Chivalry — alive or dead? According to a new survey in the United Kingdom, it is not only on a life support machine but there are legions of women queuing to pull the plug.
Ninety-two per cent of women wouldn’t take a seat that was offered to them by a man. Eighty-nine per cent would refuse help with heavy bags. Even on a cold day, 78 per cent would not take a coat from a man. So while I thought chivalry was an act of kindness dating back to medieval times, when noble knights led a life of gallantry, honour and courtesy, the researchers of a British online sock company have put me right.
In fact, chivalry is dark and sinister, a powerful reminder that men believe they are the stronger sex. A man who gives up a seat, pays the bill or walks on the outside of the pavement is actually signifying his belief in gender inequality. And the chap who opens my car door isn’t a well-mannered type but someone who is patronising my belief that I am quite hopeless without him, because I am a woman and he is a man.
“Men’s standards have slipped so far in recent years that any offer of chivalry from a gentleman knocks a woman off their guard and is viewed with outright suspicion,” claims Mark Hall of socked.co.uk. Yet this doesn’t tell the whole story. Because if a man helps me carry my baby’s pram down the steps of the station (as many frequently have), he is congratulated for doing the right thing. Why else would we see pregnant women on the Tube wearing “Baby On Board” badges? Why, for that matter, do old women (and men) take a seat proffered to them without so much as a mutter of thanks? Because chivalry hasn’t died, it has become codified.
Just as Italian women deem it the height of rudeness to be ushered through a door first as a man holds it open, there are different rules for today’s acts of modern chivalry. Benjamin Webb, 33, recently offered his seat to a woman standing near him on a packed Tube. She not only refused it, but took objection because she was neither pregnant nor old. “Neither had occurred to me,” he says. “I was simply doing what I’d been brought up to do. But it was an isolated incident. Lots of other women have happily accepted, and I haven’t been put off.”
Celestria Noel, former editor of “Debrett’s Guide to the Social Season”, says she will happily glare at a fit young man on the Tube who has beaten her to a seat, “although I have found that a sort of Margaret Rutherford-like simper gets better results.” Noel is also suspicious of men, but for a different reason: “I think they’ve got more selfish. They like to say that chivalry annoys women, but only because it’s a good excuse for them not to put themselves out.”
Some people argue that it is a generational thing — Noel quotes a nonagenarian of her acquaintance who still tries to get up out of his wheelchair every time a woman enters the room — but, in truth, older generations have always complained about the youth. There were probably cavewomen bemoaning young yobs who hogged the fire. Henry Hitchings, author of the recently published “Sorry! The English and Their Manners”, and who has been berated by a cyclist for helping an old lady with her shopping, believes that part of the difficulty now is keeping up with the changing times.
“There are so many new things that we need to have manners about,” he says. “It’s still not clear, for example, what to do with one’s mobile phone at meal times.” But he also warns against saying that manners are getting worse. I asked my 20-year-old stepdaughter what she thought of doors being held open for women, expecting her to ask me to explain such an unheard-of practice. To my surprise, she said she enjoys chivalrous acts “because they give me a secure feeling — it’s not about showing off or bargaining”.
But she was quick to distinguish between situations that were ripe for chivalry and ones that were not. A drink from a stranger would never be accepted, she said, because it implied he was asking for something she would not be willing to give in return. By the same token, an absence of chivalry on a date is a serious indication that things shouldn’t go any further.
I once refused to go on a second date with a man who failed to see me in safely through my front door before driving off into the night. Noel is adamant that the onus is on parents to teach chivalry — and one of its key components, courtesy — when children reach their teenage years. “Good manners not only give you a much-needed edge when going for a job,” she says, “they are both character-forming and the lynchpins of civilisation. To pass the chocolates around before having one yourself, or to let the woman with the pushchair go first when you’re in a hurry — these are the sorts of things that delay instant gratification, acting as a bridle on your own desires. In that way, chivalry acts as a character reference. If you are someone who can perform many tiny acts of delayed gratification and kindness then you are someone who is worth having around.”
Selfless service to others, after all, lay at the heart of the knights’ Code of Chivalry. Interestingly, the office is one place where courtesy has flourished. Sophie Cornish is co-founder of notonthehighstreet.com and a passionate advocate for equality between men and women. She believes the battle has been won in the workplace when it comes to chivalrous behaviour. “If I was asked to find a good example of positive cultural change in business, that would be it,” she says. “The evidence now is that we’re all simply nice to each other, without an agenda. If you go to a meeting and there aren’t enough chairs, it’s as likely for a woman to give up a seat for a man as the other way round. Certainly if a man comes to our office for a business meeting, I’ll hold the door open for him.”
Cornish does admit, however, to a certain self-consciousness in other areas: “I’m very careful about being the one to pour the tea in a meeting.” So perhaps we should redefine modern chivalry as acts of kindness performed by one person for another, regardless of their sex. Instead of women being affronted by it, they should follow the example of past persecuted minorities and take ownership of the very thing they believe seeks to belittle them. If more women decided to open the door for others, or offer to lend a handkerchief when someone is sneezing, or simply said “the next one’s on me” when taken out for supper, instead of insisting on splitting the bill (or, worse, only paying for what you ate), then we might all have a nice day.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2013
