Jane Austen [ Art and Literature ]
… a young woman with little money. Where her fictional heroines find husbands amongst their dancing partners, Austen herself remained single: a circumstance which left her financially precarious but probably facilitated her writing career. … For both sexes the ball represented the culmination of dancing lessons and long rehearsed social skills combining self-presentation with performance. A young lady’s first ball signalled her eligibility for marriage: that she was ‘out’. … currency amongst elite groups. But succeeding generations of readers have held Austen’s characters and the author herself in such familiar affection that a popular cult of Austenolotry grew up around her fictions. 14 From the …
Courtship | Fiction | Gender | Public sphere
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