Losing Face

Shame, Society and the Self in Early Modern England

Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032129273
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000550399
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book is a study of shame in English society in the two centuries between c.1550 and c.1750, demonstrating the ubiquity and powerful hold it had on contemporaries over the entire era. Using insights drawn from the social sciences, the book investigates multiple meanings and manifestations of shame in everyday lives and across private and public domains, exploring the practice and experience of shame in devotional life and family relations, amid social networks, and in communities or the public at large. The book pays close attention to variations and distinctive forms of shame, while also uncovering recurring patterns, a spectrum ranging from punitive, exclusionary and coercive shame through more conciliatory, lenient and inclusive forms. Placing these divergent forms in the context of the momentous social and cultural shifts that unfolded over the course of the era, the book challenges perceptions of the waning of shame in the transition from early modern to modern times, arguing instead that whereas some modes of shame diminished or disappeared, others remained vital, were reformulated and vastly enhanced.

1 Constructions of shame

DOI: 10.4324/9781003226871-2

Early modern writers on the subject of the ‘humane passions’ accorded shame a central role. Drawing on a long tradition of thought that dated back to ancient authorities and Christian theology, these authors pointed to the external manifestations and signs of shame – the blushing, downturned or covered face, the averted gaze. Yet first and foremost, they elaborated on shame as a passion that resonated with moral qualities. Citing Cicero and Plato, the author of The French Academie (1586) described shame as ‘the guardian of all the vertues … [which] deserveth great commendation … as that which fashioneseth [life] according to the paterne of decencie and honestie’. Other authors drew attention to the moral benefits of shame as a deterrent against ‘loose affections’ and producing a ‘bridle on vice’, pointing as well to its moral drawbacks. In his A Table of Humane Passions (1621), Nicolas Coeffeteau warned that the shame that induced humans to ‘decline from wickednesse’ could also produce moral laxity: ‘sometimes shee diverts them from commendable and vertuous actions, by apprehension of an imaginary dishonour’. In Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), the shame that came from the loss of honour – ‘the apprehension of some crosses, which may make man infamous’ – could bring in its wake despair, mental anguish and disease, even death.¹

These discussions of shame as a passion, with their emphasis on immorality and dishonour as the sources of shame, convey important and enduring dimensions of early modern shame. Yet they do not indicate shame’s many divergent, rich and compelling constructions. An array of discourses and beliefs that marked the era from the mid-sixteenth century onwards resonate with implications for shaming and shame; the discourse on civility and honour, humanist notions of virtue and morality, beliefs regarding gender, sexuality and the human body, Protestant notions of sin and salvation – all these invariably implied sources and inducements for shaming and shame. As the print market expanded substantially over the course of the era, the shame that was intrinsic to these discourses was communicated in numerous publications, including books on manners and conduct manuals, scientific treatises, and literary and devotional works of varied genres and sorts.

This chapter examines the shame that was conveyed in a selected set of these writings and genres. The aim is to probe contemporary ways of thinking about, and communicating, shame; the values and belief systems that gave rise to shame, its varied constructions and meanings, the rhetorical means, vocabulary, and imagery through which the shame was evoked. The chapter unravels great variations within and between the different writings and genres, each with its purported aim and audience; yet it also identifies overlapping themes and recurring constructions. It indicates not only diverse meanings of shame and the powerful hold it had on the contemporary mind, but also the major forms in which it could be experienced and applied in society at large.

Manners, honour, morality

Early modern constructions of shame were profoundly affected by an emerging code of civility designed to regulate the manners of an educated elite. The codification of rules for proper conduct dated back to medieval traditions of injunctions for polite behaviour and to fifteenth-century courtesy poems intended to advise on the upbringing and education of aristocratic youth. Over the ensuing centuries, the literature on manners expanded, greatly enhanced by works imported from the Continent and increasingly aiming at wider audiences beyond the courtly aristocracy. Writers gradually came to replace ‘courtesy’ with ‘civility’ in denoting the forms of conduct and set of moral values that were the distinguishing mark of an educated elite.² At the core of the code were rules regarding the care and control of the body and its processes, followed by detailed directions for communication in speech and writing, ceremonial proceedings and social interactions. All the rules were designed to produce a mode of conduct typically marked by emotional control, moderation, and the accommodation of the self to the expectations of others. Francis Seager’s The schoole of virtue, an early manual that remained popular throughout the sixteenth century and beyond, detailed instructions that were carefully structured around the daily routine of a young man, from the early morning ‘when thou risest’, until dusk. Beginning with rules for bodily care – washing, dressing, taking care of every body part, including the nose (‘thy nose to cleanse, from all filthiness’,) nails, ears, and teeth – the book proceeded with instructions on behaviour ‘in going by the streets’, at school, during meals (‘How to behaue thy selfe in sitting at the Table’), and when attending church. Separate chapters were devoted to the merit of learning and moral conduct, while the two central chapters offered guidelines on communication – ‘how to behave thy selfe in talking with any man’. Here detailed instructions were presented regarding rhetorical skill, bodily position and tone of voice during conversations, all of which were intended to project control of the body and sobriety: ‘thy words duly place, with countenance sober and body upright, thy feet just together, thy hands in like plight … in an audible voyce thy words plainly utter … nor high, nor too low since both exceed measure’.³ Similar rules and principles were repeated and elaborated upon in numerous manuals that appeared during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the publications, both translated and indigenous, becoming increasingly bulky, and the rules outlined in them ever more numerous, refined and stringent.⁴

A strong sense of shame was built into this highly elaborate edifice of detailed and intricate rules, for the art of ‘delivering things well’ – as Antoine de Courtin referred to moderate and precise manners performed under the guise of effortlessness and a ‘pleasing appearance’ – was the defining mark of elite status. It not only denoted a person’s superior position, but also earned him the right to respect and the honour accorded by inferiors and among peers. Immense social meanings and values were hence inscribed in every act, speech, or bodily signal, with minute deviations presented as having grave consequences and ‘provoking or disobliging’, causing ‘injury, disesteem, offence’. While good breeding and training from a young age were deemed indispensable for mastering the art of manners, skill, and resourcefulness were still required to accomplish it, and the risk of transgression lingered. One could stumble in the display of a specific act or speech, gestures could have unintended outcomes, the gestures of others could be misinterpreted or their treatment could be perceived as deficient. As the rules became stricter and more elaborate, so the stakes became higher; ‘Do nothing [emphasis mine] which may be unpleasant, and offensive their senses’, as one writer summed the challenge of decorum and the stakes that were entailed.⁵ With every single aberration being construed as liable to offend, the opportunity for shaming and shame – showing inconsiderateness and disrespect or being afflicted by these – was imminent.

Conduct manuals habitually constructed this type of shame through the detailed elaboration of those gestures and acts considered to cause disesteem or offence. Rather than focus strictly on the postures judged appropriate and hence rewarded with honour and esteem, they devoted large sections of their work to the kind of impropriety that a person should avoid, and it is through these that shame was elicited and greatly enhanced. Already in the fifteenth century, courtesy poems described poor table manners with the pejorative reference to serfs and peasants, warning against the spectre of humiliation and shame: ‘Kutte nouht[e] youre mete … as it were felde men … leste th[ou] be callyd … both cherle or gloton’.⁶ Similarly, sixteenth-century conduct books not only set the rules for proper manners but also went on to offer negative formulations and prohibitions that were rife with particularly offensive notions of punitive and exclusionary shaming and shame. Indecent manners were considered the mark of inferior status, as displayed by the servants, the uneducated, artisans, and common people. Since civility was increasingly depicted as the product of the human urge to distance oneself from brute nature, bad manners were more pronouncedly associated with beasts, and inappropriate manners minutely and graphically conjured up as the epitome of brutishness and savagery.⁷ In his discussion of table manners, Seager began with instructions on proper table arrangements and manners, but then moved to negative constructions and prohibitions in which every faulty manner was singled out as ‘rude’ or described as beastly. ‘And rudeness it is thy pottage to sup or speak to any his nose in the cup’… ‘thy mouth fill not full … not smacking thy lips as commonly do dogs … nor gnowing of bones as doe dunghill dogs, such rudeness abhor, such beastliness flie’. His injunctions to avoid over-talking, picking ones’ teeth and spitting were followed with the denigrating caveat, ‘this rudeness in youth is naught at a word’, while habits of ‘filthy talk’ were labelled as an indecent abuse of the tongue, ‘like a beast’. In the late seventeenth century, Antoine de Courtin devoted a special chapter in The Rules of Civility to the issue of how to distinguish ‘things decent from things indecent’, pointing out that ‘the farther we keep from the practice of Beasts, the nearer we come to that perfection to which nature directs’. Acts involving bodily needs, which humans shared with animals (eating, drinking, sneezing), should be performed ‘with much decency and as little conformity with the beasts as is possible’. Elsewhere in his list of prohibitions, Courtin used the beastly metaphor to invoke utter disdain. ‘You must … cut out your meat into small pieces, and not put great Gobbets into your mouth that may bunch out your cheeks like a monkey’.⁸

A rich and increasingly expansive vocabulary describing the shame of incivility appeared in the pages of many manuals, marked by the use of numerous synonyms, elaborate phrases, and an exaggerated style that greatly enhanced the shame and disgrace entailed in the lack of manners. Courtin’s chapter on the rules of conversation was structured entirely by referencing improper conduct – what to avoid rather than how a person should speak – with each instance highlighting impropriety through repetitive and synonymous phrases:

It is unmannerly to make comparison with the person to whom you are speaking … It is unhandsome … to add the surname or quality of a person to whom you speak … It is unhandsome likewise … to say rudely, you are mistaken Sir… tis indiscretion to make use of the person to whom you speak; it is not discreet for a man to express … it is not decent to Fly out in the praise …

‘It is not civil’ ‘nor is comely’, ‘it is not mannerly’, ‘it would be want of respect’ to intrude yourself; – ‘indecent’, ‘disobliging’, ‘disrespectful’, ‘ungraceful’, ‘disagreeable’, ‘not becoming’, ‘rude’, ‘very ill breeding’, ‘ridiculous’ – these are but a few examples of the entire vocabulary used in a single chapter to denote the impropriety and shame of unmannerly speech.⁹

Other chapters in Courtin’s work were not as packed with shame phrases, but were still prone to amplification and exaggeration that raised the spectre of ridicule and disgrace ever higher, not only repeatedly referring to ‘those repugnancies’, but exaggerating their effects. ‘Nothing is more indecent’ than to touch any liquor … or syrup with our fingers’; ‘[it] is the worst way and the most uncomely’ to wipe or lick your finger; while blowing the nose, wiping off sweat, belching, hawking, and tearing ‘anything up from the bottom of your stomach’, are things ‘so intolerably sordid, they are sufficient to make a man vomit to behold them’. Courtin also discussed forms of speech and eloquent style, using particularly damning rhetoric and an utterly disdainful tone: ‘That which is oppos’d to this (i.e., plain style), is the flate and dull style, made up of mean and low expressions that favour wholly of the vulgar, and many times consisting of improper, if not barbarous terms’. In a similar vein, Seager’s early manual contained comments on stuttering which not only associated it with vulgarity but also crime, connoting a particularly harsh and punitive shame: ‘thy words plainly utter, smoothly pronounce them without stop or stutter … To stutter and stammer is a foule crime’.¹⁰

Above all, the shame of incivility was invoked through repeated references to the reactions of others; ‘lest it turne afterwards to rebuke and shame’, as Seagar explained when referring to the consequences of deviating from the precise tone of moderate speech.¹¹ Elsewhere he raised the spectre of shame by using terms associated with disrespect, disdain, mocking, or ridicule. In discussing ‘how to behave thy selfe in going by the streets’, he contrasted mannerly conduct that ‘must sound to your great prayse’, with shouting and screaming, which ‘men in hearing deride … with mockes’. Talking with haste might bring an interlocutor to ‘iudge in thee little wit’, while casting the eyes ‘on every side’ or betraying a laugh or smile would trigger disdain: ‘Such folly forsake thou, and count it but vile’. Courtin also tended to ridicule inapt manners. In his advice on proper attire, readers were urged to follow moderation and favour rules of proportion over impulsive conformity with fashion, citing the case of a small man who wore a large hat: if ‘the man would be drawned (in the hat) … it would be as ridiculous to the Eye’ as the painter who erred in the rules of proportion by drawing ‘a large arm to a little man’. In table manners and recreations, ‘we must have a care of odd and ridiculous postures with our Bodies … lest we be laught at for our pains’, while at the ball one must avoid dancing if ‘your ear be Bad’, for ‘it renders a man ridiculous to see him out in his time [i.e., in his steps]’. When finally summing up the manner young men should adopt towards their superiors, Seagar resorted again to the beastly metaphor, exclaiming: ‘And indeed what a monstrous thing it is to see a Nobleman without civility! Every body shuns him, every body despises him, no body pays him respect’.¹²

The shame that was construed as emanating from the observation of others and linked to outward appearances and decorum was thus overwhelmingly punitive and exclusionary. Impoliteness was ‘of all vices, that which makes a Man most despisable’, as one author claimed.¹³ Lack of manners was not simply the result of an occasional lapse and failure to abide by the rules, but bespoke of social degradation and beastly dispositions; hence all forms of transgression, be they grave or small, incurred punitive shame that involved a diminished status and loss of honour and even implied exclusion from humanity at large. It was the spectre of this kind of absolute and total disgra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Constructions of shame
• 2 Puritans and the experience of shame
• 3 Family, networks, and shame
• 4 Commercial enterprise and exchange
• 5 Communities as sites of shame
• 6 Crime narratives and shame
• 7 Transformations of shame
• Conclusion: Early modern and modern shame
• Bibliography
• Index