Never let your husband have cause to complain that you are more
agreeable abroad than at home; nor permit him to see in you an
object of admiration as respects your dress and manners, when in
company, while you are negligent of both in the domestic
circle…Nothing can be more senseless than the conduct of a young
woman, who seeks to be admired in general society for her
politeness and engaging manners, or skill in music, when, at the
same time, she makes no effort to render her home attractive; and
yet that home whether a place or a cottage, is the very centre of her
being—the nucleus around which her affections should revolve, and
beyond which she has comparatively small concern.
From Decorum: A Practical Treatise on Etiquette and Dress of the Best American
Society by Richard A. Wells, 1886
Beware of trusting any individual whatever with small
annoyances, or misunderstandings, between your husband
and yourself, if they unhappily occur. Confidants are
dangerous persons, and many seek to obtain an
ascendancy in families by gaining the good opinion of
young married women.
From Decorum: A Practical Treatise on Etiquette
and Dress of the Best American Society by
Richard A. Wells, 1886
Let nothing, but the most imperative duty, call you out
upon your reception day. Your callers are, in a measure,
invited guests, and it will be an insulting mark of rudeness
to be out when they call. Nether can you be excused,
except in case of sickness.
From The Ladies Book of Etiquette and Manual of
Politeness by Florence Hartley, 1860
The true lady walks the street, wrapped in a mantle of proper
reserve, so impenetrable that insult and coarse familiarity shrink
from her, while she, at the same time, carries with her a congenial
atmosphere which attracts all, and puts all at their ease…A lady
walks quietly through the streets, seeing and hearing nothing that
she ought not see or hear, recognizing acquaintances with a
courteous bow, and friends with words of greeting. She is always
unobtrusive, never talks loudly, or laughs boisterously, or does
anything to attract the attention of passers-by. She walks along in
her own quiet, lady-like way, and by her preoccupation is secure
from any annoyance to which a person of less perfect breeding
might be subjected.
From Our Deportment, Or the Manners, Conduct, and Dress of
the Most Refined Society by John H. Young, 1882
• The best way to make up a
bathing suit is with full short
trousers or knickerbockers
gartered above the knee, and
a short skirt made with
gored front breadth, a little
fullness over the hips, and
considerable fullness in the
back.
• From “New York Fashions” in
Harper’s Bazaar, June 1898
Who is….
• Leonce
• Adele
• Robert
• Edna
• On page 548, the narrator says that Edna’s
marriage to Leonce was “purely an accident.”
How can a marriage be “an accident”? Does Edna
love Leonce?
• “An indescribable oppression, which seemed to
generate in some unfamiliar part of her
consciousness, filled her whole being with a
vague anguish” (539). Can we describe this
“indescribable anguish”? Why is it birth place
unfamiliar? And “anguish” about what?
• “A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,--the light
which, showing the way, forbids it” (544).
• “Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the
universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an
individual to the world within and about her” (544).
• “Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a
dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the
realities pressing into her soul” (559).
• What is this “light,” this “realization,” this “recognition, that Edna
is awakening to? How is it an “awakening”? Why is it “delicious,
grotesque, [and] impossible?
• On page 571, Edna tells Adele, “I would give up the
unessential; I would give my money, I would give my
life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself.” How
can giving up one’s life not be giving up something
essential? What is she referring to when she tells Adele
that a mother can sacrifice more than her life for her
children?
• Leonce wonders if Edna is becoming “mentally
unbalanced” and claims that it is apparent to him that she
is not “herself”. What causes these realizations? Is he
right?
• Edna believes that Adele’s marriage to her husband (a
man Edna describes as “the salt of the earth” with
boundless cheer, charity, and commonsense) is a “fusion
of two human beings into one” (676). Nevertheless, after
dining with the couple and witnessing their marital
harmony and happiness first hand, Edna leaves
“depressed rather than soothed”—not because of jealousy,
but because of “a pity for that colorless existence which
never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind
contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited
her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life’s
delirium” (677). Is there something to Edna’s observation
and judgment or is she merely something of a malcontent,
a kind of perpetual “sad sack” that would never find any
relationship satisfactory?