America’s Grand Dame of Etiquette, Emily Post, was most likely a very nice lady, but she helped to foster European style table setting rules that seem to benefit the 15 percent of the American public that is left-handed (sinister) at the expense of the rest of us who are right-handed (dexter).
When she wrote “Etiquette, the Blue Book of Social Usage” in 1922, she accepted the European placement of the fork on the left side of the dinner plate, a practice that began centuries ago when a king’s court, in an effort to disembarrass the monarch, began to copy his left-handed eating style. This was the same type of thinking that led to Castilian Spanish when one of the early Spanish monarchs had a lisp, which his court respectfully copied eventually resulting in that unusual language variation.
One can logically accept that shaking of hands began as an overtly visual demonstration of peaceful intent in more ancient times when almost everyone carried defensive weapons for protection and 85 percent of the populace was dexter-oriented, or right-handed. Think about it, we do not usually shake hands with our left hand.
In olden times the sinister-oriented (left-handed) were considered clumsy, awkward, unlucky, fraudulent, untrustworthy, even evil or the product of evil or presaging ill fortune or trouble, as opposed to dexterity: readiness and grace in physical activity, skillful and competent, adroitness.
To this very day a few superstitious mothers, born and raised in non-Western cultures, gently force their sinister-born babes to be dexter-oriented, causing, within a very small percentage of children, severe long-lasting emotional trauma.
Emily Post was born in Baltimore in 1873 to wealth and position (her father, Bruce Price, was a noted architect and designed the New York Flatiron building), but divorce left her with social standing but little funds so she turned to writing novels, light fiction and articles for magazines to augment her income. In 1922 a publisher’s suggestion resulted in her well-received (10 printings during her lifetime) book on etiquette. Her common sense-based views directed toward the ordinary person “of moderate means” resulted in a huge influx of letters that quickly led to her widely syndicated newspaper column about etiquette and manners and, in 1931, to a popular radio program. To this day she is still considered to be the etiquette maven. Her expertise was not limited to etiquette, however; she was also considered an authority on interior decoration and wrote the popular: “The Personality of a House.” She seemed to be, in a limited way, an early forerunner of Martha Stewart.
My personal mild aversion to picking up the fork across my body from the left side of the dinner plate brings up the seldom-discussed subject of eating efficiency. Is changing the fork to the left hand so that the right hand can control and use the knife a symbol of efficiency? Obviously not. The European method of eating with the fork in the left hand and cutting and/or guiding food onto the fork with the knife in the right hand is patently much more efficient, but I did not learn to use eating utensils in that fashion because by the time I was old enough to use eating implements, I was no longer left-handed. But that is another story.
Change, however, is sometimes very hard to accomplish, especially where the habit is so ingrained that attempting change feels like an alien imposition, very much like driving on the “wrong” side of the road in the British Isles or looking to the left instead of to the right when crossing an English street. In that sense, change can be … deadly!
Placing the fork on the left side of the table setting still “feels” wrong but intellectually eating with the fork in the left hand makes sense-so much less wasted motion. What to do?
Emily Post did not address this dilemma, and, as far as I know, neither has Martha Stewart.