Final Term Paper

女性修养作业

Final Project

1. Read the following pieces of articles carefully as your reference

and work out your term project according to the requirement.

“Justify” Our Rude Manners

1. Manners Nurture Our Equality

I saw the “manners and spirit” of my own people in action the other day.

I was standing at the end of a movie queue with my husband, waiting to buy our tickets to see The Queen. Though the queue was rather long, the patrons were relaxed and there was a pleasant hum along the line. Along came a couple with whom we were slightly acquainted. We went to greet each other when suddenly the wife darted toward the front of the queue and squeezed through the door into the cinema. Her husband gazed sheepishly at us. After a moment she came back out clutching two tickets. With a satisfied air, she stage-whispered to us, “You can bypass the queue and get your tickets at the snack bar!” And with this she took her husband by the elbow, led him past the queue and disappeared triumphantly inside. My husband and I did not take advantage of this quick-witted means to evade the system. We stayed in line, bought our tickets, entered the cinema and found ourselves seated three rows in front of this couple.

There were other options available to this woman. She might, for example, have suggested to cinema management that patrons could form three quick lines instead of one slow one. She might have told all the people in the queue about the waiting snack-sellers, instead of my husband and me. Or she might have simply stayed in line like us. But I could see in her eyes that she gloried in outsmarting the system. She had generated advantage for herself and her husband. She had proved herself superior to the rest of us. Her reward, I noted without distress, was to watch more advertisements than we did.

In many cases, it’s definitely, me first. And possibly, probably, and fuck you all. Yes, so many people, manifestly ordinary, try desperately via petty means to be an

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