Manners, Etiquette, and Appearances Theme Analysis

Closely connected to the book’s dissection of leisure is its examination of excessive social preening. J. accuses his contemporaries of being overly concerned with the perception of others, and throughout the book people’s preoccupation with “keeping up appearances” is a rich source of humor. Such humor is rarely intentional on the part of the characters, who are unable to transcend “formalities and fashions ... pretence and ostentation.” More often than not, Jerome shows that the pursuit of social perfection is a fruitless task, in danger of reducing people to perfunctory gestures and shallow ways of being. Rather than facilitating a freedom from the superficial concerns of city life, boating on the river seems only to push the men into a heightened state of self-awareness.

The boaters make a special effort with the clothes that they wear, for example, and dress to impress rather than taking clothing practically suited to the river environment. They judge one another on their outfits and worry about what other people on the river will think. J. thinks he dresses very well, while Harris chooses the wrong colors. Both agree that George’s blazer is too “loud,” mocking his jacket by questioning if it is intended to be “an object to hang over a flower-bed in early spring to frighten the birds.” According to the three men, girls on the river are very “prettily dressed” in boating costumes. Though the girls’ clothes look great visually, they are totally unsuited to being on the river according to J.: “It was ridiculous, fooling about in them anywhere near real earth, air and water.” Of course, the men aren’t carefree either. In one incident early in the journey, J. accidentally knocks one of the group’s shirts into the river. George laughs hysterically, thinking it’s one of J’s shirts—upon the shirt being revealed to actually be George’s, J. is sent into his own fit of laughter. They are both clearly attached to their belongings, anxious to keep them in a good state, and quick to laugh at the other’s inconvenience.

The characters’ preoccupation with appearances is further evidenced by the fact that they they’d rather pretend to be culturally aware than perceived as lacking education or knowledge. J. tells one anecdote about a “fashionable and highly cultured party” that the three men once attended. At the party, two German students ask if the group wants to hear a song (in German) by an old German master who happens to be downstairs. The students insist that it is the funniest thing the other guests will ever hear. The guests hardly understand a word of German but want to appear sophisticated. Thinking they are hearing a comedic song, they all start laughing, upsetting the singer greatly: unbeknownst to the guests, the song the German master sings for them is a tragic love story, and not meant to be funny at all. This prank by the two German students has revealed the guests to be shallow and self-concerned. Etiquette takes precedence over honesty—people would rather pretend to understand something than express the truth that they don’t.

Harris, too, fancies himself a singer, yet can never remember the words to the popular songs of the day. Despite this lack of knowledge, he frequently volunteers to sing at parties, mixing up verses from different songs and leaving the audience in a state of confusion. His priority is being perceived as culturally learned, much like when George buys a banjo that he has no idea how to play. Harris can claim to be a singer in public simply by getting up in front of people, just as George can tenuously claim to be a banjo player by virtue of owning the instrument.

The three men are also guilty of a kind reverse snobbery, viewing their rowing boat to be the most authentic way to travel on the river. Whenever the three men encounter a steamboat (a relatively new technological advancement), they launch into a tirade about the “aristocratic” people that use such conveyances. During one encounter, J. tells the reader, “There is a blatant bumptiousness about a steam-launch, that has the knack of rousing every evil instinct in my nature, and I yearn for the good old days, when you could go about and tell people what you thought of them with a hatchet and a bow and arrows.” J. and his friends believe that the steamboat is less authentic than their vessel, which they have to row themselves, showing that they are at least as concerned with looking like they are returning to nature as they are with any kind of genuine natural communion. J.’s harking back to the “good old days” of bows and arrows—which, of course, he never experienced—further demonstrates that their river cruise is as posed and affected as the passengers on the steamboat with whom the men profess to have little in common. 

Though characters often express noble intentions in Three Men in a Boat—whether of communing with nature, rising above artifice, or improving oneself through the acquisition of knowledge—their governing desires are frequently shown to be more about being liked or respected. Just like the coffee shops and bars of the city that the three men are trying to escape, the river becomes a kind of gallery for people to display their refined manners, etiquette, and cultural cache—in short, another theatre to perform their self-perceived superiority. Rather than moving beyond the “lumber” of life, the three men can’t leave the city, or who they are there, behind; in fact, nature seems to make their superficialities all the starker, because it throws these aspects of their life into greater relief against the backdrop of an indifferent environment.