Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870

Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (1982)
By Karen Halttunen

Synopsis: This book is "a cultural history of the sentimental ideal of social conduct" that defined the morals and behaviors of the antebellum nineteenth-century middle-class in America (xvi). Asks: Why did nineteenth-century conduct manuals, etc, see hypocrisy as such a huge threat? Analyzes etiquette books, conduct manuals, advice books, fashion magazines, and mourning books to uncover the fact that perfect sincerity and transparency of character was essential to the sentimental ideal of the time. Includes sections on fears of the "confidence man" or trickster in urban culture, the important of sincerity as a middle class ideal, sentimental culture's influence on fashion and etiquette, mourning as a huge gesture of genteel theatricality, the decline of sentimental culture and the increased acceptance of theatricality, disguise, and performance. Each of these illustrates the ways in which Americans grappled with the urbanizing mass of strangers via initial resistance to artifice, followed by the eventual acceptance of the highly stylized and individualized mode of fashion, disguise, and theatricality. Argues that an influx of young people into crowded cities led to fears that the young would be duped and corrupted (and young people were seen as metaphor for the nation at that point). The increased fluidity and amorphous liminality of people meant that you never really knew what someone was like, hence the middle class demand that one always be sincere. This elaborate performance of sentimental sincerity ultimately gave way in the 1850-70s to a gradual acceptance of disguise and theatricality. So, in the end, skillful social performance beat out transparent sincerity. The middle class preference for sincerity does live on a bit today. [Who hates sincerity? What is the benefit of insincerity? Are we talking sarcasm here, or what?] Bottom line: "...sentimental demand for sincerity was a defensive strategy against the perceived dangers of placelessness in the open society and of anonymity in the urban world of strangers" (194). Also, "it was through their definition of the problem of hypocrisy, and their efforts to resolve that problem in the sentimental cult of sincerity, that American seeking to rise in the urban world of strangers became resolutely middle-class" (197). [Hmm, try to think about how this connects with other explanations for the rise of the middle class. Does it differ?]

Interesting Specifics:

The incredibly mobile Victorian culture meant positions were no fixed, and so there was an intense fear that people were passing for something they were not (xv).

American were thrown rather suddenly into a world dominated by strangers, and this vastness led people to characterize others based on appearance, as that's all they had to go on (36). [Wow, almost identical argument that Rudeness and Civility makes]

Middle class women struggled over what kind of fashion would not obscure their sincerity and true nature (73). The clean, minimalist, body-conscious classical style gave way to the "sentimental style" in the 1830s (characterized by bonnets and plain styles/simplicity (89).

With the rise of sentimentality and the domestic ideal, the parlor became even more important, and the genteel hostess felt increasingly pressured to act as a kind of "stage manager" (105). Parlor as zone between private and public. All about the "controlled communication of proper sentiments" (121).

Mourning was a huge deal; seen as the most transparent and hence sincere/genteel sentiments.

"By the 1850s, the sentimental view that a particular dress form could embody a particular feeling or moral quality was losing credence" (158).

1860s = increased use of makeup.

1850s = increased acceptance of theatricality and with parlor stages and games like charades.

1848-1875 was an era of huge economic prosperity, creating a "bourgeois world" (187).

By the 1850s, the middle class decided to rely on a general confidence in the good intentions of others, as opposed to a strict trust in their Christian morals.

Interacts With:

Rudeness and Civility, Urban Masses and Moral Order, The Arts of Deception (basically any book about P.T. Barnum - as an example of the place of "fraud" in nineteenth-century culture), Horrible Prettiness (evolution of Americans' view of theatricality and performance)

Class: A Painfully Accurate Guide Through The American Status System

Class: A Painfully Accurate Guide Through The American Status System (1983)
by Paul Fussell

Synopsis: Fussell's basic goal is to debunk the very American idea that we live in a classless society. He does this by providing a tongue-in-cheek, yet somewhat accurate, taxonomy of the various class markers. He shows that even the most minute details can be seen as clear depictions of class. He discusses body shape, gestures, recreation habits, clothing, household objects, decor, materials, attitude, reading preferences, ways of speaking, food preferences, higher education, and architecture. The book's tone is self-consciously ironically snobby and playful, and is decidedly non-scholarly and footnote-free. His final point seems to be that the only way to escape your class is to bow-out of the system completely and become a self-made "inner-directed" "Category-X" person. This is the escape route he grants to (presumably) all his clever, creative, in-the-know readers (and himself). Overall, he argues that the middle class is intensely insecure about its status, and hence is obsessed with the inoffensive (which is perceived as "tasteful") and un-ideological. The middle class is horrified of conflict, controversy, and ideas, and this shows in most of what they do. The implication of this is that the middle class is a very dangerous class to be immersed in, as it avoids all conflict and pain to the point of ignorance and inaction. [This really connects to Radway].

Interesting Specifics:

"Style and taste and awareness are as important as money" (16), and the source of ones money is more important than the amount.

Really emphasizes the fact that the middle class suffers from status anxiety and intense desire to belong (35). For the middle class "Argument or even disagreement must be avoided at all costs" (97).

"Classy people never deal with the future" (74).

Says the desire for privacy is an upper class marker [but don't all people desire privacy, and it's just that the upper class has more access to it?]

The term "weekend" came about in 1878, "a moment marking what can be said to be the flowering of high bourgeois culture" (120).

"We're pretty much stuck for life in the class we're raised in" (198).

Says all of U.S. culture is immersed in a class-lowering, or "prole-drift" (205)

"It's only as an X, detached from the constraints and anxieties of the whole class racket, that an American can enjoy something like the Liberty promised on the coinage" (223). [Geez, that's not too overdramatic).

Interacts With:

Bourdieu (Class can be seen as an obscenely simplified and lay-person version of Distinction, without the theoretical framework. Is basically about the role of "stuff" in constructing a self. Departing from Bourdieu, Fussell does grant people some agency by allowing them to sneak off into the Category X realm if they want to.)
Connects with all the books that discuss the role of "stuff" in constructing a self/identity.
Rudeness and Civility (in the use of labels and clothing and goods to distinguish one person and "type" from another; also in the rise of "gentility" and its scorn of anything that seems offensive or rude).
Radway, Reading the Romance and A Feeling For Books (both demonstrate the ways in which middle class women go out of their way to avoid reading anything that is too heavy or upsetting - especially Reading the Romance; fits with Fussell's argument that the middle class goes out of its way to avoid pain and conflict of all kinds)
The Lonely Crowd (Fussell seems to run with a tweaked version of the "inner-directed" person in constructing his glorified class-dodger "Category X")

Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America

Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (1990)
by John F. Kasson

Synopsis: This book asks: "What...was the relationship of the symbolic system of economic exchange (money) to the symbolic system of social relationships (manners) in a democracy?" (6) Kasson investigates this question by looking at "the semiotics of everyday urban life" via etiquette rules, manners, etc., to get at how such practices bear "upon key questions about the nature of social conventions, social relationships, and individual identity in the supposedly 'free' market and democratic society of the nineteenth-century metropolis" (5). Includes a discussion of pre-nineteenth-century manners (pre-"modernity,"), etiquette books and gentility, reading the city, bodily management, emotional control, table manners, and "disciplining spectacle." This book is thus basically about the "transition from a rank-structured society to an impersonal 'class' society" (33). The rise of urban center populations led to an increased sense of fragmentation and confusion and a fragmented sense of self; this resulted in a need to create some kind of system of self-protection/cohesiveness. Etiquette and manners stepped-in to provide this system of semiotic guideposts. The more chaos ensued, the more people relied on the most minute signs and symbols as a way to "read" or understand others. Clothes, silverware, manner of walking, etc. all thus became increasingly emblematic of one's character. This increased restraint, control, and decorum, came at the expense of jovial togetherness, and this increasingly passive spectator style really paved the way for modern consumer culture. Meanwhile, the city itself was read from 1) the bird's eye view of "unity and progress," and 2) the mole's eye view of vice and shadows. Overall, this book demonstrates the intense need to develop some new system of ranking, status, and order in the face of immense change and fracturing.

Interesting Specifics:

** Excellent! Focus on! Lots of good info and specifics! **

The output of etiquette manuals surged from 1870 to t.o.c.

"In the name of civility and self-discipline, the bourgeois code of manners deflected the pressures and inequities of the society back on the individual" (6).

The Civilizing Process by Norbert Elias (from about 50 years ago) was one of the first to analyze manners and etiquette and study them as history.

Many of the changes associated with modernity include: rise of the nation-state, the rise of egalitarian spirit associated with Western democracies, modern capitalist economy, the rise of relations defined by the market, the rise of Evangelicalism, and the Enlightenment focus on rationality and tolerance, etc (18).

The rise of capitalism meant that gentility was now something to be purchased.

"As late at 1820, only one person in fourteen lived in a community of more than 2,500, and only twelve cities exceeded 10,000" (71). From 1860-1910, the urban population rose from 19.8% - 45.7% of the total American population (72).

By 1920, in cities of 100,000+, 58% were foreign-born or had foreign-born parents (72).

The 1850s saw a rise of "gaslight" tours in which the bourgeois would explore the horrors of those who lived in the slums (78).

There was an increase in agoraphobia in the 19th century due to "sharp discontinuities between public and private life" (113); also connected to an increased fear of embarrassment.

Increased focus on control at this time meant that emotional outbursts - especially of anger - were shunned.

"Private tastes, rather than public actions, became the crucial indicator of sincerity and authenticity" (169). "Privacy" also became increasingly desirable. [Hmm, would be interesting to do a history of privacy in the U.S. Very connected to current issues i.e. online communities. Can love of privacy be directly linked to xenophobia? Does its rise dovetail increased immigration? This book says yes, basically, I wonder if this pattern continues through history?]

Increased specialization of flatware mirrored increased specialization in the workplace.

The 1830s marked a huge revolution in cutlery and table-manners.

Astor Place Theatre represented a new era in refinement.

The term "confidence man" was coined in 1849, and referred to a well-dressed con-artist who pretended to be an old friend and then would say "Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?" and then would of course take off with the watch (103).

The increasingly demanding social rules of the time represented an attempt to defend a "solid self" in a fragmenting world (257). Says self-help books of today are the successors of etiquette books, and are still attempts to come to terms with our fragmented world/selves.

Interacts With:

Says that although material development of society is well studied, few have paid much attention to "vital but elusive changes in cultural practices, conduct and consciousness that attended this physical transformation" (4). I guess that is his intervention then.
Paul Boyer (Urban Masses and Moral Order - in attempt to deal with/adjust to the increasingly impersonal metropolis)
Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum (need for order in the face of chaos)
Even the books from the jeremiad section, like The Culture of Narcissism (via the increased focus on tiny individual details as key parts of one's self)
Actually, a lot of the material culture books too, as related to the use of stuff to construct one's identity and sense of self (in Kasson's book, as done with clothing and overall personal "style").
Horrible Prettiness (as related to increased passivity and bourgeois-ification of theatre; what was lost with the rise of "gentility" and "polite" spectatorship).
de Certeau (for their shared focus on the "practice of everyday life;" the small gestures).
Books that deal with the separation of home from workplace.
With its focus on the "fragmenting self," it seems that this book is really about early strains of postmodernism - but then again, postmodernism really can just be seen as an extension of modernism, but without the faith in the potential of a "grand plan."