Etiquette and Friendship

     I don’t quite understand what James means by “good manners.” Especially in regards to what he says on page 163, “As Mrs. Touchett had foretold, Isabel and Madame Merle were thrown much together during the illness of their host, so that if they had not become intimate it would have been almost a breach of good manners. Their manners were of the best, but in addition to this they happened to please each other.” Why would it be “a breach of good manners” if they hadn’t become close in some way? When did the act of becoming friends suddenly turn into etiquette? I understand that James is writing in a different era and that the culture he is describing is incredibly different from that we’re living in today. However, friendship and manners are very rarely described as the same thing.

     So how is Madame Merle and Isabel becoming friends the same thing as good manners? Is it really the same thing as good manners? This question is especially pertinent since Isabel isn’t really sure exactly how friendship works.

It is perhaps too much to say that they swore an eternal friendship, but tacitly at least they called the future to witness. Isabel did so with a perfectly good conscience, though she would have hesitated to admit she was intimate with her new friend in the high sense she privately attached to this term. She often wondered indeed if she had ever been, or ever could be, intimate with any on. She had an ideal of friendship as well as of several sentiments, which it failed to seem to her in this case-it had not seemed to her in other cases-that the actual completely expressed. (163)

First he makes mention of an intimate friendship that they supposedly share that doesn’t breach good manners or etiquette in any way, and then he points out that Isabel doesn’t know what friendship or intimacy really is. This frustrates me completely. I don’t understand it at all. James really doesn’t make any sense with what he says.