3/07/2009

What is American (Frances Trollope 1780 – 1863)

What is American (Frances Trollope 1780 – 1863)
Frances Trollope is a novelist and miscellaneous writer. She was born at Stapleton near Bristol. She married in 1809 Thomas, a querulous lawyer, who fell into financial misfortune. She then in 1827 went with her family to Cincinnati, where the efforts which she made to survive were unsuccessful for two years. Her one hope was to make a book out of her experiences. On her return to England, however, she brought herself into notice by publishing Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), in which she gave a very unfavorable and grossly exaggerated account of the subject. The mocking by contemporary European travelers about American proud and vulgarity, such as Trollope's notorious critique of the Domestic Manners of the Americans, hurt domestic readers because, however overdrawn, they could not be easily dismissed. Many foreign visitors believed, Trollope among them, that American egalitarianism simply fomented a culture of crude familiarity and rudeness, particularly at the dining table.
Domestics Manner of the Americans tells us about how actually the manner of American people. They should behave politely in daily activities. Especially in dining table. They should not behave in such manner. Respecting the dinner, the people and also the menu would pleased them and more comfort in spending the dinner time. They spend their menu by using the blade of knife until the whole blade seemed to enter into the mouth. Seeing the idea that is written in Domestics Manner of the Americans actually it is not only criticize the dinning table but also the manner of Americans people in daily life. As she said at the Domestics Manner of the Americans “ I don’t like them. I do not like their principle, I do not like their manner, I do not like their opinion”. She announced that The American exhibited a total want of manners, both in males and females. They were inquisitive, boring, uncultivated, uncouth, humorless and self- satisfied. The American behavior in How they treat others people is still questioning. Some of them do not give the totally rights as human being. They still differentiate between man and women even white and black and also the rights of slave and Indian. Therefore it is a great way to steal the attention of Americans people to start thinking about their manner to be good manner.
Besides Domestics Manner of the Americans , she also write a novel, The Refugee in America (1832), pursued it on similar lines. Next came the three novels The Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw; or Scene on the Mississippi (1836), The Barnabus in America (1843), and The Old world and The New: a Novel (1849). Thereafter she continued to pour forth novels and books on miscellaneous subjects, writing in all over 100 volumes. Though possessed of considerable powers of observation and a sharp and caustic wit, such an output was fatal to permanent literary success, and none of her books are now read. She spent the last 20 years of her life at Florence, then she died in 1863.

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