(the) American (Novel of)

240 Hazel E. Barnes
Etymologically, English “etiquette” and “ticket” are related. Cognates
in other Indo-European languages bring the connection still closer.
French étiquette and Spanish etiqueta can both be used to refer not only
to conventional rules for approved behavior, but to a ticket or a label.
“Ticket” suggests the idea of admission, the privilege of joining a
particular collection of persons. Indeed, etiquette is inseparably linked
with conformity. “Label” is more ambivalent. Its purpose is to separate
one thing or type of things from others. And part of the function of
etiquette is precisely to distinguish—as in the protocol for seating at
state dinners. In all areas of etiquette we find this interplay between
sameness and difference. Etiquette provides for the individual’s need to
belong to a group, but to this group rather than to that group; also it
allows for limited self-expression within a group. There may be cases of
wholesale rejection of all etiquette, though these, if not pathological, are
likely to be temporary, most often indicating a revolt against the
requirements of a particular code in favor of a new one. Etiquette
seems to stand midway between ethics (and laws) and aesthetics—
restraint on the one side, creativity on the other. We can more clearly
see its connection with both, and its distinctive way of socializing the
self, if we look at one specific area. Take clothes, for example.
My reasons for choosing clothes? They are the most universal and
the most particularized. They exhibit the extreme of mutability. To
coopt an ancient Greek poet, “Quick as the flick of a butterfly’s wing
/ Is the change that fashion brings.” 1 Clothes proclaim loudly the given
society’s values and prejudices—both overt and hidden. They demonstrate
the paradoxical quality of etiquette. Clothes are designed to conceal
and to reveal. They are a means of self-display—but display to
others. Sometimes clothes are determined by the most serious of deeply
held beliefs. But they are allied also to the artistic impulse and to the
spirit of play.
Most basically, I suppose, clothes have been worn to give warmth,
to protect the skin, and to indicate sex differentiation—or to conceal
it, which is in itself an indication. Only this last enters into the Adam
and Eve story; significantly, it appears in tandem with the need to make
distinction between right and wrong. The first couple adopted a unisex
solution with the fig leaf. One wonders how long it took them to
discover more colorful and varied coverings, and whether Adam insisted
that Eve’s be different from his. And on those first cold nights outside