After dinner you are urged to pass the afternoon and night, and if you are a gentleman in manners and information, your host will be in reality highly gratified by your so doing.Such is the character of southern hospitality.
[4]More recently, Tara McPherson writes about the representation of "tradition and manners" as "the glue that binds the South together, distinguishing it from other regions",[5] going on to say that: This is a familiar mantra, one linked to the "famous" southern hospitality capitalized on by many of the tourist attractions...
Contemporary fascinations with the "grandeur" of the Old South depend on a certain sense of decorum, and this genteel mise-en-scene of southernness is constructed via a carefully manipulated stage set of moonlight, magnolias, and manners.
It requires "a talent for taking on a special role in a comedy of manners that will apparently run forever, no matter how transparent its characters and aims".
This maintenance of an aura of tranquility despite a certain degree of transparency suggests that southern hospitality is a performance, a masquerade, an agreed-on social fiction, albeit a powerful one with material effects.