The Necessity of Prowess

It is among the most predictable lines. When a man opens a door for a woman in public, some nostalgic onlooker has to chime in, “I guess chivalry isn’t dead.” That’s what most people understand chivalry to be: a series of gestures, which may or may not have romantic undertones, amounting to something like good manners, courtesy, gentlemanliness. And it …