Littell's Living Age/Volume 129/Issue 1663/Affectation
From The Saturday Review.
AFFECTATION.
All epithets which commonly imply the existence of a feeling of slight approval or disapproval in the speaker's mind for the thing named are apt to be used very vaguely, and the term "affected" is no exception to this rule. Some people seem to call anything in another "affected" which they dislike, just as they term anything "nice" which they happen to like. Still even the most foggy minds probably attach some dim connotation to the term affectation, while by some few persons it is always used with a fairly distinct apprehension of its correct meaning. Hence it does not seem to be a hopeless task to attempt to define the term a little more exactly, and to find where its peculiar value as an ingredient of a well-sorted vocabulary really lies. In making this attempt we must obviously have recourse to the Socratic method of definition by an induction of various examples of the well-recognized application of the term.
Affectation is most commonly employed in reference to the details of external behaviour. To take a familiar instance, any trick of bodily gait or of manual or facial movement may be deemed affected. A man may have an affected way of bringing his forefinger to the side of his nose after the foreign manner, or a lady may have a way of seeming to relieve her trachea from some irritant by a characteristic "hm" which strikes us as being affected; or again a young girl may appear to be affected when she gives herself a certain dignity of deportment. Some people are able to keep up an affected condition of behaviour for a considerable period. Thus we know ladies who regularly assume and maintain a curiously unnatural tone of voice when entertaining their male visitors. In such a case as this it obviously requires intimate knowledge and close observation to discover the affectation. In these instances, and in many others resembling them, we call an action affected because it springs from a deliberate wish to impress another person, instead of from some unreflecting impulse or mechanical habit. With respect to polite behaviour, it may be added that we look for a certain fixed habit of courtesy in people, and do not, for example, call a lady affected who uniformly adopts a gracious manner to her guests. So that what we mean by an affectation of elegance in behaviour is the conscious endeavour to assume something which does not flow easily from the fixed sources of habit. It follows from this that affected behaviour is very frequently a conscious imitation of something foreign to the person, more especially of something a little above his reach. Children's amusing affectations always show themselves as rather too obvious attempts to don the pretty manners of their elders. Imitation passes into affectation as soon as it becomes a conscious process, and this change seems to take place very early in the child's development. Affectation in adults as well as in children owes much of its ludicrousness to a conscious imitation of the words and actions of a superior age or social rank. It is this simple type of affectation which has so often been ridiculed in fable.
Another department of human life which offers a good field for the discovery of affectation is the region of emotional expression. When, for instance, a child or an adult expresses admiration of some spectacle by a long chain of extravagant superlatives and absurd images, we call the language exaggerated and affected. The expression is felt to be out of proportion to the feeding to be expressed. Again, a person may go on urging, so t6 speak, the presence of a certain emotion on his hearer long after the feeling has had time to relieve itself. A lady is expressing her regret at some little inconsiderateness, and, instead of making her apology in a few words, continues to reiterate her assurance of vexation, much to her companion's discomfort. Another common form of this affectation of sentiment is the habit of flowing over into feeling on every possible occasion. Some men and women seem to affect, for instance, an extraordinary degree of risibility, since the least provocative—something quite microscopic perhaps to others—sends them into long fits of explosive laughter. Then there are the young women who- seem to be afflicted with a plethora of aesthetic sentiment, and are for ever breaking forth into gushing rhapsodies over the scenery last visited and the works of art last inspected. Judging by the ordinary standard of human nature, we are unable to believe in these excessive effusions of sentiment. What strikes one as most significant of affectation in these sentimental persons is that they appear to be equally excited by the most powerful and by the most insignificant stimulants. The very funny youth who sees a comical element in all kinds of things laughs just as uproariously and persistently at what seems the merest trifle as at something which others are able to recognize as really ludicrous. In all these instances the affectation lies in a suspected forcing of a feeling beyond its natural bounds by an act of deliberate volition. It is the doing with a conscious purpose a thing which we expect to be done instinctively by the mere force of feeling itself.
A case of affectation in sentiment which at first sight looks very different from those just specified is that of a person who does not so much seek to increase the visible dimensions of a feeling as abstain from checking a feeling within becoming bounds. Thus we are apt to call a lady affected who makes no visible effort to subdue a feeling of trepidation, or of a fastidious aversion at the sight, or even mention, of certain harmless little creatures. So, too, we call a young woman affected who apparently makes no effort to overcome her natural bashfulness in the presence of strangers. Whenever the term is carefully employed in reference to these cases, it seems to connote a positive as well as a negative element of volition. For we invariably suspect that the person would control the feeling but for a lurking wish to display as much sensibility or sentiment as possible. It is this latent intention to appear sensitive which really justifies the use of the epithet in such an instance; for, strictly speaking, we employ it incorrectly if we imply merely a moral weakness of will. And so we find that in these examples also the essence of affectation is the substitution of a conscious purpose for an instinctive process. The sentiment is deliberately nursed, so to speak, by an artificial expansion of its external expression. It is to be observed that there seems to be a well-recognized distinction between affectation and hypocrisy in the expression of sentiment. If the hollow profession of sentiment is likely to deceive, and also to injure by misleading, we scarcely speak of it as an affectation, but apply to it some stronger term of opprobrium. Moreover, though we are accustomed to regard as affectations mere exaggerations in the expression of certain feelings, such as those we have been describing, we should sometimes speak of a wholly illusory profession of the same sentiment as insincere or false. If a lady is rather too voluble in the expression of her regrets, she is said to- be affected; if we have reason to believe that she feels no regret at all, we rather call her hypocritical. This shows that the term affectation, as applied to feeling, implies only a slight or harmless kind of simulation—a petty species of pretence which is rather comical from its patent hollowness, as well as from the silliness and vanity of its motive, than morally reprehensible. It is also worth noting, perhaps, that in the case of sentiment, as in that of mere external behaviour, we recognize such a thing as second nature—that is, a fixed habit of expressing a feeling on a certain occasion without any reflection at the moment. The rules of a rigid courtesy demand, for example, that we should always manifest a certain friendly interest in anything which our guest happens to be talking to us about; and so long as we do not exceed this quantity we are not likely to be accused of affectation. On the other hand, if we lay ourselves out to be specially sympathetic towards a person with whom we really have no particular interests in common, our conduct is rightly said to be affected; unless indeed it has some ulterior purpose besides that of simply making an impression on our guest's mind, in which case it will probably be characterized by some stronger epithet.
We may now pass to the second great region of affectation, that of literary and artistic style. When we accuse a writer of having an affected mannerism, we clearly liken him to those who show themselves affected in personal behaviour and in the profession of sentiment. The clearest case of affectation in art is where there is conscious imitation of another's manner. The usual form which this naturally takes is an attempt to array oneself in the fine plumage of more brilliant birds. The group of young aspirant poets and poetesses who uniformly follow in the wake of a leading popular poet, eagerly catching at all his peculiarities of manner, are rightly said to be affected. There is of course a vast deal of unconscious imitation of style in art, and it would be absurd to term every musician, for example, affected who instinctively follows some one model of style. Where the imitation is seen to arise from a natural affinity of mind, it is not said to be affected. Not only so, even conscious imitation of style does not always amount to affectation. It is unreasonable to expect that every writer should always abstain from introducing an echo of some previous master's melody. The field of perfect originality in art is not large enough to allow us to make such a demand. If only the selection of the particular model is seen to be made with an intelligent purpose, from a conviction that the manner selected is most suitable for the object in hand, it has nothing unseemly. In short, only such imitation of another's style is affected as is consciously executed, and, moreover, springs from mere mental impotence and a silly propensity to try to appear more than one really is. The style of a writer or a painter may, however, be affected without being imitative. Just as an original eccentricity of behaviour becomes affected as soon as it is studied, so oddities of artistic manner grow into affectations when consciously cultivated for their own sake, and without any reference to their fitness or utility. Hence it is sometimes permissible to call an eccentricity of literary manner affected after it has been distinctly brought before the author's notice by adverse criticisms, though before this it may have been a wholly unconscious habit of mind. Nobody, for instance, can doubt that some of the later uncouthnesses of Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Browning are correctly styled affectations. It is absurd to suppose that a writer can be wholly unconscious of mannerisms which have frequently been thrust as it were under his very eyes; and when one sees an author persevering in such eccentricities after these criticisms with rather more energy than before, and in cases where no other eye than his own, however kindly, can discover any advantage in their employment, it seems a fairly safe inference that the writer is obstinately affected. Yet it is no less clear that it is always more or less hazardous to predicate this quality of any man's style. For, after all, a man may bring himself to believe that his favourite mannerism is not only useful but essential to his art. In speaking, then, of artistic style as affected, we assume that the selection of all details of style should be a half-unconscious process guided only by the exigencies of the subject in hand. This idea is clearly indicated in the common expression "naturalness of style." A literary style is natural when it springs from the author's individual nature, and is directed exclusively to the best expression of the idea of the moment. It is artificial and affected when it is made a distinct object of pursuit for its own sake, whether it be the original product of the person who uses it or consciously borrowed from another. So that, in this class of cases also, affectation connotes the presence of consciousness and deliberate volition with respect to a thing which ought, so to speak, to take care of itself by means of an instinctive or mechanical process.
In the affectations of art as well as in those of social life we may see the distinction between a comparatively harmless and a culpably insincere profession. Thus with respect to artistic imitation we draw a sharp line between affectation, or the adoption of another's style, and plagiarism, or the adoption of another's ideas. The latter term conveys a grave accusation of intellectual dishonesty, while the former is only in a very slight degree condemnatory. This difference is probably explained by the consideration that the borrowing of ideas is never, like the borrowing of style, to be excused on the ground of the limitation of the individual mind, for nobody has any business to write who has no ideas of his own to convey; also that the filching of an author's ideas is much more likely to impose on readers, and far more difficult to detect, than the adoption of an element of his style which lies patent, diffused, so to speak, over the whole surface of his writings.
We conclude, therefore, that the term affected has only a very slight amount of ethical force. In some cases it does no doubt imply the presence of some amount of falsification or simulation, but this is not of a serious character calling for stern disapprobation. On the other hand, people certainly do very often mean to express their strong dislike by this word, and we may reasonably infer that, as employed by the more refined and discerning, it strikes, so to speak, at a certain quality of deformity in the behaviour or action so described. In other words, an affectation is something which offends our aesthetic sentiment. This inference is fully borne out by a consideration of the essential qualities of affected actions. We have seen that they are such as possess a certain unnaturalness, being the result of conscious study and voluntary endeavour, instead of the spontaneous outflow of native or acquired disposition. The aesthetic charm of a good deal of human action resides in its unconsciousness. A man whose every action was directed by deliberate purpose and reflection would be intensely wearisome to the aesthetic eye, which loves before all other things in human character and conduct spontaneity and ease. There is, too, in all affected conduct a further repulsiveness which is connected with a recognition of illusion and pretence. Contradiction is always unsightly, and the deliberate simulation of a natural quality strikes us as an aesthetic dissonance. At the same time there are many examples of affectation which do not so much displease our sense of fitness and harmony as awaken our feeling for the ludicrous. This holds good especially of all the attempts of people to robe themselves in the unsuitable manners of their superiors. Of course this interpretation applies only to the term as employed with a certain degree of precision by thoughtful persons. Unfortunately, however, these are very few, and the greater number of people who use the term do so in the most slovenly manner. It naturally follows that these same people are utterly careless in making sure that the persons they thus vaguely characterize have the quality attributed to them. It will be seen from what we have said that it is often a matter of great delicacy of insight to decide whether a particular ingredient of a man's behaviour or an oddity of style is really an affectation.