Sense as Psychotherapist

V S. Naipaul once observed that • late in the nineteenth century English writers shifted their attention from examining human nature to defining, and celebrating, Englishness. Chronologically, Jane Austen is exempted from the charge (she died in 1817). Yet there is probably no writer whose works are thought more characteristically English.

By its nature, the novel is an exploration of manners and, thus, of how people act in a particular time and place. The novel, not surprisingly, developed at the stage in Western history when manners themselves became a means of differentiating among people—of disclosing something important about the person who displayed them, or failed to do so. It may surprise some to hear it, but it was capitalism (a century before that label was affixed to the new economics) that made manners matter, because it made possible the rise of middle classes. Traditionally, people had been anchored to well-defined stations in life. The new middle classes found themselves freed from that condition, only to discover the anxieties that accompany navigation beyond safe harbors. Manners steered people “on the rise” to a new identity, a way of knowing “who they were.” By contrast, to take an extreme example, the manners of Henry VIII were irrelevant to his position and his power. A man who can send you to the Tower of London need not say excuse me.

MS

About the Author

Michael A. Scully

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V S. Naipaul once observed that • late in the nineteenth century English writers shifted their attention from examining human nature to defining, and celebrating, Englishness. Chronologically, Jane Austen is exempted from the charge (she died in 1817). Yet there is probably no writer whose works are thought more characteristically English.

By its nature, the novel is an exploration of manners and, thus, of how people act in a particular time and place. The novel, not surprisingly, developed at the stage in Western history when manners themselves became a means of differentiating among people—of disclosing something important about the person who displayed them, or failed to do so. It may surprise some to hear it, but it was capitalism (a century before that label was affixed to the new economics) that made manners matter, because it made possible the rise of middle classes. Traditionally, people had been anchored to well-defined stations in life. The new middle classes found themselves freed from that condition, only to discover the anxieties that accompany navigation beyond safe harbors. Manners steered people “on the rise” to a new identity, a way of knowing “who they were.” By contrast, to take an extreme example, the manners of Henry VIII were irrelevant to his position and his power. A man who can send you to the Tower of London need not say excuse me.