"It appeared to her that he did not excel in giving those clearer
insights, in making those things plain which he had before made
ambiguous."
-- Northanger Abbey, Chapter 9
The phrase "fair X", indicating that X is a woman or women, had long been
an unimaginative cliché by Jane Austen's
day. The two characters in Pride and
Prejudice who use it are foolish ones:
Sir William Lucas (who refers to
Elizabeth, when dancing with
Darcy, as his
"fair partner"), and
Mr. Collins (who continually
refers to the Bennet daughters as "my fair
cousins"). Jane Austen had also made fun of
the expression in Jack & Alice (one of her
Juvenilia): when a lady is caught in a steel
trap on the estate of a handsome young man, another character exclaims "Oh!
cruel Charles, to wound the hearts and legs of all the fair". So it can be
taken for granted that when this phrase appears as part of the narration of
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen is
not using it in a simple way:
"With such rivals for the notice of the
fair, as
Mr. Wickham and the officers,
Mr. Collins seemed likely to
sink into insignificance."
When Darcy moves toward the
piano that Elizabeth is playing,
he stations "himself so as to command a full view of the
fair performer's countenance".
According to a somewhat hollow convention of the day, it was considered a
violation of etiquette for a woman to decline a man's invitation to dance in
any way which would make it seem that she didn't want to dance with
him personally; rather, she had to maintain the pretense that she
didn't want to dance at all with anybody for the moment, and then sit down
for at least the next few "sets" of two dances each (i.e. must not soon be
seen to be standing up with someone other than the man she has turned down).
In some cases (depending on the lady's scruples and/or fear of being seen to
violate etiquette or fear of giving offense, and the particular
circumstances involved), it means she won't dance at all for the rest of the
evening.
Thus the following dialog from Northanger
Abbey:
John Thorpe:
"Well, Miss Morland, I suppose you and I are to stand up and jig it together again."
Catherine Morland:
"Oh, no; I am much obliged to you, our two dances are over; and, besides, I am tired, and do not mean to dance any more."
(This rule of etiquette continually involves the heroine of
Fanny Burney's
Evelina in difficulties.)
"The post-office is a wonderful establishment! The
regularity and despatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to
do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing! So seldom
that any negligence or blunder appears! So seldom that a letter,
among the thousands that are constantly passing about the kingdom, is
even carried wrong -- and not one in a million, I suppose, actually
lost! And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad hands
too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder."
-- Jane Fairfax, Chapter 16 of
Emma
In an era
before telephones or cheap fast transportation, letter-writing was very
important to the families of Jane Austen's day;
Jane Austen herself wrote many hundreds of letters
during her lifetime, of which about 150 have survived. Many 18th century
literary works (even some quite long novels) were in the
form of a series of letters between the characters (the "epistolary
novel"), often regardless of plausibility. (The Extraordinary
Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine books by Nick Bantock are modern
examples of the "epistolary form".) Jane Austen
experimented with this form in her early
Juvenilia (notably
Love and Freindship, and
also The Three Sisters), and in
Lady Susan.
Pride and Prejudice itself (under its
original title of First Impressions) was probably first written
in epistolary form.
In Jane Austen's day, there were no envelopes
(or postage stamps), and the "envelope" mentioned in
connection with Caroline Bingley's letter and
Darcy's letter was merely another sheet of paper
folded around the rest (there could be writing on one side of the "envelope",
as well as on
the part of the other side that didn't end up on the outside of the
letter). Jane Austen herself was said to be
dextrous and neat in folding and sealing letters (though
in her letters she often deprecates her own handwriting
as being too large, unlike that of
Cassandra -- at the time, letters were
charged according to the number of sheets of paper, so the smaller you could
make your writing, the more you could fit in). To save postage, letters were
frequently "crossed": i.e. after a sheet of paper had been written on, it was
turned 90°, and further lines were written crossing the original writing
(there is a reference to this practice in
Emma). It was the recipient,
rather than the sender, who paid the postage.
One important rule of protocol of the period is that a correspondence
between two unmarried and marriageable unrelated young people of the opposite sex is a
sign that the two are engaged. So Elinor Dashwood in
Jane Austen's novel
Sense and Sensibility, when
she sees a letter from Edward Ferrars to Lucy Steele, thinks "a correspondence
between them by letter could subsist only under a positive engagement, could
be authorised by nothing else", and, when she is unsure whether or not
Willoughby and Marianne are engaged, says "If we find they correspond, every
fear of mine will be removed". Similarly, Captain Wentworth says to Anne
Elliot in Persuasion: "...if
I had then written to you, would you have answered my letter? would you, in
short, have renewed the engagement then?" (i.e., she likely would have answered
the letter only if she had also decided to renew the engagement). And since Mary
Crawford and Edmund Bertram in Mansfield
Park could not legitimately correspond, the correspondence between
Fanny Price and Mary Crawford is used as a conduit between them.
This rule isn't so rigid as to prevent Elinor Dashwood in
Sense and Sensibility from
starting to write a one-off letter to Edward Ferrars (which was to be more a
business than a social letter, to someone who could be considered a relative of hers by marriage); however, for a continuing correspondence to be
carried on in the absence of an engagement is a breach of propriety (a
significant point in Marianne's conduct in
Sense and Sensibility --
though Jane Austen dismisses the topic more
lightly at the end of Northanger
Abbey). This is why
Darcy thinks it advisable to
hand-deliver his famous letter to Elizabeth (since
it would be awkward if anyone at Rosings
or Hunsford Parsonage were to see a letter
addressed from him to Elizabeth);
and it is an important reason why
Elizabeth doesn't answer the
letter.
After she marries, Charlotte
Lucas is only separated from her family by
"50 miles of good road"; however, though
she and her husband have a "comfortable income", it is "not such a one as will
allow of frequent journeys".
It was not considered quite proper for "genteel" unmarried young
women to travel on public coaches unescorted (Lady Catherine is even more severe:
"I cannot bear the
idea of two young women travelling post by themselves"). This is one
reason why General Tilney "acted neither honourably nor feelingly -- neither
as a gentleman nor as a parent" in dismissing Catherine Morland near the end
of Northanger Abbey, and why Fanny
Price's stay in
Portsmouth is prolonged in
Mansfield Park.
Jane Austen herself had to arrange many of her visits to various family
members according to when it would be convenient for her to be carried
in a relative's or family friend's carriage, as appears in some of her
letters.
"Mr. Clifford... travelled in his Coach & Four, for he
was a very rich young Man & kept a great many Carriages of which I do not
recollect half. I can only remember that he had a Coach, a Chariot, a
Chaise, a Landau, a Landeaulet, a Phaeton, a Gig, a Whisky, an Italian Chair,
a Buggy, a Curricle, & a wheelbarrow."
-- Jane Austen, Memoirs of Mr. Clifford: An Unfinished Tale
Generally an enclosed four-wheeled carriage seating up to three people,
and driven by a rider mounted on one of the horses (see
"postilion"). The more or less standard vehicle for
families which are "respectable", but not extremely wealthy.
A "coach" is a large enclosed four-wheeled carriage, drawn by four or more
horses, with at least two rows of seats in the compartment, and usually with seats on the top etc. in addition to those in the compartment.
The "box" is a luggage compartment to the front of the main coach body; the driver either sits on this coach box, or sits on the front edge of the coach body with his legs resting on the box (depending on the design of the coach); there is also usally a "basket", or open luggage compartment hanging from the rear of the coach body. Coaches are used by wealthy families,
and in long-distance public transportation.
Here's a picture of a coach (?) and six, with a
"box" in front and "basket" behind (Rowlandson, 1798). <JPEG>
This is intermediate in carrying capacity between a chaise and a coach.
It has two rows of seats in the compartment, so that the passengers sit facing
each other (unlike a chaise, in which all the passengers
face forward). Barouches are "convertible" -- they can be partially opened in
good weather. (Lady Catherine owns a
barouche; for the barouche "box", see "coach" above.)
A four-wheeled carriage which is open (completely unenclosed), and
therefore appropriate for a fair-weather excursion around the park at
Pemberley, as
proposed by Mrs. Gardiner.
Curricles and gigs are light two-wheeled carriages open in front. They
seat no more than two people (one of whom acts as the driver), and are generally
favored by young men. A curricle is drawn by two horses, a gig by one.
Costume worn by servants, which distinctively identifies the family that
they work for. (The livery is often taken from their employers' coat of arms.)
People have differed on how ironically
this statement by
Elizabeth, supposedly dating the
beginning of her love for Darcy,
should be taken -- Sir Walter Scott took it
as the basic truth. However, there is a sense in which this declaration can
be part of the truth ("at that moment
she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!") without
Elizabeth necessarily being
mercenary or shallow. First, because of the 18th century passion for
landscaping, the grounds of an estate could be an index to the owner's taste
and personality (as also the interior decorations and furnishings of a house).
And second, the well-being of a landed gentleman's `dependants' (servants and
employees) and tenants depend on his amicable personality and his
estate-management skills ("As a brother, a
landlord, a master, she considered how many people's happiness were in his
guardianship!"). Therefore it can be said that after seeing the house and
grounds at Pemberley, and hearing his
housekeeper's praises of him, she begins to perceive his real merits, without
having to see through the darkened veil of some of his personal mannerisms.
(And in any case, if Elizabeth
wished to be mercenary, she knew the
rough size of his fortune long before she visited
Pemberley -- before he made his first proposal, in fact.)
Jane Austen's opinion on those who
dislike novels is expressed by the
charming and witty Henry Tilney in
Northanger Abbey when he
says (during the walk to Beechen Cliff)
"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good
novel, must be intolerably stupid". It is only the most ridiculous characters
in her own novels who dislike novels, such as
Mr. Collins here, and the
obnoxious John Thorpe in Northanger
Abbey (who declares that novels "are the stupidest things in
creation").
The ball at Netherfield:Darcy tells her that "I could
wish, Miss Bennet, that you were
not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to fear
that the performance would reflect no credit on either".
Elizabeth and Darcy at
Rosings: Darcy: "We neither
of us perform to strangers."
Darcy likens
Elizabeth's lively
quick-wittedness to an
"accomplishment", and implies that
his refusal to go through the social motions is due to a dislike of
"performing" meaningless rituals for random strangers (he refuses to "perform"
like some circus act). In his failure to observe the minor social amenities,
he resembles Marianne Dashwood in Sense
and Sensibility -- and in both cases Jane
Austen tends to disapprove (though she herself had to suffer through being
civil to tiresome people, as is abundantly clear from
her letters).
As is also the case with many other
topics, Jane Austen is never explicit on this
subject (even if she had wanted to be, it would have been very difficult for
someone in her social role -- a never-married "genteel" female living
in her family). Nevertheless, there are
several passages that clearly refer to sex (or the absence thereof), if you
understand the code words:
When it is stated that
"Mr. Bennet was not of a disposition
to seek comfort, for the disappointment which his own imprudence [in marrying
a narrow-minded foolish woman] had brought on, in any of those pleasures which
too often console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice", this means,
among other things, that Mr. Bennet
remained faithful to his wife.
Similarly, when it is stated of
Lydia that "in spite of her youth and
her manners, she retained all the claims to reputation which her marriage had
given her", this means she was not involved in any other sexual misadventures
after her original elopement with
Wickham, but remained faithful to
him.
"Unluckily however, I see nothing to be glad of, unless I make it
a matter of Joy that Mrs. Wylmot has another son, & that Lord Lucan has
taken a Mistress, both of which Events are of course joyful to the Actors."
[i.e. participants]
-- Jane Austen, letter to Cassandra,
February 8th 1807
"Ladies of the best families, with rank and fortune, and
beauty and fashion, and everything in their favor, cannot (as yet in this
country) dispense with the strictest observances of the rules of virtue
and decorum... I remember seeing the Countess of ----
come into the Opera-house, and sit the whole night in her box without any
woman's speaking or curtesying to her, or taking any more notice of her
than you would of a post, or a beggar woman." ...
"Young gentlemen of fortune will, if it be only for fashion's sake, have
such things as kept mistresses (begging pardon for mentioning such trash);
but no one that has lived in the world thinks anything of that, except,"
added she, catching a glimpse of Belinda's countenance, "except, to be
sure, ma'am, morally speaking, it's very wicked and shocking, and makes
one blush before company, till one's used to it, and ought certainly to be
put down by an act of parliament, ma'am; but, my lady, you know, in point
of surprising anybody, or being discreditable in a young gentleman of
Mr. Hervey's fortune and pretensions, it would be mere envy and scandal to
deem it anything--- worth mentioning."
-- quotes from Belinda, by Maria Edgeworth
"A reformed rake makes the best husband."
-- a traditional, somewhat cynical, English proverb
"He had not ruined himself, and it is well known that... a man
who has the strength of mind to leave off when he has only ruined others, is
a reformed character."
-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Chapter 9
"We must persuade Henry to marry her... and when once married,
and properly supported by her own family, she may recover her footing in
society to a certain degree. In some circles, we know, she would never be
admitted, but with good dinners, and large parties, there will always be
those who will be glad of her acquaintance; and there is, undoubtedly, more
liberality and candour on those points than formerly."
-- Mary Crawford, Mansfield Park (on Maria)
"she must withdraw... to a retirement and reproach which
could allow no second spring of hope or character."
-- narrator, Mansfield Park
Jane Austen's most explicit comment on this
double standard is in her dismissal of the character Henry Crawford at the end
of Mansfield Park (who had run
off with Mrs. Rushworth / Maria Bertram): "That
punishment, the public punishment of disgrace, should in a just measure attend
his share of the offence is, we know, not one of the barriers which
society gives to virtue. In this world the penalty is less equal than could
be wished; but... a juster appointment hereafter..." (in other words,
society's double standard is both unfair and un-Christian).
See also
Jane Austen's opinion on the infidelities of the
Prince and Princess of Wales.
Though Jane Austen's era was more tolerant in some ways than the later
full Victorian period, "country gentlewomen" (such as Jane Austen and most of
her female characters) were not affected all that much by any laxness of sexual
standards among other groups -- so the following quotes from Pride and
Prejudice on Lydia do not at
all exaggerate some of the conventional attitudes towards "fallen women",
but are only expressed in different ways appropriate to each character (the
didacticism of Mary and the
unconscious blundering of
Mr. Collins).
"Unhappy as the event must be for
Lydia, we may draw from it this useful
lesson: that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable -- that one false
step involves her in endless ruin -- that her reputation is no less brittle
than it is beautiful, -- and that she cannot be too much guarded in her
behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex."
"[We] sincerely sympathise with you, and all your respectable family, in
your present distress, which must be of the bitterest kind, because proceeding
from a cause which no time can remove. [i.e.
Lydia can't get her presumed lost
virginity back, so that anything anyone might try to do for her would be
useless.] ... The death of your
daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this. ... [The
De Bourghs] agree with me in
apprehending that this false step in one daughter will be injurious to the
fortunes of all the others; for who, as
Lady Catherine herself
condescendingly says, will connect themselves with such a family. ... Let me
advise you then, my dear Sir, to console yourself as much as possible, to
throw off your unworthy child from
your affection for ever, and leave her to reap the fruits of her own heinous
offence ..."
"I am truly rejoiced that my cousin
Lydia's sad business has been so well
hushed up, and am only concerned that their living together before the
marriage took place should be so generally known. I must not... refrain from
declaring my amazement at hearing that you received the young couple into your
house as soon as they were married. ... You ought certainly to forgive them as
a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be
mentioned in your hearing."
Jane Austen clearly disagrees with such
excessive rigidity (only unsympathetic characters in the novel hold these
views), but while she finds excuses for
Lydia (her youth, her mother's
encouragement, and her father's passivity), she doesn't at all intend to
defendLydia's conduct.
"Was he born in the purple of
commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the aristocracy?"
-- sarcastic inversion in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest
"James went to Winchester Fair yesterday, and bought a new horse,
and Mary has got a new maid -- two great acquisitions; one comes from Folly
farm, is about five years old, and thought very pretty,
and the other is niece to Dinah at Kintbury."
Actually, not all that much needs to be said, since the basic points (if
not the subtler ones) can be picked up from context.
Jane Austenconfines herself to the "genteel", those
socially recognized as being invitable; but as pointed out by
Craik, this actually covers a fairly
broad financial range -- thus
Mrs. Phillips comes in social
contact with Darcy, and
Mr. Knightley with Miss Bates.
Anyone with any pretensions to gentility can afford to hire
servants (even Mrs. Bates in
Emma has one servant, as would
Edward Ferrars and Lucy Steele in Sense
and Sensibility in their state of poverty as imagined by
Mrs. Jennings). In a letter of October 27, 1798,
Jane Austen wrote: "Earle and his wife live in the most private manner
imaginable at Portsmouth, without
keeping a servant of any kind. What a prodigious innate love of virtue she
must have, to marry under such circumstances!" -- obviously, this is the
abyss of genteel poverty.
This paragraph in chapter 45, during the
visit to Pemberley, after Miss Bingley's snide remark about the militia
being removed from Meryton, does in fact mean that Darcy had hoped that his
sister would marry Bingley; here's a version of the paragraph with
annotations supplied by Arnessa:
"Had Miss Bingley known what pain she was then giving her beloved friend
[Miss Darcy], she [Miss Bingley] undoubtedly would have refrained from the
hint; but she had merely intended to discompose Elizabeth, by bringing
forward the idea of a man [Wickham] to whom she [Miss Bingley] believed her
[Elizabeth] partial, to make her betray a sensibility which might injure
her in Darcy's opinion, and perhaps to remind the latter [Darcy] of all the
follies and absurdities by which some part of her [Elizabeth's] family were
connected with that corps. Not a syllable had ever reached her [Miss
Bingley] of Miss Darcy's meditated elopement. To no creature had it been
revealed, where secresy was possible, except to Elizabeth; and from all
Bingley's connections, her brother [Darcy] was particularly anxious to
conceal it, from that very wish which Elizabeth had long ago attributed to
him [Darcy], of their [the Bingleys] becoming hereafter her [Miss Darcy's]
own [connections]. He [Darcy] had certainly formed such a plan, and
without meaning that it should affect his [Darcy's] endeavour to separate
him [Bingley] from Miss [Jane] Bennet, it is probable that it might add
something to his [Darcy's] lively concern for the welfare of his
friend. [Bingley]."
A "rector" was a Church of England clergyman on the highest rung of the
hierarchy of ecclesiastical endowment (entitlement to agricultural tithes, and security of tenure): curate,
vicar, rector.
Lydia Bennet: "I was thinking,
you may suppose, of my dear Wickham.
I longed to know whether he would be married in his
blue coat."
Frederic & Elfrida: "a young
& Handsome Gentleman with a new blue
coat entered & intreated from the lovely Charlotte, permission to pay
to her his addresses."
Literally, a French masculine plural adjective, meaning "handsome ones";
used to mean handsome, pleasant men, especially marriageable men. In Jane
Austen's novels this word tends to be used only by vulgar or unsympathetic
characters.
To be "out" meant being permitted to
attend the more grown-up social events, such as balls and assemblies; in
effect it means that a young lady has entered onto the
"marriage market" (cf. the "debutante
balls" of later periods -- the younger Lucas girls speak of their
"coming out"). This was not one of
Jane Austen's favorite social customs, as she
makes abundantly clear in a passage in her novel
Mansfield Park; see also the
hilarious parody, in one of her Juvenilia, of a mother's bringing her
daughters "out". (She also wrote, in a
letter of August 10, 1814: "What he says
about the madness of otherwise sensible women on the subject of their
daughters coming out is worth its weight in gold.")
"...talking of the confidence of Sir Rd. Ford's
new-married daughter; though she married so strangely lately, yet
appears at church as briscke as can be and takes place of her elder
sister, a maid."
-- Pepys, November 30, 1662
Precedence (i.e. the regulation of who goes first, or gets a more favorable
position) was a part of everyday activities, and a not uncommon source of
tension (as in Persuasion,
when Mary Musgrove, a baronet's daughter, insists on taking precedence over
her mother-in-law). The basic rule of precedence referred to here is that
the daughters of a family take precedence according to seniority (i.e. are
ranked in order of date of birth), except that all married
daughters take precedence above all unmarried daughters. This is why Lydia,
even though she is the youngest daughter, now takes precedence over the
eldest, Jane -- at least until the time when Jane too marries (thus at the
end of Persuasion, youngest
daughter Mrs. Charles Musgrove [Mary] has "something to suffer" in seeing her
newly-married elder sister Anne "restored to the rights of seniority").
Note that the precedence between sisters can also be affected by further
complicating factors (such as the ranks of the husbands that they marry),
and that the whole subject of precedence is rather involved.
In a letter of late 1814,
Jane Austen wrote,
"Miss Bigg... writes me word that Miss Blachford is married. but I
have never seen it in the Paper. And one may be as well be single, if the
Wedding is not to be in print."
In one of Jane Austen's own letters to
Cassandra (October 27th 1798) she says
"next week [I] shall begin operations on my hat, on which you know my
principal hopes of happiness depend".
``Yes, and her petticoat; I hope you saw her petticoat,
six inches deep in mud, I am absolutely certain; and the gown which
had been let down to hide it not doing its office.''
-- Louisa Hurst, Chapter 8
The petticoat would have been slightly shorter than the outermost layer
(the gown), and made of a coarser, cheaper, and easier-to-wash material than
the gown, so that when Elizabeth walked through the mud, she would have
lifted up her gown and let the petticoat underneath take the brunt of the
dirt (thus protecting the gown, while still being decently covered down to
near her ankles; at that time, the lower part of the outer petticoat was not
really considered underwear, and was often decorated in the expectation of
its being publicly seen). The idea was that when she arrived at Netherfield,
she could let down the down the gown (the outermost and most fragile layer
that she had been trying to preserve) so that it would cover the muddy
petticoat, so that she would have a more presentable (externally undirtied)
appearance -- only there was so much mud that this plan apparently wasn't
entirely successful (in the hyper-critical eyes of the Bingley sisters, at
least...)
It says in chapter 28: "When
Mr. Collins said anything of which his wife might reasonably be ashamed,
which certainly was not unseldom, she [Elizabeth] involuntarily turned her
eye on Charlotte."
Here if you strictly follow through the logic of the triple negation
(NOT (NOT (NOT FREQUENTLY))) then the "compositional
semantics" of the way the phrase's component parts are put together would
lead one to expect that "not unseldom" should mean "infrequently".
However, a quick perusal of the OED (Oxford English
Dictionary) shows that "not unseldom" was simply a fixed phrase or idiom
with the meaning "not infrequently" (which comes to pretty much the same
thing as "frequently"). In fact, the word "unseldom" was really only used
as part of the phrase "not unseldom".
When Mr. Collins declares
that he will "trespass on your hospitality" from "Monday, November 18th" to
"the Saturday se'nnight following", this
means he will stay twelve days, until November 30th, the first Saturday which
is more than a week after his arrival ("Saturday week" in modern British
English). His visit is timed so that he will only have to find a clerical
substitute for one Sunday. (See Chapman and McKinnon's chronology.)
First, Christmas day itself didn't necessarily have that much cross-generational family ritual
associated with it. The Christmas / New Year's season was the occasion of
some general feasting and merriment among adults (as in George Eliot's
Silas Marner), and children would
often be given some kind of informal treat in connection with such year-end
festivities, as among the Musgroves at Uppercross in chapter 14 of Jane
Austen's Persuasion (and at this time of year children came home
from boarding schools, as also mentioned there). However, there generally
weren't any major "child-centered" rituals marking Christmas, and Jane
Austen's period was actually kind of a low point for special
Christmas-specific customs among the English gentry classes (the days when
"God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman" was practically the only Christmas song known to
the general English population at large, and when in the southern English
cities Christmas carols were mostly sung only as a lower-class begging
technique); this period was towards the end of a long period of slow decline
in Christmas customs which followed the Puritan attacks on Christmas in the
17th century, and was before the revivals of the 1840's (Dickens'
Christmas Carol, the importation of the Christmas tree into
Britain from Germany by Prince Albert, etc.).
Second, the Gardiners' visit over Christmas was very short by
pre-railway standards (a flying visit of only a week
long), and if the Gardiners had chosen to bring their children along, this
would also have meant taking along a set of nurserymaids (and possibly some
additional other servants), as John and Isabella Knightley do when they visit
Hartfield in Emma, which would have made at least one additional
carriage necessary (probably two) and greatly increased the expense and
inconvenience of the journey.
So it was not surprising according to the standards of the time that the
Gardiners did not choose to complicate their very brief visit in this way, and
they were not necessarily depriving their children of any expected celebration
in doing so.
At semi-informal dance events (but not really at grand formal balls), if
there were more young women than young men, then some of the young women would
sometimes dance with each other. (Sisters also often danced together at home,
to practice their dancing; see this contemporary picture of two sisters dancing.)
So here Mr. Bennet is pretending to be an exaggeratedly harsh caricature of an
ultra-restrictive parent, for comic effect apparently (always the comedian,
Mr. Bennet), and to give vent to his irritated feelings. Elizabeth certainly
understands him here, but Kitty doesn't.
"Fitzwilliam" was Darcy's mother's surname (she was known as "Lady Anne
Fitzwilliam" before her marriage to Darcy's father, and "Lady Anne Darcy"
afterwards), and at the time it was rather common to give a son his mother's
maiden surname as his own first name, especially if his mother's family was in
some way prominent or distinguished (or sometimes another prominent family
surname different from his own surname). This explains why Darcy's first name
is the same as his cousin Col. Fitzwilliam's surname. (See
genealogy chart.)
The name "Shirley" has an interesting history in this way: it was
originally a surname (and not particularly a girl's first name); then
Charlotte Brontë wrote an 1853 novel in which a character who was an only
daughter (and so was an heiress) had been
given the surname "Shirley" as a first name (as if she had been a boy) -- so
that Brontë actually intended "Shirley" to have something of a masculine
connotation. But as a result of the novel, "Shirley" started to come into use
as a girl's name in real life...
When Lydia is described as "a stout,
well-grown girl of fifteen, with a fine complexion and good-humoured
countenance", the word "stout" does not really mean "fat", but simply
"healthy and robust". Red cheeks and a strong healthy frame were contrasted
with paleness and feebleness, and a body made thin or "wasted" with disease.
For example, Elizabeth Bennet says earlier in
the same chapter: ``Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Every thing
nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of
inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely
away.''
So Lydia is just healthy, and mature for the age of 15.
A game in which cards are traded to get the best hand of three cards
(where a three of a kind is ranked highest). A "round
game" (unlike whist and quadrille) -- i.e. with flexibility in the number
of players.
Lottery Tickets
Another "round game", in which you win if you hold a certain card (the
winning "lottery ticket").
Loo
Another "round game", in three-card and five-card variants.
Fordyce's Sermons to Young
Women (1766), the object of
Lydia's vigorous (though hardly
well-mannered) act of naïve criticism, was a conservative work of morality,
the pages of which were used by Lydia Languish's hair-dresser as hair-curling
paper in Sheridan's The Rivals,
and which was scored by
Wollstonecraft for being insulting to women (in her Vindication of the
Rights of Women -- see Kirkham).
Here's a brief summary and quotation from Fordyce taken from Women's
Life and Work in the Southern Colonies by Julia Cherry Spruill:
"In these writings, which exalted the passive and negative
qualities of character, and held up masculinity as the most displeasing
characteristic ladies could posess, one finds some explanation of the
exaggerated gender consciousness and unnatural manners of many women of the
period. Dr. Fordyce's Sermons to Young Women was saturated with
sentimentality. The author extolled the ``submissive dependence'', ``timidity
of temper'', ``lovely meekness'', ``modest pliancy'', and ``complacent
deportment'' of the female sex, and thus laid out the province of women:
``Nature appears to have formed the [mental] faculties of your sex, for the
most part, with less vigor than those of ours, observing the same distinction
here as in the more delicate frame of your bodies... But you yourselves, I
think, will allow that war, commerce, politics, exercises of strength and
dexterity, abstract philosophy, and all the abstruser sciences, are most
properly the province of men... Those masculine women that would plead for
your sharing any part of this province equally with us, do not understand
your true interests. There is an influence, there is an empire which belongs
to you, and which I wish you ever to possess: I mean that which has the heart
for its object and is secured by meeknesss, by soft attraction, and virtuous
love.'' In spite of their exaggerated notions of feminine delicacy and
unnatural standards of conduct, these books were exceedingly
popular."
Both Lydia and
Mr. Collins are intended to
come off badly in the little scene in Chapter 14, as pointed out by
Craik, p.173. It is interesting that
the speech styles of Lydia and
Mr. Collins (as calculated from
the use of the most-frequently occurring words), diverge from each other more
than do almost all other possible pairings of the speech styles of two
different characters in the novel -- see
Burrows, p.84
"In the army... there is an almost impassible gulf between the ranks --
which even Wellington called ``the scum of the earth'' -- and the officers.
Although Jane Austen feels no call to dwell upon
the degrading conditions suffered by the common soldier, she shows herself as
aware as her contemporaries of the brutal discipline enforced." --
Craik, Jane Austen in her
Time, p. 75.
A parlour for the reception of guests, and to which ladies
withdraw after dinner; the gentlemen remain for a time in the dining
room, and then follow them.
In Jane Austen's era, quite serious infectious
diseases were sometimes called "putrid sore throat", so we aren't meant to be
too complacent about Jane's
illness.
The words "Candid" and "Candour" did not generally take on the connotation of
being brutally frank, as they sometimes do now. The most usual meaning of
"candid" according to Dr. Johnson's dictionary, was "Free from malice; not
desirous to find faults", though according to the OED, it could also have the connotations "unbiased, impartial, open, sincere".