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A review by kates
Miss Leslie's Behaviour Book; A Guide And Manual For Ladies by Eliza Leslie
3.0
I am fairly positive that "Eliza Leslie" is actually Lady Catherine de Bourgh (an antebellum Lady Catherine from Philadelphia, to be sure, but stranger things have happened). There is something regally ridiculous about her narrative voice.
Some choice edicts:
"No colours are more ungenteel, or in worse taste, than reddish lilacs, reddish purples, and reddish browns."
"Above all, do not travel in white kid gloves. Respectable women never do."*
"Ladies no longer eat salt-fish at a public-table."
"Pouring butter-sauce over any thing is now ungenteel."
"We doubt if in the present day the talk and manners of Johnson would have been tolerated in really good society."
"Beware of trusting an infant, too confidingly, to an European nurse."
"Dancing at weddings is old-fashioned."
The Ladies' Guide is an interesting cultural artifact. Painful to read, in places--Miss Leslie, as well as being entertaining, is misogynistic and implacably racist.
*Happy to say I have NEVER ONCE contravened this injunction!! Clearly am naturally respectable.
Some choice edicts:
"No colours are more ungenteel, or in worse taste, than reddish lilacs, reddish purples, and reddish browns."
"Above all, do not travel in white kid gloves. Respectable women never do."*
"Ladies no longer eat salt-fish at a public-table."
"Pouring butter-sauce over any thing is now ungenteel."
"We doubt if in the present day the talk and manners of Johnson would have been tolerated in really good society."
"Beware of trusting an infant, too confidingly, to an European nurse."
"Dancing at weddings is old-fashioned."
The Ladies' Guide is an interesting cultural artifact. Painful to read, in places--Miss Leslie, as well as being entertaining, is misogynistic and implacably racist.
*Happy to say I have NEVER ONCE contravened this injunction!! Clearly am naturally respectable.