Why Manners Matter

Judith Martin

Judith Martin (b. 1938) writes the internationally syndicated 1 United Features column "Miss Manners" and is a drama and film critic for The Washington Post. A version of the ideas in her book Common Courtesy, as she expressed them in a speech given at Harvard University, is reprinted below.

Americans today believe, erroneously, that acceptable social behavior follows effortlessly and naturally from personal virtue. The distinction between morals and manners has become blurred. All you need is a good heart, most people assume, and the rest will take care of itself. You don't have to write thank-you notes.

The "natural" approach to human relations presumes that to know any person well enough is to love him, that the only human problem is a communication problem. This denies that people might be separated by basic, genuinely irreconcilable differences—philosophical, political, or religious—and assumes that all such differences are no more than misunderstandings. Many forms of etiquette are employed precisely to disguise those antipathies that arise from irreconcilable differences.

Whenever the expectation exists that manners ought to be in full accord with morals, ethical problems arise with the polite fictions or conventions that smooth ordinary life. In the days of obligatory formal visiting, "Madam is not at home" was clearly understood to mean, "Madam can't face you any more than you can her, but takes due note of the fact that you have done your duty." Nowadays, we never allow ourselves the convenience of being temporarily unavailable, even to strangers. With telephones and beepers, people make themselves instantly accessible to everyone at all times, and it is the person who refuses to be on call, rather than the intruding caller, who is considered rude.

I receive much mail from correspondents who consider anything but blunt literalness to be dishonesty. They become indignant because people who ask them "How do you do?" don't really want to hear about the malfunctioning of their bowels, and they demand an alternative to signing letters "Yours truly" when writing to those whose trulies they don't want to be. It is a little annoying to have to check the weather report before venturing to say "Good morning." Those who believe in blunt, literal truth also claim special license to be rude by giving honest answers to such careless questions as "Do I look all right?"

The lack of standardization of manners results in an often angry, chaotic society, where every trivial act is interpreted as a revelation of the moral philosophy of the individual actor, who is left standing naked in his mores. Today, each person claims the right not only to design his own etiquette but also to take offense if others do not observe it, even if he has not troubled to acquaint them with his preferences.

Indeed, it has never been easier to insult people unknowingly. A gentleman opens a door for a lady because his mother taught him that ladies appreciate such courtesy, but this one turns around and spits in his eye because he has insulted her womanhood. A young lady offers her seat in a crowded bus to an elderly, frail gentleman, and he gives her a dirty look because she has insulted his manhood. Mind you, those are just people trying to be nice; the only problem is that they are operating on different systems of etiquette.

Curiously, it has never been harder to insult people intentionally. If you say, "You are horrid and I hate you," the person is apt to reply, "Oh, you're feeling hostile; I'll wait until you feel better." The idea that explaining one's motivation justifies any violation, is perhaps essential in a world of flying insults, where the all-purpose excuse, "I'm depressed," absolves one of any obligation or responsibility.

The idea that people can behave "naturally" without resorting to an artificial code tacitly agreed upon by their society is as silly as the idea that they can communicate by using a language without commonly accepted grammatical rules. Like language, a code of manners can be used with more or less skill, for good or evil purposes, to express a great variety of ideas and emotions. Like language, manners continually undergo slow changes and adaptations, but these changes have to be global, not atomic. For if everyone improvises his own manners, no one will understand the meaning of anyone else's behavior, and the result will be social chaos and the end of civilization.