Social Graces Research Articles

Being 'Just' a Husband Can Be Fun

Sir .—I was amused by Dr Stiehm's 1 account in the December 1989 issue of AJDC of his experiences as prince consort. He must be congratulated for being brave enough share with the readers his problems handling lack of notoriety. I find disconcerting, however, that his identity seems center mainly, if not exclusively, around his professional persona. He becomes a nonperson away from his job and experiences great difficulty not being the center of attention. I wish submit that he does not become a nonperson, but his wife's an intelligent and educated man with enough social graces and interests to make it without the aura of the white coat. As Dean of Students and a successful physician, my wife enjoys her own reputation and prominence. There are occasions when I am just the husband, or the Mrs as I like call myself. I do

Non-amnestic dementias: special considerations for clinicians and caregivers

Memory disorders are only one aspect of degenerative dementia. When the dementia instead is characterized by prominent impairments of judgment, insight, reasoning and social graces, this provides a challenge not only for differential diagnosis, but also for management. Two case studies illustrate the special issues facing a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and the caregivers who are involved with patients with non-amnestic dementias. The unique situation of the patient with presenile dementia is considered and broader questions of public policy are raised.

The Recital

THE RECITAL / Arthur Smith for my sister Twice, in dreams, in the ferocity Of chUdhood, I hacked her up so horribly she's still, to this day, Benefiting from my guilt, though I think she had my number Early on, long before the dreams, about the same time she acquired The social grace of the accordion. What can I say, offering not only—as only A younger brother could—to be her one companion, doggedly encouraging, As she went rummaging through the known musical notes For the better part of a year, but also to carry the contraption—bulky, an embarrassment— To and from her weekly lessons? I can almost weep remembering AU the renditions of "Home on the Range" I suffered through Between the ages of eight and nine, And how they crippled, forever, whatever sense of melody I may have had. And yet I say Amen to all that, and likewise to the summer afternoon of her recital, The heat doubling off the asphalt lot And pulsing at the stained-glass windows As though it wanted in. There we sat, in pews, Dressed up and chilled, miserably, 240 · The Missouri Review Whenever the air-conditioner kicked on, joining its drumming bass-note To the cacophony in which My sister, decked out in pinafore And ringlets, played No small part. It was bad. I was only nine and would twice later, Dreamily, do her in, but even then, wishing Td been Brought up in an orphanage, I was feeling the strangest order of affection For the girl being Manhandled by an accordion. Whatever that feeling was, it wasn't love, and we had shared too much For friendship. It struck me then that we were "blood," that curious word Grownups often leaned on as an excuse for someone's failings, as in "Well, blood will out," or, more simply, "He's blood-kin, you know," With the stress on "you know." Otherwise, other than the blood, My sister and I were girl and boy, no more than strangers, really, coincidentally whirled Into an orbit Not of our desire or design, But, rather, thrown together thrashing, the same way the wounded notes were then thrashing toward silence, The same way everything moves Toward silence— awkwardly, together. Arthur Smith THE MISSOURI Review · 242 ...

Presbyophrenia: the rise and fall of a concept.

The history of the concept of presbyophrenia is traced from its inception in 1863 to the present day. Early in the twentieth century it was used to refer to a subtype of dementia characterized by confabulations, marked memory impairment, hyperactivity, disorientation, elevated mood and preserved social graces. At the time it was considered to be either a form of Korsakoff's psychosis or a subtype of senile dementia. The decline of the concept started in the 1920s and was precipitated by the redefinition of dementia in terms of impaired cognition, cortical symptomatology and specific neuropathological changes. Three explanations for the curious combination of symptoms characterizing presbyophrenia were then suggested: toxic-delirious states, manic illness in late life, or a combination of cerebrovascular disease and senile dementia. It is suggested that the dismissal of presbyophrenia could have been premature as it may capture a behavioural phenocopy of relevance to clinical practice.

Getting a Word in Sex‐wise

Women aspiring to fast‐track corporate careers are surrounded by advice on how to succeed. Like the men who were their peers before they were shot out of the business‐school cannons, such women will need special training, technical skills, general intelligence, and social graces even to begin the race. But, experts tell them, women need additional skills and strategies if they want to advance in what is still the largely male world of upper management.

The Secondary School in Contemporary Western Society: Constraints, Imperatives, and Prospects

Secondary education will provide an all-round education for the whole child. It will provide vocational competence. It will teach the young to think, to make intelligent decisions, and to learn how to learn. It will provide an apprenticeship in the disciplines of knowledge and in contemporary technology. It will provide not only equality of opportunity to a nation's youth, but ultimately, social equality within an educated, democratic society. It will teach youth social graces, social competence, and character. It will help young people develop skills in and appreciation of the arts. It will help them become physically fit and give them skills to use in future leisure activities. It will teach young adults to review their existing value systems and to develop a coherent set that will be appropriately respectful of their worldwide and local community. It will help young people become competent in more than one language and it will consolidate their competence in the basic skills. Finally, it will prepare young people to lead fulfilling lives on the basis of good feelings towards others and about themselves.

James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (review)

262CIVIL WAR HISTORY strengths. It willbe welcomed by close students of theperiod; itwill also prove appealingto a much larger audience, for itis a finely crafted book and written in an easy and engaging style. Major L. Wilson Memphis State University James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery. By Drew Gilpin Faust. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982. Pp. xviii, 407. $27.50.) The sketchy outlines of James Hammond's personal indiscretions—his antebellum interracial liaisons, his extraordinarily irregular relationship with four of his nieces (and his subsequent extended exile from politics and polite company)—alone have guaranteed the South Carolina planter-politician bemused notoriety among students of Southern history . Moreover, he has been the subject of several essays and at least one political biography describing his public role as a politician, proslavery essayist and agricultural reformer. But Drew Faust, who had earlier explored Hammond's relationship with other Southern intellectuals, has given us the first full biographical treatment of this remarkable figure and she does her story justice. Faust has organized her biography around a number of topics and subthemes, but the core of her study is reflected in the subtitle she has chosen. Hammond waged a relentless drive for mastery over his family (with mixed success), his slaves (with equally mixed results), and his political constituents (where he was nearly undone by his own weaknesses ). While he was born in 1807 with few assets beyond intelligence and ambition, Hammond soon showed that a young man of his charm and appearance could go far with these attributes when he set out to marry the sister-in-law of Wade Hampton II. Catherine Hampton lacked most of the social graces and she was certainly no beauty. ("Young wags in Charleston," recalled one relative, "used to say they wouldn't marry her if every pimple on her face was worth a million dollars." p. 59.) But she had two overwhelming advantages: family position and a 10,000 acre plantation on the Savannah River. Brushing aside the well-founded suspicions of the Fitzsimmons family (Hammond may have even seduced her in order to be certain he would gain her hand), he gained the bride and the plantation he desperately sought. With his new position in the South Carolina aristocracy and his finances reasonably secure, Hammond moved quickly up the ladder of success and status in South Carolina public life. In 1834, he temporarily abandoned his aristocraticpretensions and campaigned successfully for Congress as a representative of the "undistinguished mass of the people . . . imbued with the love of democratic institutions" (p. 151). BOOK REVIEWS263 Eight years later he took office as South Carolina's governor. By this time, Hammond had established himself as a successful politician, as well as a brilliant agricultural reformer and intellectual defender of slavery. But at the very moment of his greatest achievement, Hammond let slip the protective mask of emotional self-control that had guided him throughout his life. Beginning in 1840, the lonely and repressed Hammond had become increasingly intimate with his four nieces, ages fifteen through twenty. During these same years he was to be estranged from his wife by sexual liaisons with at least two of his slaves, but in this case, the young women were not only relatives, they were the daughters of Wade Hampton II. While Hammond apparently stopped short of sexual intercourse with the four young girls, it is clear that his attentions went far beyond the usual affection a doting uncle might show toward his nieces. When Hampton learned of the series of incidents in the fall of 1843, he set about to destroy Hammond's reputation by making a sketchy account of his actions available to South Carolina political and social leaders. In the end, Hampton succeeded most completely in destroying the reputations of his daughters (none ever married). And Hammond, after an extended political exile, returned to the United States Senate and served until the state's secession in 1860. But this last political act in Hammond's long career was an anticlimax. His new found hesitancy on the issue of secession, his seemingly lukewarm adherence to the new nation, and his resistance to Confederate demands...

Mother-Daughter Relationships: Problems of Self-Determination in Novak, Heinrich and Wohmann

Until recently, most mother-daughter relationships in German literature reflected the traditional family hierarchy in which women's lives revolved around the male. Mothers searched for suitable partners for their daughters, watched over their virginity, and taught them virtues and social graces. Daughters obeyed. If conflicts arose between the two at all, they very often stemmed from the mother's naive misguidance.' Literature has shown how mothers have prepared daughters to fulfill their vital function within the family and accept a passive role in society. What these fictional accounts neglected to deal with is the paradox of power which daughters inherit from mothers. We are rarely provided with a glimpse of the two-faceted reality which is perpetuated in women's lives: their influential position in the domestic sphere, and simultaneously, their socially and economically induced powerlessness.2 Only since more women have gained economic independence has the age-old model of womanhood been widely challenged in literature. At the same time, the relationship between mother and daughter, which has been treated marginally and two-dimensionally for so long, is being recognized in its depth and complexity.3 Helga Novak, Jutta Heinrich and Gabriele Wohmann have been among the first writers to focus on this issue. Their three novels Die Eisheiligen, 1979, (Novak), Das Geschlecht der Gedanken, 1977, (Heinrich) and Ausflug mit der Mutter, 1976, (Wohmann) are models of mother-daughter conflicts which uncover social realities by sharply revealing the nature and source of women's powerlessness, perpetuated in this relationship.4 The first novel, by Novak, shows how a mother's brutal child-rearing methods breed a lack of self-worth in a young girl. It also reflects upon the societal pressures which prevent a woman from deciding against motherhood and following other inclinations instead. The second novel, by Heinrich, attacks the hierarchy of the family structure as the source of women's powerlessness, and shows how this debility is traditionally transferred from the mother to the growing daughter. The third novel, by Wohmann, magnifies an older mother's lack of independence. The

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Greatest Negro woman the race has produced.' First lady of social graces.2 twig bender of Sedalia.3 One of the foremost exponents of cultural education.4 Woman of the Year.5 These things were said about Mrs. Charlotte Hawkins Brown. Who was she, and what did she accomplish that would elicit these superlatives? The purpose of this article is to sketch her life and work, and to assess her contributions.6

Bendigo Shafter by Louis L’Amour, and: Comstock Lode by Louis L’Amour

Reviews Bendigo Shafter. By Louis L’Amour. (New York: Bantam Books, 1979. 324 pages, $2.25, paperback.) Comstock Lode. By Louis L’Amour. (New York: Bantam Books, 1981. 378 pages, $6.95, paperback.) Readers who wish to get a full sense of Louis L’Amour’s productions, for whatever purposes, must inevitably take on his two blockbusters, Bendigo Shafter and Comstock Lode. These two novels, in their separate ways, continue the historical mode that L’Amour launched into with Sackett’s Land, Rivers West, and Fair Blows the Wind, with the exception that the main characters of the later two novels are not members of the Sackett, Talon, or Chantry families. Both are marketed as historical novels rather than as Westerns, and they are both about twice as long as the characteristic tales that flowed from his typewriter in the 1960’s and 1970’s. And Comstock Lode is physically a big book, being as large in paperback as it is in cloth. In their broader features they perpetuate the pattern of all of L’Amour’s fiction: there is a superlative hero who fights through adversity to ensure that the country will be settled and developed properly. Good and evil are clearly distinguishable from one another, and the conflict is resolved unequiv­ ocally through violence. The plot resolution, along with a steady stream of narrative comments, affirms the broadly held values of the mass audience. And in these novels, as in all of L’Amour’s fiction, there is a sprinkling of errors in grammar, sentence structure, and word usage — errors that are overshadowed by a profusion of corpses and a liberal fare of “authentic” historical and geographical detail. In Bendigo Shafter, the titular hero tells his own story of coming to manhood. Wise beyond his tender years, he lavishes upon his reader many mini-sermons about the building of a country; almost innumerable lectures on frontier lore; occasional analogies between the Plains Indians and Arthurian Knights, Bantus, and Europeans; and prophecies about the passing of the Indians and the buffaloes, and about the probability of stellar travel. He is a voracious reader (dwelling chiefly on Blackstone, Plutarch, and Locke), 316 Western American Literature not to mention the successful author of a treatise on mountain lions. When Bendigo goes to New York, Horace Greeley praises the budding writer’s lean prose style, and seeks his wisdom about the future of the West. An excellent pugilist, Ben beats up some New York thugs; a natural gentleman, he is not at a loss for social graces. All of this would be more tolerable if it were not narrated in the first person, a point of view that L’Amour has labored with frequently and without much success. It seems that when the narrator is not serving as the author’s mouthpiece for lectures in history and civilization, he is telling the reader of the many compliments he receives for his strength, good looks, and acute mind. As a youthly narrator, Bendigo Shafter dwindles in comparison with Dickens’ Pip, Twain’s Huck, or Schaefer’s Bob Starrett, even though he is not quite as risible as the narrators of L’Amour’s Rivers West and The Proving Trail. Comstock Lode is a less comprehensive, lessvisionary book than Bendigo Shafter; perhaps also because it is written in the third person, it is more read­ able. In Comstock Lode L’Amour introduces a new set of authentic details, the fruits of I/Amour’s renewed research, as he reworks the melodramatic plot of such novels as Reilly’s Luck and The Proving Trail — the story of a young man who avenges his parents’ death (the two earlier novels had a father and a father figure killed, while in this one L’Amour sets the wheels rolling with two murdered fathers and two violated, murdered mothers). Val Trevallion, like some of L’Amour’s other recent heroes, is an immigrant who soon becomes whole-heartedly American in his devotion to developing the country. He exercises this devotion in the silver mines of Virginia City, Nevada, in 1859-60, and he fulfills the larger purpose of producing the silver that the President will need if he...

Book Reviews

Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Human Behaviour and the Social Environment: A Perspective for Social Work Practice , Grace Ganter and Margaret Yeakel , New York , Columbia University Press , 1980 . Pp. 290 . $18.75. JILL FORD JILL FORD Lecturer in Social Work Glasgow University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 11, Issue 1, 1981, Pages 242–244, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjsw.a054620 Published: 01 March 1981

The Primary Education of French Girls: Pedagogical Prescriptions and Social Realities, 1880-1940

WOMAN is the guardian of thefoyer. Her place is at home, in the house of her parents or husband. . . ; it is for the foyer that she must reserve all her grace and good humor. ... A woman who does not love her home, who has no taste for household duties. . . cannot remain a virtuous woman for long. Such were the instructions and warnings about the domestic mission of women which Madame Henry Greville offered to French schoolgirls in one of the most widely used textbooks for moral and civic education in girls' public primary schools during the late nineteenth century. (1) Greville's teaching conformed to the wishes of the Ministry of Public Instruction which ordered that primary schools should prepare boys to become workers and soldiers and initiate girls in the care of the household and ouvrages defemmes. (2) The statements by the Ministry and Greville indicate that some aspects of primary schooling for girls would differ from that for boys during the Third Repubic. It is therefore necessary to modify a generalization about the identity of boys' and girls' elementary schooling which Antoine Prost makes in his standard Histoire de l'enseignement en France. Prost states that the differences between the education of girls and boys evident on the secondary school level before World War I do not apply to the primary schools. Whereas the state secondary schools for girls sought to familiarize the future ladies of the republican bourgeoisie with domestic virtues and social graces as well as general culture, the primary schools, says Prost, served the children of the people and aimed to prepare both sexes for a lifetime of hard work. (3) It is true that boys' and girls' primary schools shared the same formal curriculum for academic subjects, drawing and singing and differed only in the short-lived requirement of military exer-

The career of Alexandra Denisova: Vancouver, de Basil, and Cuba

WHEN YOUNG PATRICIA MEYERS began studying ballet in Vancouver, British Columbia, in the mid-1930s, there were few opportunities for serious dancers in Canada. To have a career she had to go abroad. The story of how she became Alexandra Denisova, a principal dancer with the de Basil Ballet Russe, and as the wife of Alberto Alonso played an important part in the development of the Cuban ballet before going into musicals and films, reveals much about the dance world of the 1930s and '40s. In 1934 the American dancer June Roper slipped quietly into Vancouver to visit a sister who had settled there and was shortly commandeered into teaching dancing at a projected school for the theatre arts. Before the visits of the Ballet Russe companies, ballet connoted to many the toe dancing in the music hall and pantomime forms that a generation of new Canadians had seen on the English stage.1 Daughters from middle-class families were enrolled in dancing schools primarily to acquire social graces, and the rigid discipline of ballet was generally reserved for children requiring therapy for physical defects and problems. Prospects of a career in dancing, locally or otherwise, were rarely entertained. Vancouver society matrons subscribed to The Dancing Times and religiously kept abreast of theatrical trends in England. June Roper's picture on the cover of the February 1929 issue of the journal heralding her debut in the Cochran Revue had come to their attention, and stories of her accomplishments preceded her arrival.2 It was thus known that she had studied as a child with the Cecchetti disciple Ernest Belcher in Los Angeles, that she had been a stunt woman in silent films, and that she incorporated ballet technique and spectacular physical feats into her adagio dancing. She had sought ? 1979 by Leland Windreich

CHILDHOOD IN CHINA

If our observations were at all representative, the outstanding feature of childhood in China, and that which raises the lower basic problem, is the high level of concentration, orderliness, and competence of the children. The docility did not seem to us to be the docility of surrender and apathy; the Chinese children we saw were emotionally expressive, socially gracious, and adept. . . . Over and over we asked ourselves how the very young Chinese child was brought competence, social grace, and restraint. Put in its most simplifying form, Chinese children behave the way they do because that is the way children behave! The contrast with common American practice can be easily made. An American teacher (or parent) considers how he or she will effect a change in a child, what should be done with the child to make a difference. This attitude, which runs across many different theories of education, sees teaching as instrumental, as a set of procedures for the purpose of changing behavior. If the instruments of education, whether they are problem setting, positive reinforcement, or modeling, are ineffective, then change is difficult or distorted. Such a consciously instrumental attitude seems far less prevalent in Chinese schools. Rather, we formed the impression that Chinese teachers have uniform expectations of what children at one or another age can do and that they behave with the virtually certain knowledge that the children would come to behave in the expected way—and, critically, it did not much matter whether the children got there early or late.

The Hidden Role of Fraternal Organizations in the Education of Black Adults: Prince Hall Freemasonry as a Case Study

Among middle class blacks, people whose aspirations for suc cess and status have been strong but whose economic and occu pational base for achievement has been weak, the desire for edu cation, broadly conceived, including manners and social graces, intellectual and practical business skills, citizenship training, and moral instruction has been overpowering. One of the places they have received the education they have desired has been from a multi-faceted institution not normally associated with learning; one that performs educational tasks outside a formal institutional framework: Prince Hall Freemasonry, the black branch of the international Freemasonic Order. The fraternity's continuous role as "educator" for the last 200 years is discussed.

The Strategy of Tact

EBSTER defines as discernment of what is to do or in dealing with others. Tact is a social grace practiced by the excep tionally thoughtful or the guileful. In the current en counter groups and sensitivity marathons, forthright ness and confrontation would seem to have replaced nice discernment. Tact would seem a refuge for the timid or the dishonest. Certain recent experiences have taught me, however, that tact is not out of fashion in teaching. Rather, it is absolutely essential, for important reasons. Teachers are system makers, and the larger the class the more pervasive is the system that is con structed. In a composition class of twenty-five students, for example, some system of paper submission, reading, and return is inevitable if the teacher is to manage the amount of work needed to give his students a thorough writing experience. The sheer burden of labor involved in collecting, reading, and criticizing so many papers, not to mention individual conferences that must be fre quently held, demands some task organization to which all students must be asked to submit. Such system mak ing occurs in all classes of any size, no matter what the subject of the course. Teachers, therefore, are often called upon to exercise that tact necessary to the mesh ing of student and system. The teacher must ensure that the individual student will actually learn under his sys tem. The problem in Websterian terms is, how can the teacher exercise toward each of his students discernment of what is to do or say when he must confront that student through a Let me give this problem specific dimensions by citing two incidents from my recent experience. I teach in a university which has made an effort to recruit black students and keep them, and consequently I have been challenged recently by several composition classes containing small minorities of black students, many of whom were sitting for the first time in predom inantly white classes. Both situations I will describe place a further refinement on tht problem posed above: how can the teacher exercise toward a sensitive minority student discernment of what is appropriate through a system? Both situations demanded that kind of tact I had not learned to use well, and so what fol w lows are stories of tactlessness not intentional but not the less hurtful. In a recent summer advanced exposition course there was one black girl, Darlene, among twenty-odd white students. Summer courses are notoriously fast paced and the teacher's contact time limited. Casting around for ways in which students could get more per sonal attention on their frequent papers, I decided to ask some of the better writers in the class to become tutors to

Edith Wharton's American Beauty Rose

Edith Wharton frequently likens Lily Bart, the heroine of The House of Mirth (1905), to a flower. Her name is ‘Lily’; when she kisses Lawrence Selden ‘her face turned to him with the soft motion of a flower’ in her privileged station in life she is an ‘orchid basking in its artificially created atmosphere’; and, in sum, she is‘ the fine flower and complete expression ’ of the ideals of beauty and social grace held by the old New York aristocracy. Most significant, however, is Mrs Wharton's use of rose imagery when describing Lily. For example, when Lily came to her friend Gerty Farish after having narrowly escaped the unwelcome advances of Gus Trenor, Gerty reflected that everything about Lily was ‘warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose’. Indeed, the entire society of which Lily is ‘the fine flower’ diffuses a ‘rosy glow’. Those who stroll these ‘rosy shores of pleasure’, such as Judy Trenor, have complexions of ‘rosy blondness’. The fastest rising star in the economic and social firmament is Simon Rosedale, ‘a plump, rosy man of the blond Jewish type …’

Bad Manners in America

The widely held contention that American manners are uniformly bad is not tenable. The very mobility of American society brings into sharp focus the bad manners of the minority, thus making bad manners seem to be the norm. The sharp delineations between classes are less important as proponents of exemplary manners and mores. The changes in etiquette frequently come from other sources. Higher education does not necessarily result in culture. Education and social grace are today not necessarily synonymous. The decline of the mother's influence in the home has meant the decline of what was once known as "ordinary" manners among America's children. Because of many economic pressures, we are living more simply, with less formality and a minimum restriction upon the family. The pattern of meal-taking has changed drastically. There is a blurring, too, of the difference between the sexes, with a resulting difference in our approach to manners between them. "Society" has taken on many meanings and is influenced by geography. Reduction in service has been one of the most striking changes in our society, along with a great change in our attitude toward language, from which "indelicacies" have virtually disappeared. The Negro revolution is making, and will continue to make, a great change in our manners and mores. The admission of new peoples into our social stream has made changes in our behavior. We have become increasingly forthright. Our etiquette is changing. When developing manners are deemed "bad," they are usually modified because bad manners make people uncomfortable.

Marihuana and Alcohol

To the Editor:— During the past two years a flood of material, both in the medical literature and in the lay press, has related to the use and effects of marihuana. On analysis and reflection, I have been astounded to note that virtually every deleterious effect ascribed to marihuana is also produced by alcohol. Conversely, there are many serious effects resulting from the short-term or long-term use of alcohol which are not produced by marihuana; specifically, liver cirrhosis, gastritis, and profound brain damage. It is difficult to avoid the irony that the use of marihuana is a felony while the use of ethyl alcohol is often a social grace. If one is inclined to reduce the use of marihuana from a felony to a misdemeanor, it is only just to consider use of alcohol a similar minor criminal offense. Following the 14th annual conference of mental health representatives of state

Marihuana and alcohol

<h3>To the Editor:—</h3> During the past two years a flood of material, both in the medical literature and in the lay press, has related to the use and effects of marihuana. On analysis and reflection, I have been astounded to note that virtually every deleterious effect ascribed to marihuana is also produced by alcohol. Conversely, there are many serious effects resulting from the short-term or long-term use of alcohol which are not produced by marihuana; specifically, liver cirrhosis, gastritis, and profound brain damage. It is difficult to avoid the irony that the use of marihuana is a felony while the use of ethyl alcohol is often a social grace. If one is inclined to reduce the use of marihuana from a felony to a misdemeanor, it is only just to consider use of alcohol a similar minor criminal offense. Following the 14th annual conference of mental health representatives of state