Jan 11, 2022

Conduct. Young ladies, Venetian painters, curiosity.

By Mary Trigiani • Issue #1064 • View online

Etiquette is the portal to equity. Good manners – deportment, as Virginia’s Wise County school system called it – meant that the children of garment manufacturers, coal miners, lawyers, doctors, welders and professors were to commune on a playing field leveled not by financial position but by the ability to understand one another and to find ways to connect. When we read the advice given to young ladies in Jane Austen’s day, then, we might leap to dismiss it. Instead, we should consider stripping away our prejudices and rejuvenating its essence, extending the guidance to all, not just women. Etiquette enables curiosity, which calls us to open our minds and hearts. Those who stifle curiosity are into judgment – not justice, or progress, or art, or even investment.

How the Lesser-Known ‘Venetian School’ Flourished During the Italian Renaissance

Both the Venetian School and the Florentine School sought the best way to emulate nature in their art. However, while the Florentine School believed in the enlightened powers of drawing, the Venetian School focused on color and its emotional qualities. As a result, many Venetian artists made little or no preparatory drawings for their paintings. Instead, they utilized the luminescent qualities of oil paint to model their subjects, creating numerous layers in the process. Choosing appropriate colors for compositions and blending hues together were other crucial features of Venetian painting.

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Conduct Books for Young Ladies | Jane Austen's World

Conduct manuals discussed a wide range of subjects, including household chores, religion, and what to look for in a husband. However, the underlying concern evident in most of the conduct pamphlets being written at this time was the cultivation of “virtue” in the female sex. As Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin states in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), “the main business of our lives is to learn to be virtuous.” And according to many eighteenth-century conduct books, a woman’s virtue was expressed in her attitudes, her carriage, her accomplishments, and her actions and speech.

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Be Curious · Collaborative Fund

“You know Rupert, guys have underestimated me my entire life. It used to really bother me, but then one day I was driving my little boy to school and saw a quote by Walt Whitman painted on a wall that said, ‘Be curious, not judgmental’. I liked that. See all those fellas who belittled me, none of them were curious. They thought they had everything figured out. So, they judged everything *and everyone*. And then I realized that their underestimating me had nothing to do with it…..because if they were curious, they would have asked questions. Questions like, ‘Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?’ Which I would have answered, ‘Yes sir. Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father from age 10 until I was 16 until he passed away’.”

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By Mary Trigiani

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