Frankness

The exposure of ideas and opinions, formerly forbidden by the ethics and values of society, which can be expected to erupt in the disorderly conditions that will follow the climacteric. Under the surface in the well-behaved citizen, there is a second nature, to whom outrageous thoughts and opinions occur, but which the person has no trouble in censoring and keeping in check. In deeply destabilised conditions, however, that second nature tends to break out; the decency-censor is ignored; the person’s second nature becomes, simply, her nature.

The shock of a new frankness has been experienced before—for example, at the time of the Renaissance, when changing expectations were forced into even more violent change by recurring outbreaks of the plague. Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron explores this disorder with astonishment. The conversations described in it (he explains) do not take place in church, nor in schools of philosophy, but in the whorehouse. In fact, the times are so out of joint that . . .

. . . judges have deserted the judgment-seat, the laws are silent, and ample license to preserve his life as best he may is accorded to each and all. . . . If so one might save one’s life, the most sedate might without disgrace walk abroad wearing his breeches on his head.^F38

Related entries:

Carnival, Manners.