access. But I was mildly shocked that an utterly faithful and trustworthy employee like Anna would still not be trusted with the key to the stores as a matter of course by a well-disposed mistress, but has to wait for Robin to get her soap!

This was underlined for me by the conversation Jo and Robin have later about the blacklead that Charles and Mike cover themselves with - Jo explains that she bought it in bulk as an experiment, but that Anna preferred the older paste, so it had been left unused. Robin says she wonders Anna didn't throw the tins out, and Jo says 'definitely' 'No, she would never do that... I'd bought them, and they were mine, not hers.'

OK, Joey, you are indeed mistress of the house! But try not to get too possessive about the cleaning materials! Because when you get to the Gornetz Platz, your faithful Anna is going to 'insist on having her night nursery with Mike and the babies', meaning she is potentially on-call at night as well!



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