There were handsome bronze pans provided both for vomiting and for urinating at ancient Greek parties; they were thought to be so comforting that the luxurious Sybarites were credited with inventing them. People have been sorely tempted to keep chamberpots on hand at dinner parties ever since. The English were often censured by French and other travellers until the early nineteenth century, for keeping chamber pots in or just outside their dining rooms. “Drinking much and long leads to unavoidable consequences,” writes Louis Simond in shocked tones, of British table manners. “Will it be credited that, in a corner of the very dining room, there is a certain convenient piece of furniture, to be used by anybody who wants it. The operation is performed very deliberately and undisguisedly, as a matter of course, and occasions no interruption of the conversation.” It was always much more permissible for men than for women to relieve themselves publicly. Whereas women were often victimized by this prejudice, and men’s drinking habits always made urinating a more pressing matter for them, it remains true that the modern insistence on the total privatization of excretion is part of the long-term victory of standards which previously applied only to women, while men were thought not only unwilling but unable to conform to them.
POSTSCRIPT
How Rude Are We?
Are we ruder than other societies are? Are we ruder than we were in the past? There is increasing concern for manners in the modern West: newspaper articles protest about the lack of them; the number of books telling people how to behave and their enormous sales attest to an anxiety on this score which rivals that experienced in the nineteenth century; and a new and expanding business is the etiquette industry, where people formally and for a fee teach protocol and the arts of the dinner table to ambitious business men and women. It is realized, in the commercial world at least, that bad manners might actually spoil a corporate image, hamper a deal, impede mobility; good manners might make a competitive difference. Since bad manners can be corrected, the demeanour of the staff is one of the things a careful company can try to polish and control.
The idea is to pinpoint trouble spots, moments where even we, with our insistence on informality, set up specific expectations which could trip up the unwary or the simply ignorant. We must know, for example, that at a formal meal served by waiters, serving dishes are likely to appear, silently and without warning, from the left; the serving spoon and fork must be used in a correct and unobtrusive manner to remove a portion of the food presented (do not take too long choosing your portion!); when eating is done, plates will be removed from the right. Most people are right-handed, and this rule is for their convenience. If plates should be presented already loaded with food, however, they are set down from the diner’s right, and taken away from the left. The need to be prepared for such moments is heightened because formal meals are unusual, and important for reasons that go beyond eating for nourishment; and because etiquette involving the presence of servants is not everyday experience. We do eat out at restaurants, however, where practice in old-fashioned formality is available to us, as is the surveillance of our manners by people outside our families.
One of the guiding principles of modernity is mobility—the opportunity to move up the social scale, as well as to flee from any social “scene” we find uncomfortable and unaccepting. Physical movement facilitates social mobility; it is possible to live in an inexpensive neighbourhood, for instance, and still drive to a job in a smart area of the city. We have greatly reduced the likelihood that anyone need play a predetermined role on a “stage” dominated from the start by people born to power. Modern cities set out to offer many alternatives—a choice of “stages” upon one of which a person may hope someday to shine, and plenty of escape routes from unwanted constraints. None of us need tolerate surveillance and adverse judgements from people who have set themselves up as arbiters of elegance. We can move away if they disapprove or try to put us down. The metaphor behind the word “politeness” is “polish”—smoothness and gloss, brought about by continuous rubbing up against other people; the panoply of courtesies can subsequently be used to facilitate management of necessary relationships. Modern people try not to embark upon, or even preserve, unconditional relationships. They do have to survive, however, in a crowded, complex world. We all battle fiercely, in fact, to make each other knuckle down and behave in a civilized fashion.
Some things we can no longer ask from people; the range of formal politeness that is still appropriate has been greatly reduced. What is left of it, while only seldom sanctioned by powerful pressures like outrage and ostracism, has remained ornamental, becoming, image-enhancing. It is still very useful, in other words, to be polite. A polite demeanour is like fashionable clothing: it proves to people who are merely slight acquaintances that we have been schooled and “finished,” that we can be counted on to behave predictably and in a manner calculated to be pleasing to others similarly schooled.
Universal rules governing modern manners usually take the form of unspoken, almost subconscious guidelines and constraints—a basic substratum or minimum standard which the majority of us carefully observes. Eating behaviour is still—and, I would argue, must always remain—guarded, enculturated, ritualized, and even taboo-laden. We can tell that taboos survive by the laughter that greets any suggestion that one of them might be broken. The tradition of Grobianus and of Juvenalian satire still rages, in the work for instance of P. J. O’Rourke, whose “advice” includes the following suggestions for making the most of a table napkin: “The best way to use a napkin is as a mantilla to imitate your grandmother in church while grace is being said or as a pretend matador’s cape to wave at undercooked beef or as a bandanna to cover your face when you pull a stickup on your dinner partner with a lamb-chop pistol …” This kind of humour relies on the extent to which it would never occur to well-behaved, “proper” people to do any of these things, even though we can all too vividly imagine them being done and the embarrassment they would afford us. There is still nothing like an uproar at table for arousing horror, hilarity, or fear; the chief purpose of table manners remains to prevent violence, usually by keeping it unthinkable.
Modern manners increasingly force us to be casual. We have no choice but to comply: the lowering of decorum and the flattening out of what the anthropologist Mary Douglas once called “intricacy” rule us as imperiously as protocol ever did. Politeness, whether formal or informal, has always involved manipulating social distance. The kind of politeness that we call formality deliberately keeps people apart. Its purpose is partly to prevent prying, and to slow down the process of familiarization in order to give each party time to appraise the other. But apartness creates distinction, so that formality also prevents or defers relationships between two people or two groups who want to be separate, or whose status is hierarchically differentiated. Informal manners, on the other hand, reduce distance; when they consciously impose themselves in opposition to formality, they express scorn for differentiation by status. Where informality reigns, there is less likelihood of either error or criticism. But rules there must be, otherwise there would be no means left of communicating with others or relating to them.
Informality has often been used as a contrast within a generally formal system of manners, to mark a stage in the progress of a relationship: one first encountered others with formal behaviour, for example, calling a person by a surname and title, with perhaps a plural pronoun like the Spanish usted (which is an abbreviation of vuestra Merced, “your Grace”). As friendship progressed, one gradually let the defences down, as it were, until a threshold was crossed beyond which informal manners were allowed; the day came when people were “on a first-names basis,” and might use familiar pronouns like tu and du. (Advances towards the achievement of familiarity would almost certainly have been marked by one or more invitations to dinner.) Such polite rites of passage denoted acceptance on both sides, and proved to the world that tests had been applied and passed, time allowed to elapse, and agreements reached. Gradu
ating from formality to intimacy, from the outer circle to the inner, was a performance both structured and demonstrative: it not only showed those concerned where they stood with respect to one another, but everybody else was expected to notice the new relationship as well.
Problems did arise; since respect was expressed through a distant manner, a denial of social distance could also mean lack of respect, so that servants, for instance, might be called tu. There could be uncertainty at dinner as to whether a waiter should be called tu because his rank was lower than that of the diners, or vous because he was socially distant and outside the dining group. Should children call their parents vous out of respect, or tu because of intimacy? Twentieth-century manners, where languages traditionally make tu/vous distinctions, have tended increasingly to stress solidarity to one’s own group rather than differences in rank, so that children call their parents tu, and diners call waiters vous. The rising preference for ritual equality means that a waiter one knows and likes might, nowadays, also be called tu. The tu address is becoming more and more common. Informality is increasingly the normal tone to adopt; formality is now exceptional. The change represents a behavioural revolution.
With the exception of the rather rare occasions when we are asked to certain carefully orchestrated events, where people tend in any case to play at being formal—gala nights at the theatre, or dinner celebrations for visiting dignitaries—it has actually become rather rude to be formal. Rigid formality tends to be perceived these days (and politeness, now as ever, has everything to do with its perception by others) as an impolite and unkind expression of icy distance. It is very clear that separateness is no longer sought but regarded as an imposition, and guarding it by means of one’s manner can be found offensive and even ludicrous. Official equality is what manners ritually express. Polite behaviour now demands constant assurances that one is in no way superior to other people—even if, and especially if, one is quite obviously in a position of power.
Modern society has more than enough devices for keeping people apart. We sleep in separate rooms, live and eat in separate quarters, move about behind the closed doors of metal vehicles. We form anonymous, hurrying crowds, and have to seek out opportunities to know or even meet other individuals as isolated as ourselves. When we meet, therefore, with the express purpose of socializing, we cannot afford to be distant. Modern egalitarianism at an interpersonal level is as much a recompense for the walls which separate each individual from everyone else as it is a political ideology and a purely moral ideal. Egalitarianism brings informality; and informality provides sorely needed access to other people. The word “casual” has two meanings, however. When defined simply in opposition to “formal,” it means “relaxed”: clothes are everyday, the number of eating rules is reduced, reserve is lowered. But “casual” derives from the same root as the word “accident” (compare “casualty”): it contains the idea of falling haphazardly, like dice. Casual behaviour leaves a good deal of the proceedings to chance: people “come as they are,” sit anywhere, throw up no conscious barriers of demeanour between themselves and whoever else happens to be present.
A typically modern event is the “reception,” “cocktail party,” or “drinks,” to which people are invited in order to make contact with one another. Drinks, and almost invariably food, are provided. Such a party is “casual” in the sense of productive of chance encounters; sufficient room is provided so that guests can both approach and escape from one another. Everybody present is free game; the only limiting factors are the aggressiveness required to gain the attention of the favoured on the one hand, and the lack of assertiveness that characterizes poor players in the game on the other. An injection of formal elements into a largely casual performance is administered to give everyone ritual distance and to prove that those invited in fact have the desired schooling and discipline. People dress up, the women in heels even though they have to stand, and in garments designed to draw attention, typically by means of up-to-the-minute fashion, glitter or brilliancy of colour, and sometimes dramatic plainness—there is not much time to make an impression, and one has to face a great deal of competition from everybody else. The first things to be discarded from the traditional sociable meal are the chairs and the table. Dining-room furniture limits numbers, prevents mobility, and promotes unwanted intimacy: people invited to “drinks” are not necessarily among those admitted to the closeness offered to guests for whom one cooks dinner. Receptions are outer-circle, not inner-circle events. The occasion usually takes place in the early evening, and is not meant to be the main event in anyone’s day.
At receptions, people stand and move about, with a glass in one hand and the other free to gesture and to take something to eat. Food and extra drinks often circulate on waiter-borne trays. Considerable dexterity and bodily propriety are demanded and usually achieved. The food is reasonably various, formally decorative, and offered not only for its company-creating qualities but also for the purpose of giving people something to do. Choosing and eating it fills gaps in conversation; seeking it provides an excuse to break away from a talking group—the food might even on occasion give people something to talk about. Because it is hand-held, it must be dry and not crumbly, neither sticky nor too fatty, either cold or lukewarm, and divided in advance into small pieces, as food usually is wherever people eat with their hands. The noise helps keep talk small and inconsequential, profundity being entirely out of place, while the drink frees tongues and lowers inhibitions. Successful practitioners at such functions know how to break in upon conversations, and also how to extricate themselves readily from them. Because nobody is allowed to sit down, the whole thing is soon over, its purpose having been fulfilled—that of permitting multiple contacts, and many brief occasions both for sightings and for being seen.
Modern lives still find a place for out-of-the-ordinary, formally structured meals. Special occasions have always been celebrated by the eating of distinctive food, and plenty of it; here rules of behaviour are more intricate than usual, preparations tend to be lengthy, and occasions are provided for demonstrations of skill, social relationship, and generosity. Feasts, for special occasions or special people, are marked off from the quotidian and the normal. Indeed it has never been thought that feasting should be allowed to become ordinary, for then it turns into a meaningless expression of monotonous greed. The wicked Suitors in the Odyssey were guilty of endlessly and pointlessly stuffing themselves—“in vain,” Homer says, “all to no purpose, effecting nothing.” A feast should be exceptional, and have a reason.
Day-to-day eating is regular, much less copious than feasting, and done with a few people whom we know more intimately than anyone else, largely because we often meet and eat with them. Everyday meals are not intended to surprise, impress, or challenge us. The expected is what we look for; we achieve it through customary behaviour but low decorum, and through order. The basis of the word “ordinary” is “order.” Daily meals in turn order our day, providing occasions for meeting friends and family and for resting from work. There are fewer rules of politeness than we find at formal feasts, but rules exist and are observed.
An early precursor of the restaurant meal was dinner served to the public at fixed times and prices at an eating house or tavern. Such a meal was called, because of its predetermined aspects, an “ordinary,” and the place where it was eaten came to be called an “ordinary,” too. When a huge modern business conglomerate offers fast food to travellers on the highway, it knows that its customers are likely to desire No Surprises. They are hungry, tired, and not in a celebratory mood; they are happy to pay—provided that the price looks easily manageable—for the safely predictable, the convenient, the fast and ordinary.
Ornamental formalities are pruned away (tables and chairs are bolted to the floor, for instance, and “cutlery” is either nonexistent or not worth stealing); but rituals, in the sense of behaviour and expectations that conform to pre-ordained rules, still inform the proceedings. People who stop fo
r a hamburger—at a Wendy’s, a Harvey’s, a McDonald’s, or a Burger King—know exactly what the building that houses the establishment should look like; architectural variations merely ring changes on rigidly imposed themes. People want, perhaps even need, to recognize their chain store, to feel that they know it and its food in advance. Such an outlet is designed to be a “home away from home,” on the highway, or anywhere in the city, or for Americans abroad.
Words and actions are officially laid down, learned by the staff from handbooks and teaching sessions, and then picked up by customers in the course of regular visits. Things have to be called by their correct names (“Big Mac,” “large fries”); the McDonald’s rubric in 1978 required servers to ask, “Will that be with cheese, sir?” “Will there be any fries today, sir?,” and to close the transaction with, “Have a nice day.” The staff wear distinctive garments; menus are always the same, and even placed in the same spot in every outlet in the chain; prices are low and predictable; and the theme of cleanliness is proclaimed and tirelessly reiterated. The company attempts also to play the role of a lovable host, kind and concerned, even parental: it knows that blunt and direct confrontation with a huge faceless corporation makes us suspicious, and even badly behaved. So it stresses its love of children, its nostalgia for cosy warmth and for the past (cottagy roofs, warm earth tones), or its clean, brisk modernity (glass walls, smooth surfaces, red trim). It responds to social concerns—when they are insistent enough, sufficiently widely held, and therefore “correct.” McDonald’s, for example, is at present busy showing how much it cares about the environment.
The Rituals of Dinner Page 42