Jane Austen [ Art and Literature ]
… position, particularly for 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 … landowner, or a visiting one like Mr Darcy, chose to attend (Russel 184). Despite being governed by strict conventions, dancing was an erotically charged form of embodied sociability. 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 …
Courtship | Fiction | Gender | Public sphere
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