E X T E N S I O N GOOD MANNERS IN THE VICTORIAN AGE The way Jane Austen s characters interact with one another may seem strange to a modern reader who doesn t know the social habits of the time, but the rules that governed them were quite strict1 as, in Charles William Day2 s words, [these rules were] indispensable to the well-being of society [ because, without them, society] would [ ] fall to pieces, and be destroyed . In his Hints on Etiquette and the Social Usages of Society with a Glance at Bad Habits in 1844, Mr Day wrote that Etiquette is the barrier3 which society draws4 around itself as a protection against offences the law cannot touch; it is a shield against the intrusion5 of the impertinent, [ ] and the vulgar, a guard against those obtuse6 persons who, having neither talent nor delicacy, would be continually thrusting7 themselves into the society of men to whom their presence might [ ] be offensive, and even insupportable8. So, to give a better understanding of what etiquette consisted of at the time, here is a list of some of the social rules that men and women of Austen s times had to follow: never speak to a person unless you have been introduced; 1. strict: severe. 2. Charles William Day: thinker and writer of the Victorian age. 3. barrier: something that keeps a person separate from another. 4. draws: puts. 5. intrusion: act of entering a place which is private or where you may not be wanted. 6. obtuse: slow to understand. 7. thrusting: moving quickly and violently in a certain direction. 8. insupportable: so bad or difficult that you cannot accept it or deal with it. 36