Phaeton [ Transport ]
… you were, or aspired to be, driving oneself became a new social performance. For example, in Frances Burney’s 1778 novel Evelina, Lord Orville’s slow and careful phaeton driving is a performance of his restrained, manly gentility whereas the … had in her ‘frailty […] a great desire to go out in’ of it. His driving made her think him ‘very harmless’. 4 For both Evelina and Austen, the assessing male phaeton-drivers was part of the courtship process. 3 . Frances Burney, Evelina, ed. Edward A. Bloom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 279. 4 . Jane Austen, Jane Austen’s Letters, …
Animals | Courtship | Elite
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