Yup, I think so. My point was that it was the OP who was getting bothered about the implication that she was doing food cutting “wrong” (from the standpoint of etiquette convention), and consequently pushing back against the convention.
And that there are basically two ways to deal with that pushback:
Agree that the etiquette convention is fundamentally arbitrary although still widely considered “in force”, with the reassurance that it’s ruder to criticize “violations” of such conventions than to commit them; or
Try to make the situation make sense by going down the sociocultural rabbit hole of whether or why one should follow a given specific etiquette convention, the supposed motivation(s) of its origin, and its logical justification or lack thereof, along with the abovementioned reassurance.
I get the appeal of the latter approach, but I think it’s ultimately more or less futile. However, I didn’t mean to imply that you personally were being judgmental or patronizing towards the OP in your response, and if that’s how it came across than I in turn apologize.
This, on the other hand, would strike me as somewhat judgmental and/or patronizing, if I weren’t pretty sure you were kidding. There really doesn’t seem to be much point, or courtesy, in seriously attempting to decree which cultural convention(s) of table utensil handling are justifiably “right” and which are objectively “wrong”.
Yeah, mostly kidding, especially about “Europeans [doing] it wrong, too”. Though I do find it curious that what I’ve come to regard as a perfectly ordinary way to hold utensils turns out to be unusual. Now I’m fearful of ever being invited to a formal state dinner!
It appears that both American and European etiquette about place settings is approximately the same, and both have fork(s) to the left of the plate and the knife/knives on the right (blade edges facing inwards)*, which suggests that’s that how they are to be held. That makes me the boorish outlier. And yet the soup spoon is to be placed to the right of the knives, go figure!
* When setting a table at a fine English country house, the kind where everybody “dresses for dinner” – meaning formal attire – I believe the footmen who lay out the place settings are required to use a ruler to make sure everything is placed according to exacting standards. At least at Downton Abbey they did. My fork-in-the-right-hand routine would have raised eyebrows among the aristocrats, that very same nobility who presumably wouldn’t see the irony of holding soup spoons in their right hands.
I wasn’t implying Miss Manners was wrong or stuffy.
Just that I didn’t happen to follow all the rules.
I love her books.
Were I to dine with her, I would not cut all the meat at once.
At least semi-related: eons ago I attended a celebratory dinner held at a very nice restaurant in honor of the retirement of my husband’s company’s president. We happened to be seated at the ‘head’ table, though I don’t know exactly why, given hubby was at least three echelons below the top.
Anyway, I was seated across from the company’s CFO, and was astonished to see he held his fork clutched in his fist. You know, with all four fingers wrapped around it, the way toddlers just learning to eat with silverware do? He had no obvious physical reason to do that, and it seemed ‘ordinary’ behavior to him going by the nonchalant way he did it.
Obviously I didn’t mention it in any way, I was there to help my husband make a good impression with his work higher-ups, but I amazed. A fifty plus year old man, who held his position, who must have made it through college and business school, and he had never noticed that that was NOT how all the people around him ate? He never had a parent or equivalent clue him in? Or was it some ‘in your face’ rebellion?
At the time it didn’t occur to me, but is it remotely possible that there is some sub-culture in America where that is normal way to hold your fork?
Edited to add: I’m not sure which hand he held the fork in, but it was probably his right since I didn’t notice that aspect.
What a great discussion! I especially loved the serious comparisons of which grip was easiest to turn the fork into a weapon to fend off attacks, plus the addes comparison of fork vs. blunt butter knives.
Assuming that means you are right handed, this is always what made more sense to me. If you are going to not cut up more than one piece at a time, then why not just keep your fork in the left hand? You clearly can use it that way, since you were able to stab and hold down the other part of the meat with the fork in that hand.
The only way I could ever make sense of it is if the goal is to promote eating more slowly. It would fit with the similar advice I’ve seen to put the fork or spoon down in between bites.
I wonder what you would consider a serious etiquette columnist to be - one who tells the people who ask her questions how worthless they are because they violated some rules, perhaps? I find her advice in the columns to be serious and not really humorous. She’s polite in answering their questions. She’s sometimes slightly humorous because most people in conversations are sometimes slightly humorous. There are sometimes slight amounts of sociological or historical remarks but not really that much.
Emily Post would be a serious etiquette columnist.
I don’t think that value judgement come into it: that would be a snob columnist. Snobbery and etiquette are closely associated in the popular mind, but I don’t think Miss Manners would consider them to go together naturally. I certainly don’t.
I am a big fan of early-to-mid-Miss Manners, and I’ve read a couple of Judith Martin’s other books, so my comment wasn’t meant to be denigrating.
No , but “Amy Vanderbilt” and “Emily Post” and their successors aren’t particularly humorous. At all - this advice for students emailing their professor would never be in one of their books or columns
"Dear Professor Wise,
"I regret that because of a tragedy in my family, I must ask you for an extension on the paper that is due on Friday. My beloved grandmother has died, and my presence has been urgently requested in Aspen, not only to attend her funeral but to deal with matters concerning her estate. I expect to be able to return here within two weeks, and could certainly deliver the paper before Thanksgiving break or, so as not to burden you with it during the holiday, soon after.
"Let me say what a privilege it is to hear your lectures and how much I hate to have to miss even one of them. Please accept my apologies for this regrettable absence.
"Yours sincerely,
"Luke Loggle
“P.S. I don’t want to impose on you with my family troubles, but you should know that this not the same grandmother who passed away at Stowe earlier in the semester. Owing to my parents’ remarriages, I am blessed with several.”
The only advice from a columnist I can quote is from Ann Landers. It is hopelessly outdated today. Someone asked in which ear a man could wear an earring if he was straight. Her reply, “The left ear’s the right ear. The right ear is the wrong ear. Both ears, it’s a girl”
When we sailed on the QE2, back in 1980 when it was still classy, we were impressed by the number utensils laid out at dinner. Someone we met said that they were being slightly uncouth, since proper dining involved placing utensils on the table just before they were needed, not having a whole set ahead of time.
But we were in Transatlantic Class, not First Class, so possibly they did it correctly up there.
BTW (not related to your comment) I understood that one of the reasons for cutting a bite at a time was to slow the process of eating, to make it not resemble that of a dog with food just placed in her bowl.
They should share their knowledge with the folks at Downton Abbey, and with the professionals who lay out the place settings for state dinners (not that I’ve been to any, but I’ve seen pictures of the tables as they were before the guests arrived, like the second one here).
Both views are partly right, if we’re going by standard etiquette conventions. As Miss Manners has noted (and as the Downton Abbey etc. images in wolfpup’s post correctly portray), in the modified form of service a la russe that became the standard format for most of western societies’ formal dining starting in the 19th century, the default table setting does include the standard utensils required for all courses, possibly excepting dessert.
However, as Miss Manners has also explained, it’s not considered in good taste for hosts to extend that practice beyond a reasonably modest number of utensils:
So if your fancy ocean-liner dinner had, say, five or six implements laid out on each side of the plate, then your acquaintance was right that this wasn’t in the most approved tradition of formal dining, in which the more specialized utensils would have been brought in course by course. But that doesn’t mean that all utensils are brought in course by course in formal dining.
Generally true, but in this case the Downton Abbey table settings are a pretty accurate reflection of the realities of contemporary formal-dining etiquette, AFAICT.
Oh my. Today I have a dozen piercings in my ears and one below my neck. But in the 80s I had none.
When my brother asked me to be his best man, and told me how conservative his new in-laws were, I just had to do something. I went to a jewelry shop and got a huge cubic zirconium stud put in my ear. I went back and forth with the piercer about which ear to do.
“A straight man can get either”. “OK, so which do most of your male customers get done?” “Left” “Are your customers generally straight?” “How would I know?”
