Etiquette Throwback 1932: Conventions That Change With Locality
In her chapter The Vanishing Chaperone, Emily Post lays out how women both young, single and married are now behaving publicly with men.
Etiquette, 1934, Conventions That Change with Locality
We don’t envy Emily having to write about the gendered standards of appearing in public in 1922, 1934, or 1950, but we really appreciate that she did! In the 1930s Americans’ perspectives on how young women should behave and what men and women could be trusted to do together when out in public were more relaxed (at least from the standards of a decade prior). Her choice to call this chapter “The Vanishing Chaperon” was clever in that it gave her space to discuss the topic from its modern standpoint. We are relieved that today's standards of appropriateness have relaxed enough that women and men can dine with each other, attend the theater or the movies, sporting events, or even just take a walk, and generally be left alone, without tongues wagging or gossip lines ringing.
*Please note that the grammar and spelling in the following excerpt follow 20th-century standards.
CHAPTER XVII
THE VANISHING CHAPERONE AND OTHER NEW CONVENTIONS
Conventions That Change with Locality
Pg 291
In New York, for instance, a lady, not young, who is staying at a hotel, may have a man dine with her. Any married woman, if her husband does not object, may dine alone in her own home with any man she pleases.
A young girl may perfectly well have a boy she knows well take dinner with her in her parents' house on an evening when they are dining out. She may also, with their consent, go with him to the movies especially in the country, and stop at a confectioner's for an ice-cream or soda. But she certainly may not go to the theater and to a supper club with a man alone afterwards and hope that Mrs. Grundy will leave a shred of her reputation.
Yet a girl in her teens may motor around the country alone with a man, or sit with him on the rocks by the sea or on a log in the woods, or run all over the country in a motor car.
Young married women are beginning to lunch with men they know well in some of the New York restaurants, but not in others. In many cities it would be scandalous for a young married woman to lunch with a man not her husband, but quite all right for a young girl. Everywhere it is thought proper for a boy and girl to go to a club or even hotel restaurant in the afternoon to dance and take tea.
As said above, the interpretation of what is proper shifts according to locality, or perhaps it is merely that New York is coming into line with the less strict rulings of "points South." In Baltimore, for instance, it was proper even in Victorian days for a young girl to go to the theater alone with a man, and to have him see her home from a ball was not only permitted but absolutely correct.
Do you have a story about your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents’ first dates? We’d love to hear it and to know what decade it took place in. Can’t post in the comments below? Sign up for a subscription today, or post on the Monday Podcast comment thread.
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