For those who enjoy commensality, table manners decree that food should be passed to people higher than oneself with the right hand only. A woman may eat with her left hand and so symbolize her female, “left-handed” status; but she passes food with her right. Cups containing liquid may be correctly held in the left hand. Everyone must sit or squat on the ground; they must on no account stand, walk about, or lie down. (Modern custom, for example among the Jains, permits festal buffet dinners where people stand and eat; but this has become possible only within the past fifteen years.) Even the direction one faces is filled with symbolism relating to purity: looking east is purest, and most honourable, and no one whose parents are alive should be expected to face south. Washing, both before eating and afterwards, is meticulous; one’s eating clothes must be absolutely clean, and bone dry. Dish washing is performed before the meal, not after: plates are most safely leaves, washed before use and discarded afterwards. It is dreadful to eat from a broken or impure vessel, or when one is suffering indigestion from a previous meal, or to eat too late, too early, or too much. People prefer not to eat in the open for this exposes food to unbounded social surroundings.
Walls round the dining space express purity as unviolated enclosure. Not only walls but the very outlines of one’s body constitute a boundary to be kept unpenetrated and entire. Eating ineluctably crosses the boundary between “outside” and “inside,” which is why one must be so careful when ingesting food. Saliva is extremely polluting—even if it is one’s own; like excrement, it is a secretion from inside the body. One never presses one’s lips to a cup’s edge, because to keep doing so is to pollute one’s own mouth: to a devout Hindu, our way of drinking out of cups and glasses is filthy and barbarous. In India, among Jains and others as well as Hindus, liquid is poured into the mouth from the cup, which does not touch the lips. One may be allowed to use the free hand to direct the flow of water, but without its touching the cup. Constant sipping is in any case discouraged by the custom of not drinking during a meal, but only afterwards. People may finally rinse their mouths with the water left over in their cups.
Eating boiled-rice-based meals with the hand is dangerous because fingertips and leaf plates are unavoidably touched and therefore defiled by saliva. The correct way to take food to the mouth is to grasp a small amount of it from above, pinching it with the fingertips. Food should never be scooped up, for then one would be eating—perhaps even licking—out of the hand, which is impermissibly defiling. Snacks, or tindi (fried morsels, dried fruits, sweets), can be—even though they often are not—tossed into the mouth so that there is no hand contact with the lips; this makes them safer than the relaxed, familial uta. If tindi items are too large to eat in one mouthful they should be broken, not bitten, because of the saliva. This is the reason why cooks cannot taste food, but must press and pinch it to see if it is done.
It is the porosity of clay bowls which makes them more dangerous than brassware at mealtimes; archaeological finds of huge numbers of clay sherds at Indus Valley sites suggest that in very early times the inhabitants of India were accustomed on occasion to employing clay vessels only once and ceremonially smashing them afterwards. Using a freshly cut, washed plantain leaf for a plate and throwing it away after the meal is both adequate and correct. Guests remove their own leaves, or hosts can do it for them out of courtesy and respect. A wife, as we have already seen, eats from her husband’s leaf when he has finished his meal: it is a sign that she is “lower” than he. The husband must leave a little on his leaf as a sign of his affection, and so that she can honour him in this fashion. Children may similarly eat from their parents’ “plates”; otherwise left-overs are extremely polluting, and diners should never end up with food remaining on their leaves.
Exotic as many of these rules might seem to Westerners, several of them are reflected in our own manners codes. We have looked briefly at how “good manners” have served in our own society to sort out the “refined” from the “gross,” the “base-born” from the “well-bred.” We call some of our reasoning “hygiene,” but then dirt—matter “out of place”—is always a form of pollution. We are revolted, for example, by a fly in the soup; we are even likely, as one experiment demonstrated, to reject food that has been stirred with what we know to be a brand-new, unused fly-swatter. Alfred Hitchcock created a memorably nasty moment in To Catch a Thief (it is a film with many food-pollution devices) when Mrs. Stevens stubs out a cigarette in a fried egg. The audience invariably cringes with disgust.
Smoking used to be forbidden at table mostly because it offended against gourmet standards, ruining the “palate” of the smoker and the aroma of the food for everybody. Now, in North America, smoking commonly evokes what can only be called pollution reactions, including disgust and a fear of infection and contagion. Permission to smoke at the dinner table might be accorded only resentfully, or refused. People are often ejected from public buildings altogether if they insist on smoking, wherever the rule can be impersonally applied. (Pollution rules usually claim to be utterly impersonal.)
We are proud of expecting cleanliness at table, and love insisting that our standards in this regard have been raised considerably, and relatively recently; they are proofs, for us, of a typically Western concept, that of “progress.” An eighteenth-century lady is said to have sat at dinner with filthy hands: we are given to understand that she had not adapted her old-fashioned aristocratic mores to the new standards of hygiene. When someone remarked on the grubbiness of her fingers, she is supposed to have coolly replied, “Madam, you should see my feet!” The story is memorable because awareness of our own comparative cleanliness “puts her down” in our estimation and shows how old-fashioned she was, even though we admire her unflustered confidence. We react to this, and to the shock, by smiling.
Bodily propriety with us includes consideration for others, and for the disgust they might easily (and rightly) feel: we agree with them, and would be similarly disgusted if they were the ones guilty of bad manners. Insisting on the rules protects the group, one and all. We raise the disgust threshold even higher by insisting that everyone should avoid not only doing anything likely to disgust others, but also mentioning anything disgusting. “As you would not bring upon the dinner or tea table anything which would affect the company unpleasantly,” says the author of the anonymous American Illustrated Manners Book in 1855, “so you have no right to mention it.” He or she goes on to list unmentionable subjects: details about diseases, operations one has undergone, battles and wounds, personal injuries, and deformities; these “wound the feelings, hurt the appetite, or impede digestion.” Violence, once again, is too “close to the bone” at table. Less squeamish as we are in certain respects today, the stricture against lurid descriptions of gore and putrefaction still stands; we can expect listeners to such tales to be “put off their food.” Accusatory and suggestive remarks about the food are also to be discouraged. The same nineteenth-century author gives as an example of tactlessness the story of a vegetarian lady who “characterized mince pie as ‘chopped corpse and apples.’”
“You will do well,” the writer goes on, “not to be talking of dogs when people are eating sausages,” nor should one bring up the subject of cats when eating rabbit (presumably because sausages and cooked rabbit look as if they might be cooked dog and cat). We still hate having personally known an animal we are eating, and we even hate imagining that we might have known it. Dogs and cats are pets, and in a sense taboo: they are placed in a completely different category from animals we designate as to be “raised for” meat. We dislike thinking that we can have no idea what went into a sausage. Twentieth-century people feel so strongly about this that we have created unprecedentedly strict regulations governing such conglomerates as sausage meat; we prefer in any case not to speculate about what a sausage must once have been, especially while eating it. Finally, the author of the manners book humorously advises us “to skip this paragraph if you are reading aloud in company”: laws have,
unfortunately, to mention what it is that is forbidden. We do recognize a difference between polite “delicacy” and real danger, however—between fear and disgust. This is brought out in the advice of the comtesse de B., author of Du savoir-vivre en France (On French Etiquette, 1814): “Do not mention any caterpillars you may find in the salad, but do not hesitate to complain if there is glass or a pin in it.”
The rule that diners should try not to offend means also that one should never behave oddly at table—not cut bread into strange shapes, show an excess of finickiness, wildly gesticulate, perform movements with too much elaboration. The idea is that one should not draw attention to oneself, and especially to one’s manner of eating; it makes people feel insecure and distracts them from the conversation. If anything goes wrong, polite consideration enjoins that we should pretend it has not happened—for instance, if someone were suddenly to belch. It would even now be a singularly intimate gathering where jokes or other remarks could be exchanged about someone having belched.
The need for a polite facade is said sometimes to lead to a concerted covering up of faux pas, as when the host drank the finger-bowl water because the ignorant guest had done so, or when a visiting foreigner ate his asparagus tips and threw the ends over his shoulder: the Parisian convives all did the same in order to preserve him from the embarrassment of perceiving that his behaviour had been improper. Such events can never have been common, but they do form part of the mythology of etiquette; they are like small table dramas, complete with audience (us), hero, unpredictable visitor, chorus, and triumphant but civilized containment in a hilarious and satisfying climax. In fact, foreign guests have usually been expected to watch and follow the manners of their hosts, and it has always been possible and indeed courteous to explain one’s customs to visitors. Occasionally we come across stories told about an impossibly arrogant guest, such as the Chinese warlord who was confronted for the first time with a banana, and ate it with its peel on. His host, to show him how it was done, conspicuously (but silently) peeled and ate his banana. The unregenerate guest grabbed another and said, “I always eat these things with the peel on,” then proceeded to eat the second banana the same way he had the first.
Aspiring entrants to exclusive clubs are sometimes tested by being invited to dinner, to have their table manners scrutinized by the members who already belong: we cannot allow anyone into our solidary and frequently commensal group who does not “behave.” (An especially disagreeable group might take pleasure in watching an ill-mannered guest, as when, in Buñuel’s film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, the chauffeur is invited into the company to display his ignorance of how to drink a martini.) It is said that at trial dinners like those for new Fellows at All Souls’ College, Oxford, what examiners look for is not only knowledge of how to behave, but the correct ease and confidence of manner when unforeseen problems arise. A person on trial might, for instance, be given olives or cherries to eat but no plate for the stones. Approval is given not only for knowing that cherries and unsauced olives are correctly carried to the mouth with the fingers, but that pips (having been politely, that is, unobtrusively, ejected from the mouth into a covering right hand) can be laid on the table—provided that the action is performed calmly, with assurance, and without interrupting the flow of conversation.
THE RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE MOUTH
One of the most powerful and paradoxical injunctions of modern Western table manners is that eating must be performed with the mouth closed. People who appear to have let their manners slide almost out of sight will, if they continue to eat in the presence of others at all, cling to this rule, partly out of habit (the majority of us are taught to eat like this from the beginning), but mostly because other people insist upon it. The rule is extraordinary because we are not expected to observe silence during meals. In many other cultures, people habitually eat in silence, and they have good reasons for doing so: requirements of speed, concentration, safety (gullets are for breathing as well as for swallowing; talking only adds a third complication), and a feeling that eating is sacred, with silence an expression of respect. We, on the contrary, consider it impolite, except in very intimate circumstances, not to talk—yet we are at the same time as strict as we are about anything that no one should be caught with an open mouth containing food.
In Europe, there were once regional variations on this point, and it could even be thought rather starchy to insist on keeping one’s mouth shut when chewing. A sixteenth-century French text tells us that “Germans chew with their mouths closed, and find any other way of proceeding ugly. The French on the contrary half-open their mouths … The Italians are very soft in the way they eat; the French, who behave more robustly, find the Italian manner too delicate and precious.” The Italians appeared to be more relaxed than the tight-lipped Germans, though we are not told whether their mouths were open or shut: more probably open, since they are being compared directly with the French. Erasmus wrote, in a passage not referring specifically to table manners, as though closing one’s mouth tightly were a rudeness: it “denotes someone afraid of inhaling someone else’s breath.” On the other hand, he says that a mouth clamped shut, in paintings at least, gave the subject an air of probity. Germans seemed, perhaps, to be clean, controlled, and forthright about their preferences and fears when they chewed with their mouths closed. The French, in the passage quoted, appear to have been proud of their half-open mouths, and of suffering from neither Italian affectation nor German strictness and standoffishness.
But gradually, in Europe and America, a consensus has been reached that we shall require everyone to eat with the mouth closed. Mouths are always, and in any case, to be guarded and treated with respect; they are bodily orifices, “weak points” in the body’s defences. Through the orifices or “gates” in the wall of our body’s outline, things foreign to it can enter, and substances which must be ejected issue forth. Excretions from the body emerge because they are unwanted, and we remove them and dispose of them as quickly and efficiently as we can. Faeces and urine are easy: they stink, and our reaction is direct. Tears, on the other hand, being salt and freely running, we separate off from the other excreta as belonging to the symbolism of water; they wash and purify, as we ceaselessly exclaim in poetry and song.
But other excreta are slimy or glutinous. Snot, for instance (which is usually produced, after all, when we weep), gives rise to something very different from the sympathy which tears evoke. It is nasty, viscous stuff, to be sniffed back, wiped away, or deliberately blown out and disposed of, as fast as possible. Such substances as phlegm, ear wax, vomit, and—most famously of all—menstrual blood have always aroused similar revulsion. Saliva, semen, and sweat (the last runs like tears but stinks as it ages) are sometimes easy to contemplate, sometimes not: intimacy and affection are often required, and elaborate proofs of cleanliness and control, to make the difference. Effluvia and defluxions remind us of the symptoms of disease as well. Tears are striking but acceptable; a rheumy discharge from the eyes, on the other hand, is appalling—it is, for example, one of the attributes of the demons of pollution in Greek mythology, the Furies, whose presence causes people to shudder with horror. (Shuddering, incidentally, is one of the primary reactions to pollution and disgust. Shuddering, shivering, or “goose-bumps” are the body’s outline, its skin, reacting to threat. The word “horror” itself refers to the ultimate physical response to fear, which is the skin reacting so violently that tiny muscles in it contract and the hair stands erect—the basic meaning of horror in Latin is “hair standing on end.”)
Negative physical reactions to body waste are common everywhere, though seldom experienced so strongly as by us; what is more unusual is our own extension of the category of stuffs arousing loathing to cover anything slimy. We hate whatever oozes, slithers, wobbles. Disgust at these physical properties may prevent us from liking, or even trying, to eat brains, lungs, eyes (the specificity of these animal parts—their reminding us of functions in living bod
ies—adds an extra dimension to our distaste). Some of us go so far as to refuse to eat okra, oysters, frogs, sticky rice or rice puddings, soft-boiled eggs, and the more glutinous porridges. The word “slime” is from lime or “glue,” and is related to Greek leimax (French limace), a snail. Anglo-Saxons, more squeamish than the French, often find the idea of eating snails as abhorrent as eating frogs, merely because these creatures (when alive) are slimy and slippery; it is the thought of them, not the taste, which is offputting.
We feel happiest with what is either hard or soft, either solid or liquid: anything that is neither is “suspect,” or too indeterminate to be safe. We prefer clear forms, firm outlines. One of the reasons why scuttling mice or cockroaches terrify otherwise sensible people is that they live in the cracks and joints of houses and furniture: they suggest that our lines, edges, and corners are not as secure as we rely upon them to be; they remind us how little we really are in control. Namelessness, shapelessness are liable to be associated in our minds with ooze, or “glug,” a word that is currently receiving a new meaning: it originally imitated a swallowing sound, but is increasingly used to denote something gluey, a slimy mass which we would rather not investigate too closely. When we eat jelly or blancmange, we like to have it moulded first, and extremely clean-looking; moulded blancmange was actually called “shape” from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century in England.
When food is served to us on a dish, we like knowing what it is; Germans, British, Dutch, and North Americans particularly are liable to prefer it separated into clearly defined entities: meat, potatoes, distinct vegetables. Sauced, jumbled dishes might be acceptable if thought of as “ethnic”; they are not clear and simple enough for “normal” eating. This is an attitude which is softening nowadays, as more and more “ethnic” food is becoming ordinary everywhere. But food in a dish is one thing—food in the mouth is something else. Do not open your mouth when you eat, wrote the author of The Court of civill Courtesie (1591), for people will see “the food rowle by—which is a foule sight and loathsome.” Chewed food is on its way to being digested, mercifully out of sight. It is ground and thrashed about in saliva, mixed and mumbled in the mouth, and turned to slime. We are brought up, now as in the sixteenth century, to find the very idea of this—of something that has lost its characteristic shape and turned into a slimy mass—disgusting. No one must be allowed to show the contents of the mouth to others, or to remove food from the mouth once it has gone in.
The Rituals of Dinner Page 38