Tea at Trianon: Killing Chivalry

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Killing Chivalry

From James Sama:

As the saying goes, “If chivalry is dead, then women killed it.”

This, of course, is referring to the increasingly prominent ‘I can do it myself’ independent attitudes of women. But, there’s also another saying about not letting one rotten apple spoil the bunch, or bushel, or something like that. You get the point.

Take a peek at these surprising statistics:

Only one in seven men will offer their seat to a woman on a train or bus.

Over a third say they never assist mothers struggling with heavy prams (Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System).

But only 7% of women view chivalrous acts as patronizing.

Three in five men appreciate women holding doors open for them.

I’ve bolded the third point above for a reason. Often times, men don’t perform chivalrous acts because they feel that it will be offensive to the woman. That it implies that she is not able to do something herself, which means everyone is missing the point of chivalry – showing respect to others.

Of course, there are a lot of men out there who don’t do these simple acts because they just need a lesson in manners, but that’s a whole other article. (Read more.)