The Goodman deal
The New England Puritans used ‘Goodman’ and ‘Goodwife’ – often abbreviated to ‘Goody’, which we moderns have trouble hearing without fits of the giggles – as perfectly serious titles of address. We meet them, for example, in ‘The Crucible’. There are two ways of looking at this. We might think it respectful, as suggesting a willingness to consider everyone good citizens until proven otherwise, or even as detecting a spark of the divine in all men and women. Or else we might find it intolerably smug and self-satisfied. Our suspicion is then that the convention is a mutual admiration society, whereby I agree to afford you the narcissistic pleasure of being addressed as Goodman if you reciprocate and grant me the narcissistic supply that I myself desire. Such a system will, of course, only work if there are people in the neighbourhood that are not vouchsafed the title of Goodman.
Leave a Reply