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Society for Historians of the Early American Republic
Rudeness &Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America by John F. KassonReview by: Christopher MulveyJournal of the Early Republic, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Summer, 1992), pp. 268-269Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the EarlyAmerican RepublicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3124169 .
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JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC
Fleming's account details the numerous and often simultaneous projects designed to gather and coordinate data. He thus provides a first-order mapping of the prominent players and institutions whose science eluded the predictability of laboratory techniques. His well- documented book is based on an impressive list of primary sources.
Particularly useful are the numerous maps, illustrations, and graphic representations that document the constructs of data and theory as these changed over time. Temperature tables early in the century evolved by the 1870s into sophisticated charts showing the patterns of storms and annual rainfall. Fleming also discusses a growing recognition of the limits of explanatory models and their capacity to
predict global phenomena with so many complexities. This American
activity was important at home, but also abroad. Europeans attended to American systems of investigation as well as their outcomes, and
meteorology was one of the studies that helped give American scientists international recognition.
University of Minnesota Sally Gregory Kohlstedt
Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America.
By John F. Kasson. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990. Pp. xii, 305. Illustrations. $22.95; paper, $10.00.)
In Rudeness & Civility, John F. Kasson argues that nineteenth-century Americans had an obsession with class, and makes a powerful and
absorbing case for the study of etiquette books. These books made it
possible for persons to change class but also, says Kasson, undermined the nineteenth-century realities of class. More
fundamentally, the ancient reality of human types seemed called into
question by the counterfeiter of good behavior, and Kasson is able to tie the emergence of the confidence man and the private detective to America's rejection of Calvinist orderings of self. Both swindler and detective were skilled readers of the semiotics of the man in the crowd. Both were masters of disguise, but the detective, the one who
merges with the crowd, evolved as an anticonfidence man to outtrick the trickster.
An obsession with class brought with it an obsession with the
management of the body. "The new social settings of an urban- industrial age created a kind of ecology of embarrassment and increased the sense of vulnerability to possible rudeness," says Kasson (115). With bodily control went emotional control and the
Fleming's account details the numerous and often simultaneous projects designed to gather and coordinate data. He thus provides a first-order mapping of the prominent players and institutions whose science eluded the predictability of laboratory techniques. His well- documented book is based on an impressive list of primary sources.
Particularly useful are the numerous maps, illustrations, and graphic representations that document the constructs of data and theory as these changed over time. Temperature tables early in the century evolved by the 1870s into sophisticated charts showing the patterns of storms and annual rainfall. Fleming also discusses a growing recognition of the limits of explanatory models and their capacity to
predict global phenomena with so many complexities. This American
activity was important at home, but also abroad. Europeans attended to American systems of investigation as well as their outcomes, and
meteorology was one of the studies that helped give American scientists international recognition.
University of Minnesota Sally Gregory Kohlstedt
Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America.
By John F. Kasson. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990. Pp. xii, 305. Illustrations. $22.95; paper, $10.00.)
In Rudeness & Civility, John F. Kasson argues that nineteenth-century Americans had an obsession with class, and makes a powerful and
absorbing case for the study of etiquette books. These books made it
possible for persons to change class but also, says Kasson, undermined the nineteenth-century realities of class. More
fundamentally, the ancient reality of human types seemed called into
question by the counterfeiter of good behavior, and Kasson is able to tie the emergence of the confidence man and the private detective to America's rejection of Calvinist orderings of self. Both swindler and detective were skilled readers of the semiotics of the man in the crowd. Both were masters of disguise, but the detective, the one who
merges with the crowd, evolved as an anticonfidence man to outtrick the trickster.
An obsession with class brought with it an obsession with the
management of the body. "The new social settings of an urban- industrial age created a kind of ecology of embarrassment and increased the sense of vulnerability to possible rudeness," says Kasson (115). With bodily control went emotional control and the
268 268
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extension of the rules of etiquette reached a limit in the dictum addressed to young women in the 1890s to remember that they were "never alone." They were to learn to conduct themselves in private as if they were in public.
An investigation of public-private space by way of the theatre leads Kasson to his most powerful examination of American society. In a process that he calls the "disciplining of spectatorship" (215), the rude and noisy American crowd that took a major part in its own entertainment was reformed into the silent, disciplined, attentive audience. Opera houses in particular became the locus of class
struggle as they were taken over, pulled down and rebuilt to provide entertainment for the high bourgeoisie. When in 1849 the New York working class attempted to impose its participatory spectatorship at the newly built Astor Place Opera House, the subscribers called in the police and had the disorderly driven from the theatre. In the ensuing riot twenty-two people were killed. Etiquette writers had revealed their power.
Kasson laments the driving out of the rude and spectacular energies of the people from the theatrical scene. Kasson, however, has not only been telling the story of the working-class man. Boisterous behavior of males at Jacksonian assemblies excluded women from political life; boisterous behavior of males in the theatres excluded women other than prostitutes from the audiences; the boisterous world of street life excluded women from single participation in this life. The marginalising of workingmen represented the emancipation of middle-class women. If the improvement in manners during the nineteenth century was a mixed blessing as Kasson argues so brilliantly, it was mixed in more ways than one, and a woman's history of these matters might be significantly different from a man's.
King Alfred's College, Winchester Christopher Mulvey
The Origins of Natural Science in America: The Essays of George Brown Goode. Edited by Sally Gregory Kohlstedt. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Pp. xi, 411. Illustrations. $45.00.)
Goode (1851-1896), naturalist, museum administrator, and historian, spent his relatively short professional life chiefly at the Smithsonian Institution, where he became assistant secretary in charge of the museum in 1887. He was widely known for his museum work and for his efforts to place such activities on a sound base in both practice and
extension of the rules of etiquette reached a limit in the dictum addressed to young women in the 1890s to remember that they were "never alone." They were to learn to conduct themselves in private as if they were in public.
An investigation of public-private space by way of the theatre leads Kasson to his most powerful examination of American society. In a process that he calls the "disciplining of spectatorship" (215), the rude and noisy American crowd that took a major part in its own entertainment was reformed into the silent, disciplined, attentive audience. Opera houses in particular became the locus of class
struggle as they were taken over, pulled down and rebuilt to provide entertainment for the high bourgeoisie. When in 1849 the New York working class attempted to impose its participatory spectatorship at the newly built Astor Place Opera House, the subscribers called in the police and had the disorderly driven from the theatre. In the ensuing riot twenty-two people were killed. Etiquette writers had revealed their power.
Kasson laments the driving out of the rude and spectacular energies of the people from the theatrical scene. Kasson, however, has not only been telling the story of the working-class man. Boisterous behavior of males at Jacksonian assemblies excluded women from political life; boisterous behavior of males in the theatres excluded women other than prostitutes from the audiences; the boisterous world of street life excluded women from single participation in this life. The marginalising of workingmen represented the emancipation of middle-class women. If the improvement in manners during the nineteenth century was a mixed blessing as Kasson argues so brilliantly, it was mixed in more ways than one, and a woman's history of these matters might be significantly different from a man's.
King Alfred's College, Winchester Christopher Mulvey
The Origins of Natural Science in America: The Essays of George Brown Goode. Edited by Sally Gregory Kohlstedt. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Pp. xi, 411. Illustrations. $45.00.)
Goode (1851-1896), naturalist, museum administrator, and historian, spent his relatively short professional life chiefly at the Smithsonian Institution, where he became assistant secretary in charge of the museum in 1887. He was widely known for his museum work and for his efforts to place such activities on a sound base in both practice and
BOOK REVIEWS BOOK REVIEWS 269 269
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