Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
OPINION - POLITENESS

MANNERS

Why good manners are fading from French life

The French were the precursors of politeness, but TV show host and author Princesse Hermine de Clermont-Tonnerre tells The Local the rules of everyday French life are fading. Find out what she blames for the decline in manners.

Published: 4 June 2013 12:32 CEST
Why good manners are fading from French life
Hermine de Clermont-Tonnere in Paris in 2000. "If you say ‘Je t’aime’ it’s nice but if you say ‘je vous aime’ its fantastic and romantic." Photo: Philippe Desmazes/AFP

Socialite Princesse Hermine de Clermont-Tonnere has been described as the French answer to renowned British 'It girl' Tara Palmer Tomkinson.

She’s been a regular in the Paris party set and was even invited to the Queen Mother’s 100th birthday party. Her father was a French duke and her mother owns three chateaus including the Chateau de Soudun.  

She has appeared in films and TV series, written magazine columns and now presents a fashion show on French Television.

She is also an author and her latest book is about the decline of 'savoir-faire' or manners in French society.

Princesse Hermine tells The Local that 'politesse' is disappearing from French life, and offers some hard-hitting reasons why.

'The new generation don't have the same civility.'

Here in France we are the precursors of politeness. It’s normal to say ‘vous’ to your mother or grandmother and then ‘tu’ to your sister.

“You need to respect the difference in age.

A little girl in the street who doesn’t know me should say ‘vous’. It’s a mark of a respect.

If you say ‘Je t’aime’ it’s nice but if you say ‘je vous aime’ its fantastic and romantic.

The new generation doesn't have the same civility. Their parents and their schools don’t give them this set of rules and manners, of how to speak to people.

'I'm from a Sicilian family. We have strong rules.'

There are many reasons for this. Computer games and TV shows are all about violence. Cartoons are aggressive these days. They’re not like Walt Disney. The language is aggressive.

Look at music too. When you hear lyrics like ‘We will f**k your wife’ and so on – that’s violent . We didn’t have this kind of thing before.

I am from a Sicilian family and we have strong rules.  The mafia and gangsters always had strong rules within the family about how to respect your grandmother and other members of the family.

This kind of respect is so important.

Etiquette and politeness are like driving. You can’t just do whatever you want. There has to be laws and rules.  People don’t understand politeness, but it is so important in life.

Maybe if we had TV shows teaching people how to be polite it could help. Cooking shows are everywhere at the moment but maybe if we had shows about good manners, it could teach people that it’s not ridiculous to be polite.

Do you agree or disagree? Leave a comment below, and join the debate.

Princesse Hermine de Clermont-Tonnere's new book "Savoir vivre au XXIe siècle – Politesse oblige" is available in French from Amazon.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

BOOKS

INTERVIEW: ‘My goal is to dig up the outrageous facts about Switzerland that startle you’

"Why do the Swiss have such great sex?" That's the title of a new book by Swiss/American author Ashley Curtis which reveals a Switzerland you never knew existed. The Local spoke to him recently to find out more.

Published: 29 November 2018 20:20 CET
INTERVIEW: 'My goal is to dig up the outrageous facts about Switzerland that startle you'
Photo courtesy of Ashley Curtis.

Covering everything from cow suicides to free heroin for addicts and the real story of William Tell, Curtis's book is a humorous yet serious take on a country that often finds itself reduced to a handful of stereotypes.

“I wanted to answer the questions about Switzerland no one would ever think of asking,” the author told The Local, speaking of the inspiration behind the book.

The writer has had plenty of time to dwell on the mysteries of Switzerland. He attended primary school here, visited regularly in the years that followed, and then worked for over 20 years at the independent Ecole d’Humanité school in the canton of Bern, where he taught maths and physics in the morning and climbing and ski touring in the afternoon.

Curtis’s scientific bent is clear in “Why do the Swiss have great sex?”. Some of the most inspired sections delve deep into statistics (How much would it cost to buy Switzerland? Nine trillion Swiss francs, for the bits that are available. Could the whole world sleep in Switzerland? Yes. Although they wouldn’t have space to do much else.).

Read also: Six authors who found inspiration in Switzerland

A lot of the pleasure in the book, though, comes from sheer surprise.

“The most fun sections to write were those where I had an inkling of the answer and then all the facts would fall into place.” he says.

“Then it was like a moment of breathlessness. As my girlfriend said, it's like these questions are trap doors to a whole other Switzerland.”

The section about what happens to Switzerland’s nuclear waste was one of these experiences. With nuclear power responsible for just over a third of the country’s electricity generation, Curtis wanted to know what happened to all that toxic waste.

“As I was looking into this, I learned it was shipped out of the country in huge steel containers and tested by a German government agency called BAM. You couldn't make it up,” Curtis says with delight.

Another section on energy generation also saw the Californian-born author encountering one of the rare obstacles to his research.

Operators at the Grande Dixence hydropower plant in Valais didn’t take kindly to his questions regarding the cleanliness of their power production after he noted they were actually using electricity from potentially dirty sources to pump water back up to their reservoir.

In fact, the book doesn’t shy away from the tough issues, with money-laundering dictators, the high number of foreign prisoners in Switzerland’s jails, and its poor record on homophobia all coming in for analysis.

“My goal was to dig up those outrageous things that startle you,” he explains.

So what still surprises Curtis about Switzerland?

“It’s the combination of conservatism and being completely open. On the one hand you have this unbelievable rigidity about the smallest things and then you have this acceptability of ideas that would be unthinkable in the US like legalized prostitution, free heroin for addicts and assisted suicide.”

And why do the Swiss have such great sex (at least according to a 2013 YouGov survey)?

To answer the question, Curtis takes readers on a historical tour of spa culture, seventeenth century dating rituals in canton Bern and modern-day sex education in Zurich kindergartens, which includes the use of wooden penises and plush vaginas (backed by the Supreme Court no less).

He also dives once more into the world of statistics but concludes with an answer no one can really argue with.

“Nations don’t have sex. People do.”

“Why Do The Swiss Have Such Great Sex: Extraordinary Answers to 66 Improbable Questions about Switzerland” is published by Bergli Books. It can be purchased here.