I am currently taking-in an audiobook of Thomas Hardy’s
novel The Mayor of Casterbridge (18),
expertly read by Mr. Simon Vance, whose mastery of various voices, and of the
island dialects (both Saxon and
Scots) adds much to the
performance.
At one point in this densely plotted book, we learn of plans
by the local lumpen, to subject a certain rather flighty/haughty dame of the town (and her hardworking but
enveigled husband) to what they call a “skimmity
ride”. That turns out to be Dorset dialect (which, indeed, figures even as
a plot-element in the book, when the ingénue professes herself ‘leery’ in the
local sense, and is rated by her stepfather, who demands that she restrict
herself to Hochenglisch) for this:
skimmington: one publicly impersonating and ridiculing a henpecked
or cuckolded husband or his shrewish or unfaithful wife
-- Merriam-Webster
It is reminiscent of, but vastly milder than, the early
American custom of tarring and feathering,
and riding out of town on a rail
(literary classics depicting this:
Huckleberry Finn; and
Hawthorne’s haunting “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”) since, here, the miscreants are represented only in effigy. Moreover, the practice enjoyed here no legal sanction,
though the feckless local constables shrink from halting the procession.
As for what-all is involved in a skimmington, and the related charivari,
you may top up the cup of your Wissbegierde here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skimmington
In the matter of public shaming, devotees of literature (or
high-school grads who had the book assigned) will recall Hawthorne’s Scarlet
Letter. But that stigma was
imposed top-down; whereas (as Hardy makes clear) the skimmity-ride in
Casterbridge was instigated by a
slyboots, and implemented by the dregs.
So much might put us in mind of a current practice,
distantly related to the moral(istic) Tyranny of the Village: anonymous online mobbing
-- public shaming by complete strangers -- capriciously, via
the Twittering carrion-birds of the Erinyes. Thus ratifying the paradoxical formulation of a “global
village”.
Exercise for the student: To develop this idea further, explore the traditional
distinction between shame cultures
and guilt cultures. The latter are specifically
Judeo-Christian, and are generally reckoned an advance by those familiar with
both. Our own society is devolving
toward that earlier standard: not
a sense of guilt, but of embarrassment;
not at having done wrong, but
having offended anyone.
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