49 pages • 1 hour read
Frances TrollopeDomestic Manners of the Americans
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1832A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
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Important Quotes
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BetaPart 1, Chapters 8-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary
While living in Cincinnati, Trollope frequents many social events and worship services. She notes that religion and the clergy have a powerful influence on Americans, especially women. Although most Christian denominations are represented, the most prominent form of religion is evangelical Protestantism. The church service is the main social event, and “revivals,” prayer meetings in homes, and camp meetings in the open air are also common.
In this chapter, Trollope attends a revival in Cincinnati. Some revival meetings are held in citizens’ homes and led by an itinerant minister; these meetings consist of extempore prayer, “confessions,” shared meals, and hymn singing. While Trollope is not invited to these house prayer meetings—and thus must offer her description on the basis of hearsay—she does attend a revival event in a Presbyterian church and offers an extensive description. The effect of this ceremony makes her “shudder” with its combination of “extravagantly vehement” fire-and-brimstone sermons and frighteningly emotional conversion experiences. In particular, Trollope is horrified by the effect of the revival on young women, whom she feels are being preyed upon by the male ministers.
Chapter 9 Summary
By contrast to the at times wild enthusiasm of the religious ceremonies, ordinary secular life in Cincinnati seems staid and joyless to Trollope. There is a theater in the city, but it is poorly attended due to either economic or religious strictures. The exception, recounted in Chapter 9, is the celebrations of American liberty on Independence Day: “on the 4th of July, at least, they appeared to be an amiable people” (69).
Additionally, Trollope is happy to make the acquaintance of Timothy Flint, a literary editor and “the most agreeable acquaintance I made in Cincinnati, and indeed one of the most talented men I ever met” (71). It is through Flint and his hospitable family that Trollope learns of the generally prudish attitude toward literature shared by many Americans (as shown by one gentleman who rejects Shakespeare as obscene). It is this attitude that, for Trollope, disqualifies America for a “very general diffusion of literature” (73).
Chapter 10 Summary
Trollope and her children rent a country house in the village of Mohawk, which brings with it better living conditions—although a family walk into the nearby woods leads to a minor accident as the travelers lose their way.
The new location also allows Trollope to observe the common people of America at close range. She is somewhat put off by the “uncouth advances” and “extraordinary familiarity” of their neighbors, who come into the house at all hours (the practice of locking doors is looked down upon) and frequently trade various goods.
Chapter 11 Summary
Trollope engages in a meeting with the local Catholic archbishop—a man educated in England and France—who presents a far more positive view of American religion than she will find in later chapters.
Chapter 12 Summary
Trollope discusses the condition of the peasantry in America compared to that in England. Trollope observes early marriages, the practice of charity, and the concepts of independence and equality among the American peasantry. Additionally, she describes cottage prayer-meetings as a common religious practice in American rural communities.
Chapter 13 Summary
After the male members of the company make an excursion to Big-Bone Lick, Kentucky, and a Quaker village, Trollope witnesses the arrival of the newly elected President Andrew Jackson in Cincinnati on his way to Washington. She is shocked at the disrespectful and insulting treatment Jackson receives from a disgruntled citizen who accosts him in the street.
Chapter 14 Summary
Spring has arrived, and Trollope attends a debate about religion between the socialist reformer Robert Owen (a religious skeptic) and the Protestant minister Alexander Campbell, held in a Methodist meeting house.
Chapter 15 Summary
During the following summer, religion is again to the fore when Trollope witnesses a camp meeting first hand in “a wild district on the confines of Indiana” (126). Her detailed account of this event occupies the entire chapter. She is shocked at the “atrocious wickedness of this horrible scene” (132) and particularly by what she takes to be sexual predations of the ministers upon the young women in the midst of religious fervor.
Chapter 16 Summary
The last chapter of this section brings excursions to rural spots in Ohio and Kentucky. Trollope suffers a debilitating bout of fever caused by the August heat and must spent nine weeks recovering. During her convalescence, she reads several American novels, including all of James Fenimore Cooper’s.
Toward the end of this period, Trollope’s husband’s Cincinnati Bazaar fails, and her son in turn falls ill with the fever. It becomes clear that the company must leave Cincinnati for the good of their health. However, a severe winter has set in and Trollope’s husband still has not arrived from England. As winter departs, the ice breaks on the rivers, giving the party “hopes of immediate departure” (136).
Part 1, Chapters 8-16 Analysis
In Chapters 8, 11, and 15 Trollope offers some of her most extensive commentary on the role of religion in American society. Religion forms the focal point of community life in Cincinnati and in some way fills the role of entertainment and social life as well. Evangelical Protestantism is the real target of Trollope’s criticism. (See: Cultural Context.)
Trollope is offended by overtly emotional (“enthusiastic”) forms of Christian religiosity, both in England and in America, where evangelism became strongly rooted as a result of British immigration of Methodists, Baptists, and other groups that “dissented” from the established Church of England.
Essentially, Trollope espouses the more formal Anglican ritual that she characterizes as “rational religion,” as opposed to the wild spiritual fervor of the camp meetings. It is part of Trollope’s belief to consider a state religion (as exemplified by the Church of England) as a guarantee of social stability and unity. She contrasts this order with the seeming chaos represented by the ever-multiplying denominations of American Protestantism. For her, evangelical Christianity is simply a vulgarization of religion. She contrasts such religious attitudes with the “polished” and “sincere” Roman Catholic archbishop of Cincinnati, whom she meets in Chapter 11.
Somewhat related to religious attitudes, the prudishness of Americans is a notable target of Trollope. Americans are very modest and over-delicate and will go to great lengths to avoid mentioning certain sensitive topics. To illustrate this, in Chapter 14 Trollope recounts an incident in which a young woman making a shirt for a man had to pretend it was something else rather than say the word “shirt.” Although modern readers tend to associate this kind of prudishness with Victorian England, Domestic Manners shows us that it was earlier considered characteristic of America. For Trollope, such daintiness forms a violent and hypocritical contrast with the vulgarity and cruelty of other aspects of American life.
Although Cincinnati represents in some respect the nadir of Trollope’s view of America, it also marks a notable exception in her friendship with Timothy Flint—an author and editor whom Trollope singles out as representative of the best of the American cultured class. With his urbanity, Flint contrasts with Trollope’s predominant narrative of American cultural crudeness.
This latter is represented by the “gentleman said to be a scholar and a man of reading” (71) with whom Trollope converses about literature in Chapter 9. This man represents for Trollope a pretension to culture masking prudish and ignorant attitudes. Trollope reproduces their conversation, illustrating one of her frequent methods in the book for directly showing the attitudes of Americans.
Trollope has occasion to discuss the “hidden” social classes that exist in America when at a party (116). Although America does not have an overt class system or aristocracy as in Britain, distinctions are still maintained between “merchants,” who sell goods, and “mechanics,” who are considered mere laborers and thus lower on the social scale.
This distinction shows—apart from the obvious example of slavery—that the ideals of democracy and equality are not observed to the letter in America. Trollope’s commentary, however, suggests her attitude of condescension at finding even a “master or shopman” treated as a fine gentleman at a party; thus Trollope, whether consciously or unconsciously, expresses her underlying skepticism about equality.
