Domestic Manners of the Americans

Trollope argues that American society is coarse and unrefined and that these qualities are a direct result of democratic government and culture. The belief that everyone is equal, according to Trollope, breeds a vulgar familiarity and lack of social respect and “decorum in manners and language” (86).

In part, Trollope’s observations rest on the conviction that there should be a legitimate hierarchy to society, with the more “refined” members of society receiving the highest honors and setting the example for the rest. Trollope implicitly considers herself of a higher class and resents being treated as an equal by people whom she regards as her inferiors. Somewhat paradoxically, the belief in equality in America goes hand in hand with an acceptance of slavery (which is an explicit denial of equality), and both beliefs contribute to the overall coarseness of American life.

As an illustration of the crudity of American society, Trollope in Chapter 13 recounts how a citizen rudely accosted President Jackson in the street during his visit to Cincinnati. Elsewhere she tells of Americans acting in an aggressively familiar way with strangers, such as her neighbors inviting themselves into her home or forcing their way into coaches as passengers. After renting a house in the country, she is annoyed by the lack of deference and loyalty shown to her by the serving maid she hires.

In Western America, Trollope misses the “little elegancies and refinements” (39) that were a part of life in Europe but which frontier Americans are forced by their environment to do without. American men constantly spit tobacco, ignore their wives, drink whiskey, and lounge with their feet up in theaters. Everything speaks of a society founded on a (for Trollope, hypocritical and false) belief in natural equality, an attitude that levels life to the lowest common denominator.

Content to exist on this low cultural level, Americans are complacently self-satisfied. Despite their lack of manners and refinement, they believe themselves to be the greatest country and most moral people on earth simply because of their libertarian founding. Thus, Americans’ uncouth character goes hand in hand with an obliviousness to their failings and excessive pride in their past that comes across as off-putting to outsiders. Scornful of other countries, Americans have no interest in learning from their manners or customs.

However, it is never entirely clear whether Trollope’s perceptions are limited by the particular social milieu she has access to throughout her journey, and whether these traits are generalizable to the entire American population as Trollope claims. The consistency of her own beliefs regarding equality versus the existence of slavery is never perfectly clear.