Rudeness and Civility: Manners in 19th Century Urban America

“Nothing, at first sight, seems less important than the external formalities of human behavior,” Tocqueville stated in Democracy in America. “Yet there is nothing to which men attach more importance…the influence of social and political systems on manners is there worth serious consideration.” Until now, Tocqueville’s challenge has gone unanswered.

Here, John Kasson writes of the deep tensions created by the demands of democracy, the pressures of an expanding market economy, and the desire for social distinction. Vividly and with humor, he re-creates the deferential and often coarse society of colonial years, then its transformation as aspirations and social forms earlier restricted to the gentry became popularized.

The rapidly industrializing economy most intensively affected the booming cities. Etiquette advisers sought to instruct the rising middle class in ways of egalitarianism: how to present oneself at home and in public; how to express pleasure and affection and suppress anger and conflict; how to conduct oneself with decorum (no hissing, no rowdiness) at a concert or performance.

Mr. Kasson examines a host of diverse topics, from the “lost art of hat tipping” to the rise of the table fork and how to behave at table, to the writings of Poe, Melville, and William James. Rudeness and Civility is a rare book that is insightful and entertaining: it will make readers think about our manners in a fresh way.

“Apart from the original conceptualization and insightful analysis, even apart from the engaging writing style, one cannot help but delight in the pungency of detail Kasson provides. The symphony conductor as audience discioplinarian, the popularity of urban bird’s-eye view lithographs, the hidden meaning of a folded calling card–these are the kinds of subjects that make Kasson’s book as entertaining as it is illuminating.”
— Tamara Plakins Thornton, American Historical Review (June 1991)