Understanding the Differences: The French and Americans

“No civilized race has gone as unerringly as the French toward the natural sources of enjoyment; none has been so unashamed of instinct. Yet none has been more enslaved by social conventions, small complicated observances based on long-past conditions of life. No race has shown more collective magnanimity on great occasions, more pettiness and hardness in small dealings between individuals…  No people are more capable of improvising greatness, yet more afraid of the least initiative in ordinary matters.” (French Ways and Their Meanings by Edith Wharton, pub. 1919) Those who have searched for the most precise way to describe the French can stop with this small gem of a book. Wharton is known as a penetrating observer of human behavior, especially within New York high society. She also was a Francophile of long duration and instinct and, in fact, is buried in the American Cemetery in Versailles. Her observations on the French, including comparison with American culture, are so trenchant as to have been written yesterday. She places her observations in five areas: Reverence, Taste, Intellectual Honesty, Continuity, and The New Frenchwoman. Sex, Politics, Business Scandals in the Millenium? Listen to Wharton: If in France there is a distinction between private and business morality it is exactly the reverse of that prevailing in America, and the French conscience rejects with abhorrence the business complaisances which the rigidly virtuous American too often regards as not immoral because not indictable.       On French versus American women: First of all, she is, in nearly all respects, as different as possible from the average American woman…  Is it because she dresses better, or knows more about cooking, or is more “coquettish,” or more “feminine,” or more excitable, or more emotional, or more immoral? All these reasons have been often suggested, but none of them seems to furnish a complete answer…  It is simply that, like the men of her race, the Frenchwoman is grown up.  Under Intellectual Honesty, Wharton notes: The very significance- the note of ridicule and slight contempt- which attaches to the word “culture” in America, would be quite unintelligible to the French of any class. It is inconceivable to them that any one should consider it superfluous, and even slightly comic, to know a great deal, to know the best line, to know, in fact, as much as possible…  The odd Anglo-Saxon view that a love of beauty and an interest in ideas imply effeminacy is quite unintelligible to the French; as unintelligible as, for instance, the other notion that athletics make men manly… At the same time as she epitomized the French as the keepers of high culture, she incisively relates three well-known French qualities, manners, aloofness, and thriftiness: No one knows more than the French about good manners: manners are codified in France, and there is the possibility of an insult in the least deviation for established procedure…  This fearless and joyful people so ardently individual and so frankly realistic, have another safeguard against excess in their almost Chinese reverence for the ritual of manners…  The complaint of Anglo-Saxons that, in traveling in France, they see little of the much-vaunted French courtesy, is not unjustified. The French are not courteous from any vague sense of good-will toward mankind; they regard politeness as a coin with which certain things are obtainable, and being notably thrifty they are cautious about spending it on strangers… If any of these observations perturb you, search out this book because these are just morsels of fuller discussions on these subjects. Wharton observes much more in this slim book, including about love-making, the French Academy, and the glacial movement of French bureaucracy. It is indispensable. Bonjour Paris is pleased to have Lynn Axelrod as a contributor.