ladyness

Miss MacGooden, humorless, prim, ugly, with a face like dried leather, prided herself on being a “lady” from one of the best families—an uncle had been a congressman in the period of the Reconstruction. She was therefore, Helga Crane reflected, perhaps unable to perceive that the inducement to act like a lady, her own acrimonious example, was slight, if not altogether negative. And thinking on Miss MacGooden’s “ladyness,” Helga grinned a little as she remembered that one’s expressed reason for never having married, or intending to marry.

1928, Nella Larsen, Quicksand, New York, N.Y.; London: Alfred A. Knopf, pages 26–27

It was precisely this labor of performing ladyhood that allowed the dictionary definition of lady to shift from primarily meaning “a woman of high social position” to a “woman who behaves in a polite way.” The shift from position to behavior did not completely unmoor “lady” from race and class hierarchies, but it did require a different set of behaviors and rituals of ladyness in order to maintain those hierarchies.

2019, Laurie Essig, Love, Inc.: Dating Apps, the Big White Wedding, and Chasing the Happily Neverafter, University of California Press, →ISBN, pages 26–27