Customer Reviews

Simple Social Graces: Recapturing the Lost Art of Gracious Victorian Living

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It's a shame that this book is out of print. It is well worth the hunt to locate a copy if you are interested in learning just about all there is to know about the Victorian era. The Victorian era was a time when the "culture of character" was the national goal. Victorians followed widely accepted moral codes and sought to create a self that was worthy of esteem. Ms. Lichter compares the consistent beliefs and cultural values of the Victorians against today's high levels of self indulgence, narcissism as well as the recent culture of victims. The Victorians shared ideals of character. Today, we satisfy our impulses rather than overcome them. Ms.Lichter also sheds new light on so called repressed Victorian sexuality. They were neither repressed nor prudish according to the author. Ms. Lichter shows that the major difference between modern day Americans and the Voctorians is that the Victorians simply believed that sexual matters were private. This is in sharp contrast to today's public and highly impersonal open book attitudes.
This is a highly informative book, and I loved it.

It is the best decline of civility etiquette book that I have read. Written by a female who boldly knocks the women's liberation movement. It is very pithy and articulate. It has shown me how to serve others by simply being civil.

I don't agree that she should follow her own advice. She obviously was being blunt for the effect (i.e., making a point). The book does contain strong language.

Despite its title, "Simple Social Graces" is not a descriptive catalogue of Victorian manners and mores, nor is it in any way a how-to manual. It is a vitriolic, misleading, and ultimately useless book. Part of the author's premise is sound: our society largely misunderstands the Victorians and could benefit from raising our standards of civility. Her methods of arguing this point, however, are ridiculous.

The main problem is that her definition of "Victorian" is elastic, expanding to encompass Jane Austen or the early Edwardians, or retracting to exclude, say, Europeans whenever Lichter needs to make a point that would be best served using a specific segment of the population. Mostly, her "Victorians" are limited to upper to middle class American WASPS (her term) and do not include actual subjects of Queen Victoria. Furthermore, her selection of historical supporting evidence is lean. She mostly draws on texts written by a handful of reformers who are hardly representative of the entirety of Victorian society, or even her definition of it. The conclusion she draws from these texts are equally limited, and often contradictory, especially in her claim that Victorian manners prevented violence towards women (repeated several times) at the same time that she lauds these reformers for their work in combatting wife-beating by drunken husbands. She praises Victorian women for their painstaking devotion to home and their skill in domestic arts while taking potshots at Martha Stewart (and even accusing her fans of being perverts based on the off-hand remarks of one of the magazine's editors). She slams Americans for scientific studies of sex which reduce lovemaking to hormones, while praising the Victorians for having studied sex first. Which is it?

Lichter's assertion that Victorian manners were "inclusive" and "democratic"(middle class people could aspire to them, too, she exclaims) is absurd, especially in the historical context of the United States. While she praises Victorian men for helping women into carriages and giving up their seats on a train regardless of the women's social status, I counter that in 1851, which was around the middle of the Victorian era, Sojourner Truth said: "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?" Nowhere does Licher address Victorian social inequality, and in her hamhanded attempt to be fair, she mentions a few times that there were robber barons in the period. She later dismisses the idea that Victorian women's dress was restrictive on the grounds that 17 pounds of clothes wasn't so bad, and that corsets weren't universally accepted.

Lichter also fails to give much practical advice as to raising the bar for civility in our society. Her only three suggestions were to socially ostracize those who break the rules, to practice Feng Shui, and to try to induce children to act Victorian with "Snappy lingo" such as "Don't be a fool, manners are cool." Unfortunately, I'm not kidding.

There is actually very little social history in this book. For those looking for a good read, try What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England which gives background on the social institutions and practices of daily life in classic British literature, including a lot of information on the Victorian period, Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian Englandwhich is the finest book on social history I have ever read, very informative and entertaining, and Inventing the Victorians which does a much better job than Simple Social Graces in debunking what we think we know about the era.

I think that this is a wonderful book. It really brings home in an undeniably strong way just how far civilization has come in the last 100 or so years - mostly for the worse when it comes to manners and behavior. It also points out that some things have even come full-circle, and that fragments of Victorian values are being recommended to people as "the latest thinking".

My mother will love this book, many of the complaints and frustrations she has about "people/life today" are repeated in this book, but put into historical context, and with an armarda of examples illustrating how the Victorians did it better, and why it worked. I find it hard to argue with the author! She makes me feel as though I'd love living back in the Victorian age.

I find this a compelling read, and so does my girlfriend - and we're "offspring of baby-boomer" age, probably one of the very few in our age group that would care less about social graces. Buy the book - even if you don't agree with the arguments, you'll have a very lively read with plenty of thought-provoking ideas and recollections.

While reading this book, I was surprized that the author was probably my age (baby boomer) and not a nostalgic grandmother. She seems somewhat hostile toward modern society post 1912, blaming the Jazz age for the decline in manners which lead to the decline in morals. She fires off as many salvos at the new Right as well as at the Left. Much of her argument makes sense: a mannered society is one that respects others, particulary women. I agree that respect and good manners is what we sorely need. I don't think she was right saying Lillian & Frank Gilbreth were evil for practicing their "Motion Study" efficiency techniques at home as well as in the factory, since their aim was to make jobs easier and give workers more leisure time. Also the title, pictures and cover art were misleading, since I thought it was a "how to" restore gracious/harmonious living; not a detribe. I think she needs to practice some of what she preaches.