Pride and Prejudice Essay: The Function Of Dance -- Pride Prejudice Es

The Function Of Dance in Pride And Prejudice In Jane Austens novel Pride and Prejudice, set in the Regency Period, dance performs several important functions. Dance patterns emulate wooing rituals, marking dance as a microcosm for courtship and marriage - two main themes of the novel. The Regency period propagated the belief that no ingredient was more essential to a courtship than spring To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love... (Austen 7). Therefore, knowledge of dance - dance steps as well as dance etiquette - was a crucial necessity and was often acquired through study and awareness of conduct codes. These crucial codes were disseminated through popular courtesy/conduct books, which informed readers of correct dance steps, movements, and patterns, as well as socially acceptable etiquette. Regency conduct codes also influenced interpretations of individual character, as social behavior was often considered the physical embodiment of character thus, Austens characters typically reveal their inner selves through their manners. And, in the manner of courtesy writers who were concerned with behavior, not only to others but as it concerns oneself (Fritzer 4), Austen was concerned with the behavior patterns exhibited by her characters, curiously upon the dance floor. In this era particularly, a persons individual worth was manifested itself through performance on the dance floor As the courtesy books hint, dancing is a clue to character, negative as well as positive. Austen shows that a lack of moderation combined with too great a love of pleasure reflects contestable character. Other negative indications include poor dancing, des... ...Honan, Park. Jane Austen - Her Life. New York St. Martins Press, 1987. Kaplan, Deborah. Structures of Status Eighteenth-Century Social Experience as Form in Courtesy Books and Jane Austens Novels. Diss. University of Michigan, 1979. Poplawski, Paul. A Jane Austen Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn ecticut Greenwood Press, 1998. Rubinstein, E., ed. twentieth Century Interpretations of Pride and Prejudice. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969. Tanner, Tony. Jane Austen. Cambridge, Massachusetts Harvard University Press, 1986. Wells, Richard. Manners Culture and Dress of the Best-American Society. Accessed Online. 25 September 1998. Available http//www.burrows.com/other/manners.html. Woods, Karen Sue Radford. Dance in England Through a Study of Selected Eighteenth-Century Texts. Diss. Cornell University, 1980.