Dr. James Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women, published in 1765
I cannot make speeches, Emma. . . . If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more’ (E 3:13).
The most famous courtesy book is Il Cortegiano by Baldassare Castiglione, published in 1528.
A voracious reader with a large memory for what she read,
Capping means to follow up with something good or better in a conversation.
Emma is the eponymous heroine, which means having the name that is used as the title or name of something else.)
It is very unfair to judge of anybody’s conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation. Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual...
Sensibility, in Austen’s time, meant relying on one’s feelings as a guide to behavior, as a guide to truth.
By paying attention to another woman (Edward to Lucy and Frederick to Louisa), about whom he doesn’t really care, each man hurts the woman he really loves and who really loves him.
Having lost her bloom in the eight years since her romance and break-up with Captain Wentworth before the novel begins, Anne is wispy and quiet, still in love with Wentworth, but feeling helpless to d...