Dancing in Jane Austen’s Day

Paltrow in Emma

Paltrow in Emma

Sports Saturday

I realize that social dancing isn’t normally regarded as a competitive sport, but I have a dance story I want to share so I’ll bend the rules of “Sports Saturday.” This one involves an afternoon of dancing where my Jane Austen seminar learned a number of the steps that her heroines engage in.

And maybe I should take back my remark about the non-competitive nature of dancing. There is fierce rivalry going on in Austen’s dance scenes as young women vie for eligible males. Success in this field is no less important—indeed, it may be far more important—than that occurring on an athletic field.

Take Pride and Prejudice, for instance. In the novel’s first dance, the prize of the room, more so even than Bingley, is 10-thousand-pounds-a-year Darcy. Which lady will land him? He dances with Caroline Bingley and rejects our heroine Elizabeth Bennett, remarking, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me; I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”

Of course, if you are a connoisseur of the courtship genre, you know that an eligible bachelor insulting the heroine is a sure sign that they will end up together. Given that Pride and Prejudice helped establish the genre, this proves to be the case here. But this dance proves to be only the first of several such occasions where things go badly for the home team.

For instance, it is at a dance that the unreliable Wickham blackens Darcy’s name, and it is at a dance where Darcy thinks he sees Jane too complacently receiving the attentions of Bingley. These two facts together cause Elizabeth to reject his marriage proposal, even though he is the right man for her.

Subtle daggers are wielded in a ball in Sense and Sensibility. The impetuous Marianne confronts Willoughby about his avoidance of her, thereby inflaming the jealousy of his fiancé—who in turn makes Willoughby write the cruel letter to Marianne that almost breaks her heart.

In Emma, the vengeful Mr. Elton refuses to dance with Harriet Smith, thereby publicly humiliating her. And then, when Mr. Knightley saves the day, Harriet is set up for heartbreak. That’s because, thanks to Emma’s imprudent coaching, Harriet begins dreaming of someday transcending their large class difference and marrying him.

Knightley also makes an impression on Emma, who suddenly realizes he is an excellent dancer–and perhaps also (although she doesn’t admit it at the time) a potential partner for herself.

Emma dances with Frank Churchill at the same dance, thereby rendering Knightley jealous, even though Frank (unbeknownst to everyone) is just using Emma as a cover for his secret engagement to Jane Fairfax. And then there is a foreshadowing of the pairing that will end the book, although it seems to be cut short with the cold words “brother and sister”:

“I am ready,” said Emma, “whenever I am wanted.”
“Whom are you going to dance with?” asked Mr. Knightley.
She hesitated a moment, and then replied, “With you, if you will ask me.”
“Will you?” said he, offering his hand.
“Indeed I will. You have shown that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper.”
“Brother and sister! no, indeed.”

There are also key dancing scenes in Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park. It is clear that Austen herself loved dancing, which she did.  But just as athletes sees sports as simulaltaneously a game and something more, so Austen saw dancing as more than mere exercise.

Back to my class’s afternoon of dancing. My student Arianna Pray (now there’s a name that belongs in a 19th century novel) engages in Civil War reenactments and brought friends of hers to St. Mary’s City to teach us steps. I can’t remember the names of the dances we were taught (I’ve written to Arianna and will update this post when she replies), but they would have been danced in Austen’s time. To give a further sense of history to the proceedings, we danced in the reconstructed 17th century Maryland State House, an exact replica of Maryland’s first state house which is located in Historical St. Mary’s City.

Among other things, we learned just how much energy it took to dance these dances. The men and women of the time would have had to be in shape. (Maybe that’s why Austen heroines take all those long walks.) We also realized how there would have been time for Jane Austen’s characters to converse at various points during the dance—not everyone is dancing all the time—and we got a sense of the thrill that men and women must have experienced as they were allowed to touch each other. At any other time, all such touching in this very formal society would have been forbidden.

Sometimes a dance is more than just a dance.

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