Etiquette and Public Health in the Gilded Age
Within the early Gilded Age, public health and etiquette expanded into a modern concept. Books written by men and women showed new ideas like getting to know your body and how to clean up. A revolution of health knowledge had been born and humanity raked in the benefits. Furthermore, one of the most common topics in health was etiquette, and how good etiquette was the equivalent of good health.
The 19th century was plagued with many diseases, such as Cholera, Smallpox, Typhus, and Yellow Fever. It’s no wonder that the public began educating themselves on health. A demand for health education led to the steepest increase in life expectancy history has ever seen. Life expectancy almost doubled within the Gilded Age [1] and that was in part because of the increase of health and etiquette books, geared at women. Why women? Because women cooked, cleaned, and cared after the sick. Cater to the wants of women, the how tos and advice, and everyone profits.
Furthermore, women increasingly demanded access to abortions and birthcontrol, reproductive "issues affected not simply a small percentage of middle- and upper- middle-class women, but all men and women" [2]. While the practice of various abortion methodes wasn't new to women, the nineteenth century saw a dramatic increase in the public vocalizing the desire for accessability. This cry was met finally in the Gilded Age and in cities like "Boston and New York (abortions could be purchased) for as little as ten dollars" [3]
The Gilded Age was known for an increase of health and etiquette books. “Enough Americans bought etiquette advice books to sustain a lively genre, which in turn supported a widespread belief that manners mattered.” [4]. This influx of knowledge on such matters as how to cook food correctly and how to put on a successful dinner party all the way to keeping a sick room and how to care for an infant increased education not only for the upper class, but for the middle and lower classes of America. “Advice on manners functioned as a powerful social tool that was most useful to people who were least certain about the rules.” [4] The more you knew about etiquette, the better you looked in society.
[1] Max Roser (2017) – ‘Life Expectancy’. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy/ [Online Resource]
[2]Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, and Charles Rosenberg. "The Female Animal: Medical and Biological Views of Woman and Her Role in Nineteenth-Century America." The Journal of American History60, no. 2 (1973): 332-56. doi:10.2307/2936779.
[3] (Smith-Rosenberg, 345)
[4] "Selected Advice on Table Manners, 1872–1903." In Food in the American Gilded Age, edited by Veit Helen Zoe, 63-77. EAST LANSING: Michigan State University Press, 2017. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/j.ctt1m3p30r.7.