Jane Austen For Dummies (48 page)
Read Jane Austen For Dummies Online
Authors: Joan Elizabeth Klingel Ray
With Austen's England structured according to class, knowing your place was a required social convention. And your place was quite literal, depending on your age, gender, marital status, and social class. You had to know when to bow, how to enter a room, and to whom you could and could not introduce yourself. But all this protocol was so engrained in people that they didn't have to carry a pocket-sized etiquette book with them. Austen is careful to observe this protocol in her novels: She follows it both seriously and humorously â the latter when a character overdoes protocol in a futile and foolish effort to look genteel and impress others. (For details on the class structure, see Chapter 2.)
Even an act as simple as walking into a dining room was actually a little parade of superiority: People walked in couples, with the gentlemen escorting the ladies whose age, marital status, and social rank determined the walking order. The pecking order, known as precedence, was as follows:
1.
Aristocracy (everyone from the rank of baron and baroness upward) entered before commoners (baronets, knights, and all others without titles).
2.
Titled commoners (baronets and knights, the lowest of the titles) and their offspring went before untitled folks.
3.
Married women went before single women.
Chapter 2 details the social ranks with which people â and I mean
all
people, from the poorest and most humble to the richest and most aristocratic â in Austen's day were familiar. The ranks were the foundation of the hierarchical society in which they lived. While Austen deals with titled folks as nothing more than secondary characters, when they do appear, other characters know precedence. But even among nontitled characters, knowing rank among commoners and within families was a social necessity. You needed to know when to speak â or not â and how to address someone. Failing to treat people of rank correctly was a major social blunder.
Rank was important in the way young ladies were discussed and/or addressed. In a family of daughters, the eldest is Miss X, and those younger than she are spoken of as Miss Mary X. In
Pride and Prejudice,
for example, Jane Bennet, the eldest, is called Miss Bennet. Her younger sisters, however, would be introduced as Miss Elizabeth Bennet, Miss Mary Bennet, and so forth. Speaking in direct address, Collins recognizes that Miss Bennet (Jane) isn't available for a proposal, and so he proceeds in birth order to propose to the next eldest, “Miss Elizabeth” (PP 1:19).
Outside the family, only close friends of equal or near equal status use their first names with each other. Thus, Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Miss Lucas (not Miss Charlotte Lucas, because she's the eldest Lucas sister) address each other as Elizabeth and Charlotte. But in
Emma,
though the heroine befriends Harriet Smith, because Harriet is of a lower class (even though Emma believes, on no grounds, that Harriet is a gentleman's daughter!), she addresses Emma as Miss Woodhouse, while Emma calls her Harriet. (If you're wondering why Emma, as the younger of the two Woodhouse sisters, is not called Miss Emma Woodhouse in the novel, remember that her elder sister Isabella is married and out of the house.)
The same naming rule applied to gentlemen. Thus, in
Emma,
Mr. Knightley is called such because he's the elder of the two Knightley brothers. But people speak of his younger brother, though an adult, as Mr. John Knightley.
Notice that close male friends frequently call each other by their last names. Fitzwilliam Darcy calls Charles Bingley “Bingley,” instead of Charles, and Bingley calls his friend “Darcy” (PP). Sir John Middleton refers to his old friend “Brandon” (SS). Edmund Bertram calls Henry Crawford “Crawford,” and Crawford calls Edmund “Bertram” (MP).
Married people of Austen's day often referred to each other in a more formal way. Traditionally the older generation of society stuck to these rules, while the younger couples felt free to break free from the convention. Here are some examples:
Married women, unless they were very close friends, called each other Mrs. X or Y. In
Persuasion,
the newly acquainted Mrs. Musgrove and Mrs. Croft refer to each other in just that way.
Even spouses, especially older spouses, call each other “Mr.” and “Mrs.” because that was traditional. On the opening page of
Pride and Prejudice,
Mrs. Bennet addresses her husband of more than 23 years as “Mr. Bennet.”
In
Sense and Sensibility,
the younger John Dashwood speaks of and to his wife as “Fanny” instead of Mrs. Dashwood.
Younger people always respected their elders. So in
Sense and Sensibility,
Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, both in their late teens, would never think of calling their London hostess anything other than “Mrs. Jennings.”
A gentleman courting a lady addressed her as Miss X until the courtship had proceeded to the engagement stage. Likewise, a lady called him Mr. X until that same time. In Austen's novels, the only exception to this is Emma, who insists that she'll always call Mr. Knightley “Mr. Knightley,” and only use his first name, George, when they take their wedding vows (E 3:17).
For information on using titles like Sir and Lady, see Chapter 2.
To meet and greet properly, those in Austen's time had to remember the following rules:
People of a lower social class had to wait to be introduced to those of a higher class, unless the higher class person introduced himself to the lower class person.
In
Pride and Prejudice,
Elizabeth Bennet, learning from Mr. Collins that he plans to introduce himself to Darcy, asks him with utter disbelief, “âYou are not going to introduce yourself to Mr. Darcy?'” (PP 1:18). Although Collins replies to her that he “âconsider[s]the clerical office [that is, being a clergyman] as equal in point of dignity with the highest rank in the kingdom,'” he's completely wrong. So it's neither a surprise nor a sign of Darcy's snobbery that Darcy, the higher in rank, shows astonishment and “unrestrained wonder” and replies to Collins “with an air of distant civility” when Collins “attack[s]” him. Collins has committed a major social blunder, which embarrasses Elizabeth because Collins is her relation, albeit (thankfully for her) a distant one.
When not properly introduced, you must be silent.
In
Northanger Abbey,
when Catherine Morland and Mrs. Allen enter the tea room at a ball, and unacquainted with anyone, they find themselves suddenly at the table of strangers, they feel extremely awkward. Mrs. Allen says to her young companion, “âThe gentlemen and ladies at this table look as if they wondered why we came here â we seem to be forcing ourselves into their party'” (NA 1:2). Mrs. Allen isn't being paranoid. But I am pleased to report that the strangers at the table finally share their tea with Catherine and Mrs. Allen. So common sense could intervene with protocol in order to alleviate social awkwardness.
After you were introduced, you always acknowledged each other when seen.
This practice went on forever: once an acquaintance, always an acquaintance. When Anne and Admiral Croft walk together in Bath, he quite properly diverts his attention from Anne for a moment to say “How d'ye do” to Captain Brigden, and when Sir Archibald Drew spots the Admiral, he waves and kisses his hand to Anne, mistaking her for Mrs. Croft (P 2:6). Failure to acknowledge an acquaintance, even with a man's slightly tipping his hat or nodding his head, was a breach in conduct. To do this deliberately was to “cut” someone. (See the sidebar at the end of this section for more information on cutting.)
Bow and curtsey when formally introduced and reserve your handshake for when you want to show a sign of real friendship.
Shaking hands hadn't yet outdated bowing and curtseying for many occasions. When introduced to someone older or of higher rank, the people of lower rank bowed or curtsied. Gentlemen bowed and ladies curtsied when formally introduced to each other and again when parting. After Darcy hands Elizabeth his letter of explanation at Rosing, he makes “a slight bow” and departs (PP 2:12). In
Sense and Sensibility,
Mr. Palmer bows to the Dashwood ladies upon leaving Barton Cottage (SS 1:19).
Mansfield Park
's Tom Bertram says that when he met Mrs. Sneyd and her daughters, “âI made my bow in form'” (MP 1:5). Sometimes, a man bowed simply in acknowledgement of someone or something. Such bowing occurs when
Northanger Abbey
's Henry Tilney bows to Sarah for pointing out the Allens' home to him, or when Mr. Hurst bows to Jane Bennet who is finally well enough to join the others downstairs after spending time ill upstairs (NA 3:1, PP 1:11). Even Elizabeth Bennet answers Darcy “with a slight bow,” when he informs her at Pemberley that the Bingleys will soon be arriving (PP 3:1). A gentleman bowed to the lady when asking her to dance (and she curtsied to him) and after escorting her back to her seat. Even if he knew the lady previously, he sometimes bowed when joining her company and when departing from her, as both Mr. Elton and Frank Churchill do (his is specifically “a graceful bow”) when they leave Emma (E 1:9, 2:6). But while the bow and curtsey were alive and well, men and women were not bowing and curtseying all the time to each other! Upon entering and leaving rooms, good friends and family members were not expected to be always bowing and curtseying! Common sense prevailed.
While nowadays people shake hands when they're introduced, in Austen's day, handshaking was a sign of real friendship. So Harriet Smith, who has seen Emma Woodhouse several times, but is now invited to Emma's home, is thrilled when at the end of the evening's little party, “Miss Woodhouse had . . . actually shaken hands with her at last!” (E 1:3). When Catherine Morland and Isabella meet and seem to be immediate best friends, they shake hands at parting (NA 1:4). Only gentlemen who knew each other well and were of about the same class shook hands.
Shaking hands with a person of the opposite sex was less frequent and less proper. But when Emma asks Mr. Knightley to shake hands with her both as an old family friend and as a gesture of their making up from an earlier disagreement, she's perfectly polite and proper (E 1:12). Similarly, Marianne Dashwood asks Willoughby, “âWill you not shake hands with me?'” when she unexpectedly encounters him at a London party. This question is perfectly acceptable after they've already spent a lot of time together back at Barton (SS 2:6).