“This Demon Anger”
Politeness, conversation and control in eighteenth-century conduct
books for young women
This chapter examines the representation and
correction of anger in conduct books written for young women in
eighteenth-century Britain. An introductory section places the admonition
against anger in the context of John Locke’s and Lord Shaftesbury’s
discussions of, respectively, rational conduct and polite sociability. Then,
I succinctly identify ideal womanly conduct as emanating from three main
sources: self-control in body and mind, obedience coupled with rationality,
and a consciousness of the world that produces self-consciousness and an
attendant desire to conform to social rules. Anger is then shown to break
with all three of these: an angry woman no longer controls her body and her
mind; she is both disobedient and irrational; and she disregards the
constant and critical gaze of society, thus risking loss of reputation.
Ultimately, anger hinders young women in what was their main objective,
attracting the best possible husband.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Self-control and individualism: The link with conduct
- 3.The discourse of conduct: Readers, writers, and ideals
- 4.Conduct books and the display of anger
- 5.Avoiding anger
- 6.Conclusion
-
Notes
-
Sources
-
References
References (29)
Sources
Allen, Charles. 1760. The
Polite Lady; or, a Course of Female Education. In a Series of
Letters from a Mother to Her
Daughter. London: T. Carnan and F. Newberry.
Ancourt, Abbé d’. 1743. The
Lady’s Preceptor. Or, a letter to a young lady of distinction upon
politeness. Taken from the French of the Abbé D’Ancourt, and adapted
to the religion, customs, and manners of the English nation. By a
gentleman of
Cambridge. London: J. Watts.
Burney, Frances. 2002
[1778]. Evelina, Or the History of a Young
Lady’s Entrance into the
World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Chapone, Hester. 1773. Letters
on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Young
Lady, 2
vols. London: H. Hughs.
Cooper, Anthony Ashley, and Third
Earl of Shaftesbury. 1978
[1711]. Characteristics of Men, Manners,
Opinions, Times. New York & Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag.
Essex, John. 1722. The
Young Ladies Conduct: Or, rules for education, under several heads;
with instructions upon dress, both before and after marriage. And
advice to young
wives. London: John Brotherton.
Gregory, John. 1774. A
Father’s Legacy to His Daughters. 2nd
ed. London: W. Strahan,
Haywood, Eliza. 1743. A
present for a servant-maid: or, the sure means of gaining love and
esteem. London: T. Gardner.
Haywood, Eliza. 1756. The
Wife.London: T. Gardner.
Hill, Aaron. 1779
[1753]. An Essay on the Art of Acting; in
which, the dramatic passions are properly defined and described,
with applications of the rules peculiar to each, and selected
passages for practice. The Whole SO Treated AS To Afford AN Actor,
OR Speaker, Easy Principles For Acquiring A Power To Please AN
Audience, And To Give The Intelligent Reader The Clearest Idea Of A
Judicious Theatrical Performer. By the late A. Hill, esq; now first
revised, and separately
published. London: J. Dixwell.
Locke, John. 1997
[1689]. An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding. London: Penguin Classics.
Pennington, Lady Sarah. 1761. An
Unfortunate Mother’s Advice to Her Absent
Daughters. London: S. Chandler.
Richardson, Samuel. 2008
[1740]. Pamela, or Virtue
Rewarded. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP.
Savile, George, First
Marquis of
Halifax. 1688. The
Lady’s New-Years-Gift: Or, Advice to a Daughter under these
Following Heads: Viz. Religion, Husband, Children, Servants,
Behavior and Conversation, Friendships, Censure, Vanity and
Affectation, Pride, Diversions,
Dancing. London: Randal Taylor.
Wilkes, Wetenhall. 1741. A
Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice to a Young
Lady. 2nd
ed. Dublin: Oliver Nelson.
References
Armstrong, Nancy. 1987. Desire
and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the
Novel. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Braider, Christopher. 2018. Experimental
Selves: Person and Experience in Early Modern
Europe. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press.
Dahmer, Cornelia. 2016. “‘Still,
However, It Is Certain That Young Ladies Should Be More Apt to Hear
than to Speak’: Silence in Eighteenth-century Conduct Books for
Young Women.” XVII–XVIII Revue de la
Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et
XVIIIe
siècles 73: 123–145. <[URL]>.
English Short Title
Catalogue. [URL].
Foucault, Michel. 1999
[1971]. L’Ordre du
Discours. Paris: Gallimard.
Goff, Moira. 2008. “Essex,
John (d. 1744), Dancing
Master.” In Oxford
Dictionary of National
Biography. Oxford University Press.
Goring, Paul. 2005. The
Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century
Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haidt, Jonathan. 2013. The
Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and
Religion. New York: Vintage Books.
Hunt, Margaret R. 1996. The
Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender and the Family in England,
1680–1780. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Klein, Lawrence. 1994. Shaftesbury
and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics
in Early Eighteenth-Century
England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kukorelly, Erzsi. 2014. “The
Affectionate Author: Family Love as Rhetorical Device in
Eighteenth-century Conduct Books for Young
Women.” In Emotion,
Affect, Sentiment: The Language and Aesthetics of
Feeling. Swiss Papers in English Language
and Literature 30, ed.
by Andreas Langlotz, and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, 109–125. Tuebingen: Gunter Narr.
Kukorelly, Erzsi. 2017. “Samuel
Richardson’s Visual Rhetoric of
Improvement.” In What
is an Image in Medieval and Early Modern
England?. Swiss Papers in English Language
and Literature 34, ed.
by Antoinina Bevan Zlatar, and Olga Timofeva, 267–284.Tuebingen: Gunter Narr.
OED
Online. 2020. Oxford University Press. [URL] (accessed March 05,
2020).
Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources
of the Self: The Making of the Modern
Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Brown, Lucien, Iris Hübscher & Andreas H. Jucker
Shvanyukova, Polina
2022.
What Makes Literature Valuable: A Nineteenth-Century Perspective. In
Translation and Interpretation,
► pp. 187 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.