Analysis Of Lord Chesterfield

Loving Father or Didactic Teacher?
Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield, lived in the era between 1694 and 1773. He was a British statesman who wrote a series of letters to his illegitimate son, Philip Stanhope, that were to serve as guides to good manners and success (Cannon, par. 8). These letters were never meant to be published (Cannon, par. 29). In Letters to His Son: Rules of Conduct in Polite Company, Lord Chesterfield lays out a set of rules to instruct his son on the type of behavior he should have socially. These rules are given with the intent of being a fatherly figure toward his son, yet, in this attempt to be fatherly, he separates himself from his son, Philip, by taking on the character of a teacher whose goal is to educate his son to be as clever, wise, and observant as his father is. Chesterfield takes pride in having experience with the guidance that he gives to his son and he proves himself to be an arrogant man whose tone and language display an attitude that attempts to create intimidation through formal language and authoritative tone. The formal language and authoritative tone serve to provide instruction but do not offer the love and support that is so characteristic of a how a father should behave toward his son. Philip is left with a set of rules without the intimacy needed to provide him the desire to adhere to the instruction. Nevertheless, through Chesterfield’s authoritative, experienced, and didactic tone and language, he endeavors to prove himself as a capable and knowledgeable father to his son.
Chesterfield uses authoritative tone and language in an attempt to appear to be an expert on fatherly advice. The firm tones in the commands which he gives to his son reveal an attitude of dominanc...

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...didactic tones, he was still missing tones of several vital aspects of what a father represents, such as intimacy, informality, generosity, sympathy, and a love. In a letter by Chesterfield to Henrietta Howard, who was known to be the prince’s mistress, Chesterfield wrote about the lack of affection or care he had for his father by stating that while he was with his father awaiting his death “this place being the seat of horror and despair . . . were I inclined to a religious melancholy, I should fancy myself in Hell” (Cannon, par. 5). It is very likely that because of Chesterfield’s poor relationship with his own father and the seeming lack of affection between the two, that he neither had the experience nor the ability to comprehend or relate as a true father would toward his son. Chesterfield proved himself to be more of a didactic teacher than a loving father.