"Isn't this constant worrying about your reputation actually quite exhausting." It is no different today. When you're brought up with it, it's natural. We know the line between showing cleavage and showing nipple. At a dinner party, we wouldn't sit on the table. We don't do a LOT of things, lest people think we're a savage. Different rules, perhaps, but no fewer, I wager!!!
Very interesting thank you! Must have been very stifling and stressful! No wonder Elizabeth Bennett liked long walks in the countryside on her own! I'd be with her lol. X
The countryside was a bit less restrictive but I expect that going to London for the Season must have been a trial. These girls were so young, seventeen or eighteen, taken from home to be paraded around in front of a very sophisticated group of people, Very scary and with so much competition, for a suitable husband ,there would always be people looking out for indiscretions, no matter how minor. Most of the rules would be restrictive but fine, however I keep remembering how unconfident I was at that age. To have been thrown in at the deep end would have made me feel very gauche ,clumsy and probably spotty!
Interesting video - Bingley and Jane Bennett broke the two dance rule in Pride and Prejudice? According to report they danced several times in the hop at Meryton. And the lady not being seen together with a man alone, again in Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth Bennett seemed happy to stroll around Rosings Park with Colonel Fitzwilliam? The etiquette rules I noticed were that a man nearly always bowed to a lady, and a lady nearly always curtseyed to a man, even when, like Darcy and Lizzie at times, they weren't on the best of terms. And people didn't speak to one another until they had first been introduced. So when in Pride and Prejudice Mr Collins goes up, unintroduced, to Mr Darcy, Darcy gives him short shrift. Must admit it seemed in some ways a more gracious age, but must have been rather wearing. And the underclasses, the household servants for example, were almost treated as non-people.
I think it’s interesting how many of these rules trickled over to American culture, especially southern culture. For instance, the book “Little women” has a whole minor plot centered around how the girls can’t dance at a ball if they don’t have gloves. And the book “Gone with the wind” goes into a lot of these customs that were still being preserved late in the 19th century such as the mourning customs. We even have leftover remnants of this today such as very traditional widows not wearing jewelry except their wedding band worn on the right hand instead of the left
Some women behave like men in this day and age. Screaming and cursing inside stores and on the street. I find it so disgusting manners have gone out the window
