Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [583]
Parlors were crucial performance spaces. Here neophytes, by paying and receiving visits properly, could display their newfound delicacy of feeling, capacity for embarrassment, and rigorous self-control—acting “naturally” all the while, as if to the manners born. Hundreds of rules governed these events. You arrived at the stroke of the clock—“if you are a moment later, your character is gone”—and presented your calling card. On entering the house, you never thumped into the parlor, breathing hard, but prepared yourself first in an offstage dressing room, until “every part of your person and dress” was “in perfect order.” Next, your entrance: “A graceful bearing, a light step, an elegant bend to common acquaintance . . . are all requisite to a lady.” Gentlemen, for their part, were warned against offering their seat to the newly arrived lady—body warmth was offensive—and instructed to avoid “ill-bred” or “indecent” subjects of conversation. At table, as in conversation, all participated in making other players look good; should one spill wine on one’s dress, one was not to “exhibit peculiar or violent emotion,” and others were to tactfully ignore the faux pas.
Death was the final performance, and mourning manuals—advice books on bereavement—counseled that the capacity to experience deep grief was a sign of true gentility. As never before, the bourgeoisie (haute and petite alike) wept over their dead and developed a sentimental reverence for keepsakes, relics, “locks of shining hair.” 1846 witnessed the invention of the Frederick and Trump corpse cooler, indispensable for the expanding profession of undertaker who prepared the deceased—affixing cosmetics, wiring limbs in a “natural” position, inserting false teeth—until a polite visitor could give the formerly vulgar corpse the ultimate accolade: “He looks asleep.” Widows (though not widowers) were expected to wear mourning for two years, just as, in general, the burdens of refinement fell most heavily on women. It was a virtual prerequisite for middle-class (as for upperten) status that the male breadwinner spare his wife from work outside the household. She was installed instead as priestess of the home, where her task was to provide a serenely pastoral sanctuary from the urban jungle. In theory this was achieved by effortless emanations of her character; in fact it took a tremendous amount of hard work.
Usually the middle-class housewife had help, though seldom as much as was available to wealthy women. In 1855 New York had thirty-one thousand domestics, the largest category of women workers. This vast pool allowed one family out of every four to employ at least one servant. The ability to command at least some labor power—perhaps a cook or maid—became another virtually defining characteristic of middle classness.
To help the housewife manage these servants, a host of advisers was standing by. Often the how-to books and ladies’ magazines counseled mistresses to take a tough line vis-a-vis their employees. Complaints about refractory or inexperienced help became common coin, a way respectable women could instantly establish a class camaraderie. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was heard to say that one day she’d surely be hanged for “breaking the pate of some stupid Hibernian for burning my meat or pudding on some company occasion.”
Advice books also aided women in managing other aspects of their increasingly complex households. Housewifery was becoming a “profession,” wrote Catharine Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher’s sister, and she along with other writers would help women master it. They discussed how to do (or oversee) the cleaning, cooking, health care, and childrearing and how to sort out the new technology of stoves, illuminants,