This week, please respnd to the reading of your choice.
Richard L. Bushman, Chapter 1, “The Gentrification of Rural Delaware,” pp. 3- 29; Chapter 2, “Courtesy Books,” pp. 30-60, and Chapter 3, “Bodies and Minds,” pp. 61-99, in The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1993).
Barbara G. Carson, “Customs and Manners: Ranks and Fashion at Mealtime,” in Ambitious Appetites: Dining, Behavior, and Patterns of Consumption in Federal Washington (AIA Press, 1990), 59-73.
Rodris Roth, “Tea-Drinking in Eighteenth-Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage,” in Material Life in America, 1600-1860, edited by Robert Blair St. George (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988), 439-462.
If you don't understand something about the readings, please ask questions in your response.
3 comments:
The one reading that really caught my interest was Ambitious Appetites: Dining, Behavior, and Patterns of Consumption in Federal Washington. by Barbara G. Carson The topic itself isn't farely new but it sparks the imagination of what it would have been like in the 18th and 19th century. For some odd reason I didn't know that Americans ate their food with a knife even though they had forks in some cases.
You see it all the time in period movies and westerns but never think about the underlying culture. I can't imagine eating with a knife especially since there is that huge risk of cutting yourself. In the chapter we not only see the evolution of dinner utensils but also etiquette. I think the quote: "They noted the wolfish haste of American eaters, the lack of conversation at the table, the scarcity of napkins, and the practice of knife-eating." on page 61 sums up the whole chapter perfectly.
The quote also reminds me of a couple of chapters we've read so far in the class that discuss books on etiquette well into the late 1930s. I wish there was more information in the articles that directed itself into that type of research. It makes me really interested in American culture when I see how people were expected to act and go on while consuming their food.
I wish I had more meaningful insight on these chapters, but basically I found them pretty amusing. Particularly Bushman's "The Refinement of America" Chapter 3. He spoke about the meaning of gentility, and what was expected of people. What really struck me was that it was not only about physical appearance but also "the mind" and that certain people just don't have the air of gentility regardless of how well they are dressed or how wealthy they are. Similar to what Qaaim said, I also found the eating habits interesting. I didn't know that they ate with knives either, or that they didn't have furniture to eat on. Carson said in "Ambitious Appetites" that silverware was actually a sign of status at that time, which now seems rather ridiculous.
The first thing that came to mind when reading the introduction of Ambitious Appetites was an answer to the question about how we can discover the manners of people in the past. It seems if you trace the evolution of table manners since the 1960s you will have plenty of information about the digression manners have taken. We can use this information as a constant and discover the pattern of digression. With this pattern established we can take what little evidence we have of the past and create an idea of how there manners would have been, just by following the pattern in reverse. I know it sounds problematic but i think this would give us a good idea of where we came from know where we have been at the past 50 or so years.
The sucket fork was like the original design for the spork. It makes you wonder if they had KFC Bowls back then, since every evolution of eating utensils was born out of necessity.
This article had so many facts in it, but more impressive then the facts was the research that went into them. Old inventory records and random comments made by people during meals all put together to develop ideas of dining culture. This is a great lesson to learn about research. Some times you can get the most relevant information from what looks like a not very relevant source.
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