Jane Austen Quote of the Week 275

I have developed a keen interest in the term "Lady" - with a capital "L".   My present path began with a post at the Republic of Pemberley by a friend of mine, namely "Line".  We met some 11 years ago in Cape Cod at a RoP conference.  You may read her post and the replies here:  What distinguishes a Lady? 

 

Her post led me to another blog post by fellow Pemberlian, TimLee, and you can read that post here:  Ladies vs. Women.  The replies he received are very interesting also.

 

During all that reading I found a Wikipedia article of interest here:  Cult of Domesticity which explains a lot of the history of the word "Lady".

 

To top all of that off, I proceeded to look into our Jane's writings to see if she used the term "lady/ladies".  She surely did!  And I will quote only one instance from "Persuasion", chapter 26.  The surrounding story is involved so I won't give all the details, and just quote the main section with the use of 'ladies':

 

The party separated. The gentlemen had their own pursuits, the ladies proceeded on their own business, and they met no more while Anne belonged to them.

 

You may notice that she uses the term 'gentlemen' and 'ladies' in the same sentence.  Now here is the hard part.  I have a lot of the above information to digest and sort out and it will take a while.  So I will make this post a "Part One" on the term "Lady".

 

And please feel free to join in with your thoughts on this subject.

 

Yrs aff'ly,  Linda the Librarian

 

 

Pic: Anne Elliot Persuasion