The Honorable Mirror for Youth is the ultimate guide of behavior for children during Peter’s time. It comes an abundance of actions for possibly all encounters a young man should have. It’s like that awkward puberty book that my mom gives to my brothers as they start to age. It’s there, it’s true, and most be read in order to understand.
Some of the rules that are present in the book are common sense , absolutely no brainers and mostly common sense, and even ones that we see in our society today. I will admit that this document cracked me up and there were sometimes that I was like “wtf?” However, over all I was entertained with this reading. One thing that I noticed was that there was not much to be said about young women. The boys and young men has about sixty numbered rules and the part about the girls and young women did not. Further, most of the rules set out for women were orientated by Bible verses, but not much was said as how they should eat, sleep, walk, and talk just like their opposite sex was told. I wonder why ( and I have a suspicion) the women did not have as many rules as their counter part?
I would also like to point out that this document gives permission to children to only “reproach someone and use slanderous words only if necessary and if they do it politely.” That part cracked me up. Some of the dinner rules that were placed for children are some that we see now or at least, that I have been accustomed too. Dinner rules- “Don’t cross legs and arms, don’t stretch your plate with your fork, don’t chew with your mouth open, etc.” The one thing I found odd was that one of the rules was that children were not “allowed to cut their food.” There were some parts too that I found contradicted what rule was said in a previous section.
Then we get to the young men section and here is where it gets interesting.
Rule #29, “Young men should not pick their nose.” As if that was not enough, we get a description at rule #56 saying that it is okay to pick ones nose as long they don’t “pick their nose as if you were winding a clock.” And of course, when you do take that bugger out, “don’t eat it!” The fact that they had to say that, well…you know?
Lol, talk about imagery. Following along with imagery, we get a description on how young men should eat so not to look like a peasant….
“Don’t gobble food down like a pig.”
“Don’t blow onto fish soup so that it splatters everywhere.”
My theory would be the author of The Honorable Mirror for Youth believed that a young woman would always be accompanied by a man, and said man would instruct said woman in proper etiquette.
I think the more colorful entries reflected pet peeves of the compiler xD
I’d think that the women had fewer rules because they’d been in seclusion until Peter’s time, and that the writer of said work perhaps didn’t know how to approach women’s etiquette?
Or, perhaps, Russian noblewomen’s behavior wasn’t considered ungraceful? Again, because they were in seclusion until Peter, there wasn’t an established precedent for how they should act in public/social situations. Mannerisms that were offensive to Western travelers probably didn’t strike Russian noblemen as atypical, and they might have been instead figuring out how to handle women being in their presence at all (at least when the terem was initially abolished).
Perhaps it was taken that women naturally were more polite, and that therefore they did not need as many rules as men, who, due to their natural boorishness, would need a greater set of rules.
This just reminds me of the line, “Every sign and every rule has a tale to tell.” If it’s in a safety book, or is a ‘Do not’ rule that seems rather specific or obvious, it’s because it wasn’t obvious enough for someone else…
(And if anyone wants to entertain themselves reading one such list, you’re welcome: https://whyumai.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/skippy’s-list-the-213-things-skippy-is-no-longer-allowed-to-do-in-the-u-s-army/)