Was Sartre Right?

In Jean Paul Sartre's play, No Exit, we hear the famous line, "... l'enfer, c'est les autres" -- hell is other people. While the vacation last week was really great, I have to wonder if he had other people or their children in my mind. I know that to some degree I may just be heading down the path of every other person who's decried the poor manners of the next generation, but after my wife and I were jostled and bumped by other people's kids cutting us off and brushing by us to get to where they needed to go, I found myself frustrated by the poor manners.

A friend of ours once shared a chapter with us from Phyllis McGinley's book, Sixpence in Her Shoe (Macmillan, 1964), a collection of short essays. (Just in case I get to sounding too self-righteous here, it's worth noting that what follows was written about my generation!) The chapter is entitled, "Manners Are Morals."

McGinley tells of a conversation with a friend about a disagreement the friend had had with her daughter over the rearing of the daughter's children. The daughter believed teaching them manners was nonsense. Her children weren't going to live by all those silly rules -- it was self-reliance and character she was after, not frills.

"I know she's wrong, but the stupid thing is I can't think of a good argument to contradict her. If manners are nothing but frills, Elaine is perfectly justified. I suppose we don't have time for frills in this age. It's so awful, though," and here my friend relapsed into real despair. "I just know those two are going to grow up horrid, oafish people - and I can't bear it!"

McGinley was hard pressed to help her friend justify rearing the children as mannerly people. Then she found the answer while visiting a New England boarding school for girls where a friend of hers was the headmistress. One of the students there paused on a formal stairway to render a curtsy. McGinley found the exercise "quite ridiculous" and questioned the headmistress as to why the school still insisted on such formality:

"Well," I confessed, "you have to admit it's pretty inessential. A curtsy in this day and age - and on the stairs. It's appealing but does it really count?"

"Good manners always count," said the Head serenely. "We could omit the curtsy, if you like. It's only a school ceremony. But we can't drop this drill on manners. It's one way of teaching morality."

"Morality?"

"Certainly." Her voice was gentle but assured. "Manners and morals are all of a piece. One is only proof of the other. That child you smiled at just now wasn't doing just a difficult gymnastic stunt. She was showing respect to superior wisdom, sagacity, and" - here the Head glanced at me slyly - "age."

... I thought it over for a moment. "You mean a gesture can instruct the mind?"

"We think so here," said the Head. "We believe in the philosophy that 'you become what you imitate.' Children learn the multiplication table by rote before they understand the theory of numbers. And we can also teach them certain physical responses before they are clever enough or good enough to understand genuine kindness. The young are hardhearted, you know. Selfishness has to be exercised out of them."

McGinley came to realize that good manners could be, to lift the phrase from sacramental theology, an outward expression of an inward reality:

[Elaine] was guilty of false reasoning, I decided ... Urbane gestures do not by themselves make philosophers or saints, but they do not unmake them either. In fact, the saints were almost all of them celebrated for courtesy. Francis de Sales, for instance. So silken were his manners that they almost obscured the hard fact of his holiness. Loyola charmed friends and enemies alike; Assisi's Francis was polite even to the wolves of the forest and the mice in his cell. Because young people were trained to automatic pleasantries, it did not follow they would lose the sterner virtues. A courtly person is not by definition a shallow person, nor is a rude one better for his rudeness. Indeed, rudeness implies egotism, which is the exact opposite of charity. Opening car doors means nothing in itself. Letting an older woman precede one into a room means nothing. But preparing the mind for kindnesses by teaching such flourishes does mean a great deal. Character is a sturdy cloth woven of hundreds of threads, and every thread is important. Elaine was permitting Monica and Tony to weaken that cloth by forcing them to make no effort at sacrifice or control.

During my absence last week, Rusty Lopez revisited our earlier series of observations regarding worship attire. Check out Rusty's follow-up post, then ask yourself, in light of what I'm writing here, is it possible that we may be on to something here?

Posted by Mike at April 20, 2004 11:49 PM | TrackBack