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
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 2 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.