Cover not available
Part of
Manners, Norms and Transgressions in the History of English: Literary and linguistic approaches
Edited by Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 312] 2020
► pp. 121–140

“This Demon Anger”

Politeness, conversation and control in eighteenth-century conduct books for young women

| University of Geneva
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.
Keywords: conduct of life, anger, politeness, conduct books, young women, eighteenth century
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
Published online: 11 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.312.06kuk
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.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Burney, Frances. 2002 [1778]. Evelina, Or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chapone, Hester. 1773. Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Young Lady, 2 vols. London: H. Hughs.Google Scholar
Cooper, Anthony Ashley, and Third Earl of Shaftesbury. 1978 [1711]. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. New York & Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Gregory, John. 1774. A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters. 2nd ed. London: W. Strahan,Google Scholar
Haywood, Eliza. 1743. A present for a servant-maid: or, the sure means of gaining love and esteem. London: T. Gardner.Google Scholar
. 1756. The Wife.London: T. Gardner.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1997 [1689]. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. London: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
Pennington, Lady Sarah. 1761. An Unfortunate Mother’s Advice to Her Absent Daughters. London: S. Chandler.Google Scholar
Richardson, Samuel. 2008 [1740]. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Wilkes, Wetenhall. 1741. A Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice to a Young Lady. 2nd ed. Dublin: Oliver Nelson.Google Scholar
References
Armstrong, Nancy. 1987. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Braider, Christopher. 2018. Experimental Selves: Person and Experience in Early Modern Europe. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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]>. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
English Short Title Catalogue. [URL].
Foucault, Michel. 1999 [1971]. L’Ordre du Discours. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Goff, Moira. 2008. “Essex, John (d. 1744), Dancing Master.” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goring, Paul. 2005. The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haidt, Jonathan. 2013. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Hunt, Margaret R. 1996. The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender and the Family in England, 1680–1780. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Klein, Lawrence. 1994. Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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.Google Scholar
. 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.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Brown, Lucien, Iris Hübscher & Andreas H. Jucker
2023. Chapter 1. Multimodal im/politeness. In Multimodal Im/politeness [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 333], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Shvanyukova, Polina
2022. What Makes Literature Valuable: A Nineteenth-Century Perspective. In Translation and Interpretation, ► pp. 187 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 june 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.