How to Be Good: Bad Advice From Eighteenth-Century Conduct Books by Tabitha Kenlon, Ph.D.
In Fanny Burney’s 1778 roles in life, setting out how-to’s novel Evelina, the eponymous from cradle to grave: how to be a heroine writes letters to friends good daughter, sister, friend, and and family detailing the balls wife, mother, and widow, or old and parties she attends and maid. the people she meets there, By the eighteenth century, providing both an entertaining with increased literacy and record of eighteenth-century a booming print culture, many society and a certainty that books included discussions of young ladies of ages past would education, accomplishments, and be quite at home on Facebook, what reading was suitable for Instagram, and TikTok. They young women (spoiler—almost would use the platforms to show nothing; even the Bible was off their accomplishments— fraught with danger). Most dancing, painting, needlework, authors acknowledged that musical ability, even foreign women went out into society and Figure 1. The Mirror of the Graces; or The English Lady’s Costume languages, perhaps lip-syncing spoke to men, though this was (1811). to the latest Reggaeton hit. And rarely encouraged, necessitating regardless of the century, their elders would tell them they were warnings against flirting, trying to be funny, or appearing wasting their time and suggest they devote their energy to more too intelligent. useful occupations. After the eighteenth century, the conduct book continued to It does seem that one of the most enduring human characteristics evolve. Despite the Victorian glorification of motherhood, interest is the desire to tell people what to do, and especially women. In the in what was happening outside the home increased. The nineteenth eighteenth century, conduct manuals remained a favorite method century turned attention to etiquette and how women should for the creation and perpetuation of ideals of appropriate female behave on trains, in hotels and restaurants, and at public events like activity; while there are few twenty-first-century versions of books weddings, christenings, and funerals. Twentieth-century iterations like Sermons to Young Women ( James Fordyce, 1766) or Strictures of conduct manuals tend to be divided by subject and often blur on the Modern System of Female Education (Hannah More, 1799), the line between self-help and etiquette. Dating guides proliferate, present-day society is no less eager to advise and control the as does advice on relationships in general, beauty, career, travel, and behavior of women. finance. Unlike the vast majority of conduct books, the more recent Ever since conduct books first appeared in the late fourteenth contributions to the genre tend to separate religious and secular, century,the genre has evolved and been adapted to suit changing social imitating the society they address. expectations. Conduct manuals could be collections of cautionary tales, sets of instructions, sermons, letters, or conversations. They Women’s Brains: A Necessary Inconvenience Writers of eighteenth-century conduct manuals took it for were written by both men and women, and though they originally addressed primarily men, women quickly became their preferred obvious fact that “Nature” had endowed all women with beauty, audience. The books were often organized by virtue and vice: the charm, a desire to please, and some degree of intelligence. There importance of humility, piety, chastity, modesty, and industriousness, were, however, carefully delineated limits to the scope and contrasted with the dangers of pride, affectation, ostentatious dress, approved uses of that intelligence. Young women were permitted being too forward, reading too much, talking too much—too much to read improving books and encouraged to avoid frivolities like of almost anything, really. Authors also liked to focus on women’s the novel, which, like romance novels and films of today, were r e d w o o d l i b r a r y . o r g 17
