Are good manners gospel? I\u2019m wondering after reading LDS author Josephine Spencer\u2019s 1904 short story, \u201cBy Natural Selection.\u201d The surprise ending occurs when the protagonist, Nell, decides not to marry Jere Radbourne but, instead, return to her very-absent and elusive boyfriend. Apparently Jere lacks what a girl wants in the way of cultured manners and civilized breeding; when he finally comes to propose (fifth installment), the \u201ceasy grace of the strong, lithe limbs was wanting\u201d and he becomes \u201cself-conscious\u201d and \u201cawkward.\u201d Uh, yeah. Was that moment easy and graceful for anyone?<\/p>\n
In any case, Nell cries about it and is torn, but says no\u2014despite the fact that Jere is pretty much perfect in every other aspect. The first four installments of the story establish that he is handsome, rich, industrious, religious, brave, loving, and kind. He dotes on his two motherless children (his wife died), works hard to maintain his business, and rescues Nell when her raft overturns in choppy water. His only bad quality is that he might<\/em> be stingy, though the gossiping women who report this realize the difficulty in establishing the line between frugal (good) and stingy (bad).<\/p>\n So it all comes down to bad manners. And not even bad<\/em>, bad manners\u2014just a lack of social ease.<\/p>\n Considering that this story was published in the LDS Young Woman\u2019s Journal<\/em> and was published during the Home Literature Movement\u2014when stories were explicitly didactic\u2014I was, well, surprised. I thought we liked the hard-working farm boy hero, not the dandified city slicker, though I suppose that might come from my Wyoming-wild-west heritage rather than my Mormon background. In any case my impression was that the poor Horatio Alger kid who pulled himself up by his bootstraps was supposed to win the girl. Apparently not. Manners matter to nineteenth-century Utah Mormons. Here\u2019s the \u201clesson\u201d of the story as expressed by a few female characters in dialogue form:<\/p>\n \u201cCountry people are not alone in those flagrant mistakes,\u201d said Mrs. Trane. \u201cI\u2019ve seen some of our city boys born and reared in our best families committing inexcusable offenses against the simplest rules of good breeding.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo have I,\u201d agreed Mrs. Smedley. \u201cIt\u2019s just an idea some people have that a boy\u2019s manners don\u2019t count in the world. It\u2019s funny, too, when every parent thinks his boy will surely be president or some sort of big-bug in life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019d only have to sit at a state banquet and see their offspring advertise their bringing up, in some terrible break of etiquette, to know just how much it counts to be on familiar terms with its rules,\u201d quoth Mrs. Smedley.<\/p>\n \u201cTo my mind,\u201d said Rilla, \u201cit has always seemed that our people should lay particular stress on such things. There is no excuse for us\u2014with the claims that we make of being an \u2018elect people\u2019\u2014that we do not reflect the best attainments of civilization in all ways. We should be an actual standard in all things that are \u2018lovely and of good report,\u2019 as our tenets teach.\u201d<\/p>\n [break]<\/p>\n I just deleted my rather sarcastic and witty conclusion that made fun of this story and its suppositions; I think I\u2019ve changed my mind. Josephine Spencer might have a point. When I\u00a0picture\u00a0Heavenly Father, I imagine a very dignified and mannerly person, not someone who chews with his mouth open, slouches at the table, or uses crass vernacular. I imagine someone perfectly at ease in any social situation with any person, since we all our His children. Perhaps we do need elect manners for an elect people. I just don\u2019t know who will decide what, exactly, constitutes lovely manners. Emily Post? President Monson?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Are good manners gospel? I\u2019m wondering<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8278,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8277\/revisions\/8278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}