where are the mammillary processes located on a typical lumbar vertebra

Three portions or tubercles can be noticed in a transverse process of a lower lumbar vertebrae: the lateral or costiform process, the mammillary process, and the accessory process.[2] The costiform is lateral, the mammillary is superior (cranial), and the accessory is inferior (caudal). The mammillary is connected in the lumbar region with the back part of the superior articular process.[clarification needed] The accessory process is situated at the back part of the base of the transverse process. The tallest and thickest costiform process is usually that of L5.[2]

Lumbar vertebrae

The lumbar vertebrae are, in human anatomy, the five vertebrae between the rib cage and the pelvis. They are the largest segments of the vertebral column and are characterized by the absence of the foramen transversarium within the transverse process (since it is only found in the cervical region) and by the absence of facets on the sides of the body (as found only in the thoracic region). They are designated L1 to L5, starting at the top. The lumbar vertebrae help support the weight of the body, and permit movement.

The figure on the left depicts the general characteristics of the first through fourth lumbar vertebrae. The fifth vertebra contains certain peculiarities, which are detailed below.

As with other vertebrae, each lumbar vertebra consists of a vertebral body and a vertebral arch. The vertebral arch, consisting of a pair of pedicles and a pair of laminae, encloses the vertebral foramen (opening) and supports seven processes.

The vertebral body of each lumbar vertebra is large, wider from side to side than from front to back, and a little thicker in front than in back. It is flattened or slightly concave above and below, concave behind, and deeply constricted in front and at the sides.[1]

The pedicles are very strong, directed backward from the upper part of the vertebral body; consequently, the inferior vertebral notches are of considerable depth.[1] The pedicles change in morphology from the upper lumbar to the lower lumbar. They increase in sagittal width from 9 mm to up to 18 mm at L5. They increase in angulation in the axial plane from 10 degrees to 20 degrees by L5. The pedicle is sometimes used as a portal of entrance into the vertebral body for fixation with pedicle screws or for placement of bone cement as with kyphoplasty or vertebroplasty.

The laminae are broad, short, and strong.[1] They form the posterior portion of the vertebral arch. In the upper lumbar region the lamina are taller than wide but in the lower lumbar vertebra the lamina are wider than tall. The lamina connects the spinous process to the pedicles.

The vertebral foramen within the arch is triangular, larger than the thoracic vertebrae, but smaller than in the cervical vertebrae.[1]

The spinous process is thick, broad, and somewhat quadrilateral; it projects backward and ends in a rough, uneven border, thickest below where it is occasionally notched.[1]

The superior and inferior articular processes are well-defined, projecting respectively upward and downward from the junctions of pedicles and laminae. The facets on the superior processes are concave, and look backward and medialward; those on the inferior are convex, and are directed forward and lateralward. The former are wider apart than the latter since in the articulated column, the inferior articular processes are embraced by the superior processes of the subjacent vertebra.[1]

The transverse processes are long and slender. They are horizontal in the upper three lumbar vertebrae and incline a little upward in the lower two. In the upper three vertebrae they arise from the junctions of the pedicles and laminae, but in the lower two they are set farther forward and spring from the pedicles and posterior parts of the vertebral bodies. They are situated in front of the articular processes instead of behind them as in the thoracic vertebrae, and are homologous with the ribs.[1]

The first lumbar vertebra is level with the anterior end of the ninth rib. This level is also called the important transpyloric plane, since the pylorus of the stomach is at this level. Other important structures are also located at this level, they include; fundus of the gall bladder, celiac trunk, superior mesenteric artery, termination of spinal cord, beginning of filum terminalis, renal vessels, middle suprarenal arteries, and hila of kidneys.

The fifth lumbar vertebra is characterized by its body being much deeper in front than behind, which accords with the prominence of the sacrovertebral articulation; by the smaller size of its spinous process; by the wide interval between the inferior articular processes, and by the thickness of its transverse processes, which spring from the body as well as from the pedicles.[1] The fifth lumbar vertebra is by far the most common site of spondylolysis and spondylolisthesis.[3]

Most individuals have five lumbar vertebrae, while some have four or six. Lumbar disorders that normally affect L5 will affect L4 or L6 in these latter individuals.

The range of segmental movements in a single segment is difficult to measure clinically, not only because of variations between individuals, but also because it is age and gender dependent. Furthermore, flexion and extension in the lumbal spine is the product of a combination of rotation and translation in the sagittal plane between each vertebra.[4]

Ranges of segmental movements in the lumbal spine (White and Panjabi, 1990) are (in degrees): [5]

Congenital vertebral anomalies can cause compression of the spinal cord by deforming the vertebral canal or causing instability.

Lumbarization of sacral vertebra 1, seen as 6 vertebrae that do not connect to ribs.

Sacralization of the L5 vertebra is seen at the lower right of the image.

Congenital block vertebra of the lumbar spine. CT volume rendering.

African apes have three and four lumbar vertebrae, (bonobos have longer spines with an additional vertebra) and humans normally five. This difference, and because the lumbar spines of the extinct Nacholapithecus (a Miocene hominoid with six lumbar vertebrae and no tail) are similar to those of early Australopithecus and early Homo, it is assumed that the Chimpanzee-human last common ancestor also had a long vertebral column with a long lumbar region and that the reduction in the number of lumbar vertebrae evolved independently in each ape clade. [6] The limited number of lumbar vertebrae in chimpanzees and gorillas result in an inability to lordose (curve) their lumbar spines, in contrast to the spines of Old World monkeys and Nacholapithecus and Proconsul, which suggests that the last common ancestor was not "short-backed" as previously believed. [7]


i know what you want ft. flipmode squad

"I Know What You Want" is a song written by rapper Busta Rhymes, and produced by Rick Rock for Rhymes' eighth album It Ain't Safe No More... (2002). The song is a duet with American singer Mariah Carey, and was co-written by Rah Digga, Rampage, Rick Rock and Spliff Star. It also includes a rap from Rhymes' group, the Flipmode Squad: Spliff Star, Baby Cham, Rah Digga, and Rampage.

I Know What You Want

It was released as the second single from It Ain't Safe No More in 2002 and was a hit across the world, peaking at number 3 in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Rhymes' previous single, "Make It Clap," had failed to reach the top forty on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. "I Know What You Want" stayed in the top forty for twenty-one weeks, and was ranked 17 on the Hot 100 2003 year-end chart. For Carey, it was a return to form after a string of unsuccessful singles, and it became one of her biggest hits in years. Columbia Records later included it on her thirteenth album The Remixes (2003) and the British and Japanese reissues of Charmbracelet (2002).

The song has sold 175,000 copies in the UK.[1]

In Billboard, Brian Garrity wrote that on "I Know What You Want," Busta Rhymes "takes an R&B turn."[2] Amazon.com editor Dalton Higgins wrote that in this duet Busta "croons."[3]

The single's music video, directed by Chris Robinson, features Busta Rhymes, the Flipmode Squad, and Carey lounging around an expensive mansion as they debate whether they "know what they want". The footage advertises Carey's jewelry brand - "Automatic Princess", during her sequences. Meanwhile, Busta watches over the female interest of the video played by video vixen La'Shontae "Tae" Heckerd, as she reads a Frank Miller-stylized graphic novel. A brief animated sequence drawn from the graphic novel is featured.

Canadian CD single

European CD single

Australian/European CD maxi-single

UK CD maxi-single

*sales figures based on certification alone
^shipments figures based on certification alone


where did the idea of individualism come from

In the English language, the word "individualism" was first introduced, as a pejorative, by the Owenites in the late 1830s, although it is unclear if they were influenced by Saint-Simonianism or came up with it independently.[11] A more positive use of the term in Britain came to be used with the writings of James Elishama Smith, who was a millenarian and a Christian Israelite. Although an early Owenite socialist, he eventually rejected its collective idea of property, and found in individualism a "universalism" that allowed for the development of the "original genius." Without individualism, Smith argued, individuals cannot amass property to increase one's happiness.[11] William Maccall, another Unitarian preacher, and probably an acquaintance of Smith, came somewhat later, although influenced by John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, and German Romanticism, to the same positive conclusions, in his 1847 work "Elements of Individualism".[12]

Individualism

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual.[1][2]  Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance[3] and advocate that interests of the individual should achieve precedence over the state or a social group,[3] while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government.[3] Individualism is often defined in contrast to totalitarianism, collectivism, authoritarianism, communitarianism, statism, cosmopolitanism, tribalism, altruism, and more corporate social forms.[4][5]

Individualism makes the individual its focus[1] and so starts "with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation."[6] Classical liberalism, existentialism, and anarchism are examples of movements that take the human individual as a central unit of analysis.[6] Individualism thus involves "the right of the individual to freedom and self-realization".[7]

It has also been used as a term denoting "The quality of being an individual; individuality"[3] related to possessing "An individual characteristic; a quirk."[3] Individualism is thus also associated with artistic and bohemian interests and lifestyles where there is a tendency towards self-creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors[3][8] as so also with humanist philosophical positions and ethics.[9][10]

An individual is a person or any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today within the fields of statistics and metaphysics, individual means "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person." (q.v. "The problem of proper names"). From the 17th century on, individual indicates separateness, as in individualism.[13] Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires.

Individualism holds that a person taking part in society attempts to learn and discover what his or her own interests are on a personal basis, without a presumed following of the interests of a societal structure (an individualist need not be an egoist). The individualist does not follow one particular philosophy, rather creates an amalgamation of elements of many, based on personal interests in particular aspects that he/she finds of use. On a societal level, the individualist participates on a personally structured political and moral ground. Independent thinking and opinion is a common trait of an individualist. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, claims that his concept of "general will" in the "social contract" is not the simple collection of individual wills and that it furthers the interests of the individual (the constraint of law itself would be beneficial for the individual, as the lack of respect for the law necessarily entails, in Rousseau's eyes, a form of ignorance and submission to one's passions instead of the preferred autonomy of reason).

Societies and groups can differ in the extent to which they are based upon predominantly "self-regarding" (individualistic, and/or self-interested) behaviors, rather than "other-regarding" (group-oriented, and group, or society-minded) behaviors. Ruth Benedict made a distinction, relevant in this context, between "guilt" societies (e.g., medieval Europe) with an "internal reference standard", and "shame" societies (e.g., Japan, "bringing shame upon one's ancestors") with an "external reference standard", where people look to their peers for feedback on whether an action is "acceptable" or not (also known as "group-think").[14]

Individualism is often contrasted[5] either with totalitarianism or with collectivism, but in fact, there is a spectrum of behaviors at the societal level ranging from highly individualistic societies through mixed societies to collectivist.

The principle of individuation
, or principium individuationis,[15] describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinguished from other things.[16] For Carl Jung, individuation is a process of transformation, whereby the personal and collective unconscious is brought into consciousness (by means of dreams, active imagination or free association to take some examples) to be assimilated into the whole personality. It is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche to take place.[17] Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.[18] In L'individuation psychique et collective, Gilbert Simondon developed a theory of individual and collective individuation in which the individual subject is considered as an effect of individuation rather than a cause. Thus, the individual atom is replaced by a never-ending ontological process of individuation. Individuation is an always incomplete process, always leaving a "pre-individual" left-over, itself making possible future individuations.[19] The philosophy of Bernard Stiegler draws upon and modifies the work of Gilbert Simondon on individuation and also upon similar ideas in Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. For Stiegler "the I, as a psychic individual, can only be thought in relationship to we, which is a collective individual. The I is constituted in adopting a collective tradition, which it inherits and in which a plurality of IÂ 's acknowledge each other's existence."[20]

Methodological individualism is the view that phenomena can only be understood by examining how they result from the motivations and actions of individual agents.[21] In economics, people's behavior is explained in terms of rational choices, as constrained by prices and incomes. The economist accepts individuals' preferences as givens. Becker and Stigler provide a forceful statement of this view:[22]

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891

Individualists are chiefly concerned with protecting individual autonomy against obligations imposed by social institutions (such as the state or religious morality). For L. Susan Brown "Liberalism and anarchism are two political philosophies that are fundamentally concerned with individual freedom yet differ from one another in very distinct ways. Anarchism shares with liberalism a radical commitment to individual freedom while rejecting liberalism's competitive property relations."[6]

Civil libertarianism is a strain of political thought that supports civil liberties, or which emphasizes the supremacy of individual rights and personal freedoms over and against any kind of authority (such as a state, a corporation, social norms imposed through peer pressure, etc.).[23] Civil libertarianism is not a complete ideology; rather, it is a collection of views on the specific issues of civil liberties and civil rights. Because of this, a civil libertarian outlook is compatible with many other political philosophies, and civil libertarianism is found on both the right and left in modern politics.[24] For scholar Ellen Meiksins Wood "there are doctrines of individualism that are opposed to Lockean individualism... and non-lockean individualism may encompass socialism".[25]

British Historians Emily Robinson, Camilla Schofield, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, and Natalie Thomlinson have argued that by the 1970s Britons were keen about defining and claiming their individual rights, identities and perspectives.  They demanded greater personal autonomy and self-determination and less outside control. They angrily complained that the 'establishment' was withholding it.  They argue this shift in concerns helped cause Thatcherism, and was incorporated into Thatcherism's appeal.[26]

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis, "of freedom; worthy of a free man, gentlemanlike, courteous, generous")[27] is the belief in the importance of individual freedom. This belief is widely accepted in the United States, Europe, Australia and other Western nations, and was recognized as an important value by many Western philosophers throughout history, in particular since the Enlightenment. It is often rejected by collectivist, Islamic, or confucian societies in Asia or the Middle East (though Taoists were and are known to be individualists).[28] The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote praising "the idea of a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed".[29]

Liberalism should not be confused with modern liberalism in the United States[30], and should be referred to as classical liberalism to avoid ambiguity.

Liberalism has its roots in the Age of Enlightenment and rejects many foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as the Divine Right of Kings, hereditary status, and established religion. John Locke is often credited with the philosophical foundations of classical liberalism. He wrote "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."[31]

In the 17th century, liberal ideas began to influence governments in Europe, in nations such as The Netherlands, Switzerland, England and Poland, but they were strongly opposed, often by armed might, by those who favored absolute monarchy and established religion. In the 18th century, in America, the first modern liberal state was founded, without a monarch or a hereditary aristocracy.[32] The American Declaration of Independence includes the words (which echo Locke) "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to insure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."[33]

Liberalism comes in many forms. According to John N. Gray, the essence of liberalism is toleration of different beliefs and of different ideas as to what constitutes a good life.[34]

Anarchism is a set of political philosophies that hold the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, or harmful,[35][36] and often advocate stateless societies.[37][38][39][40] While anti-statism is central, some argue[41] that anarchism entails opposing authority or hierarchical organisation in the conduct of human relations, including, but not limited to, the state system.[42][43][44][45][46][47][48]

For influential Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta "All anarchists, whatever tendency they belong to, are individualists in some way or other. But the opposite is not true; not by any means. The individualists are thus divided into two distinct categories: one which claims the right to full development for all human individuality, their own and that of others; the other which only thinks about its own individuality and has absolutely no hesitation in sacrificing the individuality of others. The Tsar of all the Russias belongs to the latter category of individualists. We belong to the former."[49]

Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and their will over any kinds of external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.[50][51] Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in conflict.

In 1793, William Godwin, who has often[52] been cited as the first anarchist, wrote Political Justice, which some consider to be the first expression of anarchism.[53][54]
Godwin, a philosophical anarchist, from a rationalist and utilitarian basis opposed revolutionary action and saw a minimal state as a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge.[53][55]
Godwin advocated individualism, proposing that all cooperation in labour be eliminated on the premise that this would be most conducive with the general good.[56][57]

An influential form of individualist anarchism, called "egoism,"[58] or egoist anarchism, was expounded by one of the earliest and best-known proponents of individualist anarchism, the German Max Stirner.[59] Stirner's The Ego and Its Own, published in 1844, is a founding text of the philosophy.[59] According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of the individual is their power to obtain what they desire,[60] without regard for God, state, or morality.[61] To Stirner, rights were spooks in the mind, and he held that society does not exist but "the individuals are its reality".[62] Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw unions of egoists, non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will,[63] which Stirner proposed as a form of organization in place of the state.[64] Egoist anarchists claim that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals.[65] "Egoism" has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy. It was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and LGBT activist John Henry Mackay.

Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first American anarchist,[66] and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published.[67] For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster "It is apparent...that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews...William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form.".[68] Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the United States and Europe.[69] Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his books Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Later Benjamin Tucker fused Stirner's egoism with the economics of Warren and Proudhon in his eclectic influential publication Liberty.

From these early influences individualist anarchism in different countries attracted a small but diverse following of bohemian artists and intellectuals,[70] free love and birth control advocates (see Anarchism and issues related to love and sex),[71][72] individualist naturists nudists (see anarcho-naturism),[73][74][75] freethought and anti-clerical activists[76] as well as young anarchist outlaws in what came to be known as illegalism and individual reclamation[77][78] (see European individualist anarchism and individualist anarchism in France). These authors and activists included Oscar Wilde, Emile Armand, Han Ryner, Henri Zisly, Renzo Novatore, Miguel Gimenez Igualada, Adolf Brand and Lev Chernyi among others. In his important essay The Soul of Man under Socialism from 1891 Oscar Wilde defended socialism as the way to guarantee individualism and so he saw that "With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism.  Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things.  One will live.  To live is the rarest thing in the world.  Most people exist, that is all."[79] For anarchist historian George Woodcock "Wilde's aim in The Soul of Man under Socialism is to seek the society most favorable to the artist ... for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated ... Wilde represents the anarchist as aesthete."[80] Woodcock finds that "The most ambitious contribution to literary anarchism during the 1890s was undoubtedly Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man under Socialism" and finds that it is influenced mainly by the thought of William Godwin.[80]

Ethical egoism (also called simply egoism)[81] is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people do only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism, which holds merely that it is rational to act in one's self-interest. However, these doctrines may occasionally be combined with ethical egoism.

Ethical egoism contrasts with ethical altruism, which holds that moral agents have an obligation to help and serve others. Egoism and altruism both contrast with ethical utilitarianism, which holds that a moral agent should treat one's self (also known as the subject) with no higher regard than one has for others (as egoism does, by elevating self-interests and "the self" to a status not granted to others), but that one also should not (as altruism does) sacrifice one's own interests to help others' interests, so long as one's own interests (i.e. one's own desires or well-being) are substantially-equivalent to the others' interests and well-being. Egoism, utilitarianism, and altruism are all forms of consequentialism, but egoism and altruism contrast with utilitarianism, in that egoism and altruism are both agent-focused forms of consequentialism (i.e. subject-focused or subjective), but utilitarianism is called agent-neutral (i.e. objective and impartial) as it does not treat the subject's (i.e. the self's, i.e. the moral "agent's") own interests as being more or less important than if the same interests, desires, or well-being were anyone else's.

Ethical egoism does not, however, require moral agents to harm the interests and well-being of others when making moral deliberation; e.g. what is in an agent's self-interest may be incidentally detrimental, beneficial, or neutral in its effect on others. Individualism allows for others' interest and well-being to be disregarded or not, as long as what is chosen is efficacious in satisfying the self-interest of the agent. Nor does ethical egoism necessarily entail that, in pursuing self-interest, one ought always to do what one wants to do; e.g. in the long term, the fulfilment of short-term desires may prove detrimental to the self. Fleeting pleasance, then, takes a back seat to protracted eudaemonia. In the words of James Rachels, "Ethical egoism [...] endorses selfishness, but it doesn't endorse foolishness."[82]

Ethical egoism is sometimes the philosophical basis for support of libertarianism or individualist anarchism as in Max Stirner, although these can also be based on altruistic motivations.[83] These are political positions based partly on a belief that individuals should not coercively prevent others from exercising freedom of action.

Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth-century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of individualist anarchism."[59] According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of the individual is their power to obtain what they desire,[60] without regard for God, state, or morality.[61] Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw unions of egoists, non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will,[63] which Stirner proposed as a form of organisation in place of the state.[64] Egoist anarchists argue that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals.[65] "Egoism" has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy but within anarchism it has also gone beyond Stirner. It was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and LGBT activist John Henry Mackay. John Beverley Robinson wrote an essay called "Egoism" in which he states that "Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by Ibsen, Shaw and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that they are an individual; that, as far as they are concerned, they are the only individual."[84] Nietzsche (see Anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche) and Stirner were frequently compared by French "literary anarchists" and anarchist interpretations of Nietzschean ideas appear to have also been influential in the United States.[85] Anarchists who adhered to egoism include Benjamin Tucker, Émile Armand, John Beverley Robinson, Adolf Brand, Steven T. Byington, Renzo Novatore, James L. Walker, Enrico Arrigoni, Biofilo Panclasta, Jun Tsuji, André Arru and contemporary ones such as Hakim Bey, Bob Black and Wolfi Landstreicher.

Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[86][87] generally held that the focus of philosophical thought should be to deal with the conditions of existence of the individual person and his or her emotions, actions, responsibilities, and thoughts.[88][89] The early 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, posthumously regarded as the father of existentialism,[90][91] maintained that the individual solely has the responsibilities of giving one's own life meaning and living that life passionately and sincerely,[92][93] in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom.[94]

Subsequent existential philosophers retain the emphasis on the individual, but differ, in varying degrees, on how one achieves and what constitutes a fulfilling life, what obstacles must be overcome, and what external and internal factors are involved, including the potential consequences of the existence[95][96] or non-existence of God.[97][98] Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophy, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.[99][100] Existentialism became fashionable in the post-World War years as a way to reassert the importance of human individuality and freedom.[101]

Freethought holds that individuals should not accept ideas proposed as truth without recourse to knowledge and reason. Thus, freethinkers strive to build their opinions on the basis of facts, scientific inquiry, and logical principles, independent of any logical fallacies or intellectually limiting effects of authority, confirmation bias, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, sectarianism, tradition, urban legend, and all other dogmas. Regarding religion, freethinkers hold that there is insufficient evidence to scientifically validate the existence of supernatural phenomena.[102]

Humanism is a perspective common to a wide range of ethical stances that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority.[103][104] Since the 19th century, humanism has been associated with an anti-clericalism inherited from the 18th-century Enlightenment philosophes. 21st century Humanism tends to strongly endorse human rights, including reproductive rights, gender equality, social justice, and the separation of church and state. The term covers organized non-theistic religions, secular humanism, and a humanistic life stance.[105]

Philosophical hedonism is a meta-ethical theory of value which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic bad.[106] The basic idea behind hedonistic thought is that pleasure (an umbrella term for all inherently likable emotions) is the only thing that is good in and of itself or by its very nature. The normative implications of this are evaluating character or behavior as morally good to the extent that one is concerned with pleasure/pain qua pleasure/pain or an action leads to a greater balance of pleasure over pain than any other would.

A libertine is one devoid of most moral restraints, which are seen as unnecessary or undesirable, especially one who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour sanctified by the larger society.[107][108] Libertines place value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the senses. As a philosophy, libertinism gained new-found adherents in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly in France and Great Britain. Notable among these were John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and the Marquis de Sade. During the Baroque era in France, there existed a freethinking circle of philosophers and intellectuals who were collectively known as libertinage érudit and which included Gabriel Naudé, Élie Diodati and François de La Mothe Le Vayer.[109][110] The critic Vivian de Sola Pinto linked John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester's libertinism to Hobbesian materialism.[111]

Objectivism is a system of philosophy created by philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand (1905–1982) that holds: reality exists independent of consciousness; human beings gain knowledge rationally from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive and deductive logic; the moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest. Rand thinks the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure laissez faire capitalism; and the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that he can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally. Objectivism celebrates man as his own hero, "with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."[112]

Philosophical anarchism is an anarchist school of thought[114] which contends that the State lacks moral legitimacy and – in contrast to revolutionary anarchism – does not advocate violent revolution to eliminate it but advocate peaceful evolution to superate it.[115] Though philosophical anarchism does not necessarily imply any action or desire for the elimination of the State, philosophical anarchists do not believe that they have an obligation or duty to obey the State, or conversely, that the State has a right to command.

Philosophical anarchism is a component especially of individualist anarchism.[116] Philosophical anarchists of historical note include Mohandas Gandhi, William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner,[117] Benjamin Tucker,[118] and Henry David Thoreau.[119] Contemporary philosophical anarchists include A. John Simmons and Robert Paul Wolff.

Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms like Solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it. For example, Wittgenstein wrote in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "The subject doesn't belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world" (proposition 5.632). Metaphysical subjectivism is the theory that reality is what we perceive to be real, and that there is no underlying true reality that exists independently of perception. One can also hold that it is consciousness rather than perception that is reality (subjective idealism). In probability, a subjectivism stands for the belief that probabilities are simply degrees-of-belief by rational agents in a certain proposition, and which have no objective reality in and of themselves.

Ethical subjectivism stands in opposition to moral realism, which claims that moral propositions refer to objective facts, independent of human opinion; to error theory, which denies that any moral propositions are true in any sense; and to non-cognitivism, which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all. The most common forms of ethical subjectivism are also forms of moral relativism, with moral standards held to be relative to each culture or society (c.f. cultural relativism), or even to every individual. The latter view, as put forward by Protagoras, holds that there are as many distinct scales of good and evil as there are subjects in the world. Moral subjectivism is that species of moral relativism that relativizes moral value to the individual subject.

Horst Matthai Quelle  was a Spanish language German anarchist philosopher influenced by Max Stirner.[120] He argued that since the individual gives form to the world, he is those objects, the others and the whole universe.[120] One of his main views was a "theory of infinite worlds" which for him was developed by pre-socratic philosophers.[120]

Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from Latin solus (alone) and ipse (self). Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. As such it is the only epistemological position that, by its own postulate, is both irrefutable and yet indefensible in the same manner. Although the number of individuals sincerely espousing solipsism has been small, it is not uncommon for one philosopher to accuse another's arguments of entailing solipsism as an unwanted consequence, in a kind of reductio ad absurdum. In the history of philosophy, solipsism has served as a skeptical hypothesis.

The doctrine of economic individualism holds that each individual should be allowed autonomy in making his or her own economic decisions as opposed to those decisions being made by the state, the community, the corporation etc. for him or her.

Classical liberalism is a political ideology that developed in the 19th century in England, Western Europe, and the Americas. It followed earlier forms of liberalism in its commitment to personal freedom and popular government, but differed from earlier forms of liberalism in its commitment to free markets and classical economics.[121] Notable classical liberals in the 19th century include Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo. Classical liberalism was revived in the 20th century by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, and further developed by Milton Friedman, Robert Nozick, Loren Lomasky, and Jan Narveson.[122] The phrase classical liberalism is also sometimes used to refer to all forms of liberalism before the 20th century.

In regards to economic questions within individualist anarchism there are adherents to mutualism (Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Emile Armand, early Benjamin Tucker); natural rights positions (early Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Josiah Warren); and egoistic disrespect for "ghosts" such as private property and markets (Max Stirner, John Henry Mackay, Lev Chernyi, later Benjamin Tucker, Renzo Novatore, illegalism). Contemporary individualist anarchist Kevin Carson characterizes American individualist anarchism saying that "Unlike the rest of the socialist movement, the individualist anarchists believed that the natural wage of labor in a free market was its product, and that economic exploitation could only take place when capitalists and landlords harnessed the power of the state in their interests. Thus, individualist anarchism was an alternative both to the increasing statism of the mainstream socialist movement, and to a classical liberal movement that was moving toward a mere apologetic for the power of big business." [123]

Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought which can be traced to the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market.[124] Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank which would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate only high enough to cover the costs of administration.[125] Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value which holds that when labor or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility".[126] Receiving anything less would be considered exploitation, theft of labor, or usury.

Libertarian socialism (sometimes dubbed socialist libertarianism,[127] or left-libertarianism[128][129]) is a group of anti-authoritarian[130] political philosophies inside the socialist movement that rejects socialism as centralized state ownership and control of the economy,[131] as well as the state itself.[132] It criticizes wage labour relationships within the workplace.[133]  Instead, it emphasizes workers' self-management of the workplace[132] and decentralized structures of political organization.[134][135][136] It asserts that a society based on freedom and justice can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control certain means of production and subordinate the majority to an owning class or political and economic elite.[137] Libertarian socialists advocate for decentralized structures based on direct democracy and federal or confederal associations such as libertarian municipalism, citizens' assemblies, trade unions, and workers' councils.[138][139] All of this is generally done within a general call for libertarian[140][141] and voluntary human relationships[142] through the identification, criticism, and practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all aspects of human life.[42][46][143][144][44][145][146][48] As such libertarian socialism, within the larger socialist movement, seeks to distinguish itself both from Leninism/Bolshevism and from social democracy.[147][148]

Past and present political philosophies and movements commonly described as libertarian socialist include anarchism (especially anarchist communism, anarchist collectivism, anarcho-syndicalism,[149] and mutualism[150]) as well as autonomism, communalism, participism, guild socialism,[151] revolutionary syndicalism, and libertarian Marxist[152] philosophies such as council communism[153] and Luxemburgism;[154] as well as some versions of "utopian socialism"[155] and individualist anarchism.[156][157][158][159]

Left-libertarianism (or left-wing libertarianism)[note 1] names several related but distinct approaches to politics, society, culture, and political and social theory, which stress both individual freedom and social justice.  Unlike right-libertarians, they believe that neither claiming nor mixing one's labor with natural resources is enough to generate full private property rights,[160][161] and maintain that natural resources (land, oil, gold, trees) ought to be held in some egalitarian manner, either unowned or owned collectively.[161]  Those left-libertarians who support private property do so under the condition that recompense is offered to the local community.

Left-libertarianism can refer generally to three related and overlapping schools of thought:

Right-libertarianism or right libertarianism is a phrase used by some to describe either non-collectivist forms of libertarianism[167] or a variety of different libertarian views some label "right" of mainstream libertarianism including "libertarian conservatism".

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls it "right libertarianism" but states: "Libertarianism is often thought of as 'right-wing' doctrine. This, however, is mistaken for at least two reasons. First, on social—rather than economic—issues, libertarianism tends to be 'left-wing'. It opposes laws that restrict consensual and private sexual relationships between adults (e.g., gay sex, non-marital sex, and deviant sex), laws that restrict drug use, laws that impose religious views or practices on individuals, and compulsory military service. Second, in addition to the better-known version of libertarianism—right-libertarianism—there is also a version known as 'left-libertarianism'. Both endorse full self-ownership, but they differ with respect to the powers agents have to appropriate unappropriated natural resources (land, air, water, etc.)."[168]

The anarchist[169] writer and bohemian Oscar Wilde wrote in his famous essay The Soul of Man under Socialism that "Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine."[79] For anarchist historian George Woodcock "Wilde's aim in The Soul of Man under Socialism is to seek the society most favorable to the artist...for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated...Wilde represents the anarchist as aesthete."[80] The word individualism in this way has been used to denote a personality with a strong tendency towards self-creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors[3][8]

Anarchist writer Murray Bookchin describes a lot of individualist anarchism as people who "expressed their opposition in uniquely personal forms, especially in fiery tracts, outrageous behavior, and aberrant lifestyles in the cultural ghettos of fin de sicle New York, Paris, and London. As a credo, individualist anarchism remained largely a bohemian lifestyle, most conspicuous in its demands for sexual freedom ('free love') and enamored of innovations in art, behavior, and clothing."[70]

In relation to this view of individuality, French Individualist anarchist Emile Armand advocates egoistical denial of social conventions and dogmas to live in accord to one's own ways and desires in daily life since he emphasized anarchism as a way of life and practice. In this way he manifests "So the anarchist individualist tends to reproduce himself, to perpetuate his spirit in other individuals who will share his views and who will make it possible for a state of affairs to be established from which authoritarianism has been banished. It is this desire, this will, not only to live, but also to reproduce oneself, which we shall call "activity".[170]

In the book Imperfect garden : the legacy of humanism, humanist philosopher Tzvetan Todorov identifies individualism as an important current of socio-political thought within modernity and as examples of it he mentions Michel de Montaigne, François de La Rochefoucauld, Marquis de Sade, and Charles Baudelaire[171] In La Rochefoucauld, he identifies a tendency similar to stoicism in which "the honest person works his being in the manner of a sculptor who searches the liberation of the forms which are inside a block of marble, to extract the truth of that matter."[171] In Baudelaire he finds the dandy trait in which one searches to cultivate "the idea of beauty within oneself, of satisfying one's passions of feeling and thinking."[171]

The Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky once manifested that "The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even—if you will—eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with."[172] Ralph Waldo Emerson famously declared", "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist"—a point of view developed at length in both the life and work of (Henry David) Thoreau. Equally memorable and influential on Walt Whitman is Emerson's idea that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."...Emerson opposes on principle the reliance on social structures (civil, religious) precisely because through them the individual approaches the divine second hand, mediated by the once original experience of a genius from another age: "An institution," as he explains, "is the lengthened shadow of one man." To achieve this original relation one must "Insist on one's self; never imitate" for if the relationship is secondary the connection is lost."[173]


where does the dog name fido come from

Fido probably began life sometime in the autumn of 1941 as an independent street dog in Luco di Mugello, a small town in the municipality of Borgo San Lorenzo, in the Tuscan Province of Florence, Italy. One night in November 1941, a brick kiln worker in Borgo San Lorenzo named Carlo Soriani, on his way home from the bus stop, found the dog lying injured in a roadside ditch. Not knowing who the dog belonged to, Soriani took him home and nursed him back to health. Soriani and his wife decided to adopt the dog, naming him Fido ("faithful", from Latin fidus).

Fido (dog)

Fido (1941 â€“ June 9, 1958) was an Italian dog that came to public attention in 1943 because of his demonstration of unwavering loyalty to his dead master. Fido was written about in many Italian and international magazines and newspapers, appeared in newsreels throughout Italy, and was bestowed several honors, including a public statue erected in his honor.[1]

After Fido recovered, he followed Soriani to the bus stop in the central square of Luco di Mugello and watched him board the bus for his job. When the bus returned in the evening, Fido found and greeted Soriani with obvious great joy and followed him home again. This pattern repeated every workday for two years: Fido would stay in the square, avoiding all others, waiting and sniffing the air until excitedly greeting Soriani and enthusiastically following him home.

This was during the Second World War, and on December 30, 1943, Borgo San Lorenzo was subjected to a violent allied bombardment: many factories were hit, and many workers, including Soriani, perished. That evening, Fido showed up as usual at the bus stop, but did not see his beloved master disembark. Fido later returned home, but for fourteen years thereafter (more than 5,000 times)[2] until the day of his death, he went daily to the stop, watching and sniffing the air, waiting in vain for Soriani to get off the bus.

Media interest in Fido grew during his lifetime. Italian magazines Gente and Grand Hotel published the story of the dog, which also appeared in several newsreels of the Istituto Luce.[3][4][5] Many readers were struck by the extraordinary faithfulness of Fido, including the mayor of Borgo San Lorenzo, who, on November 9, 1957, awarded him a gold medal in the presence of many citizens including Soriani's moved widow. Time magazine wrote an article about Fido in April 1957.[1]

Fido died still waiting for his master on June 9, 1958. The news of his death was announced to the public by the newspaper on a four-column front-page story in La Nazione.[6] On 22 June, La Domenica del Corriere commemorated Fido with a poignant cover story. The cover painting by Walter Molino shows Fido dying on the roadside, with the bus waiting in the background. Fido was buried outside the cemetery of Luco di Mugello beside his master, Carlo Soriani.

At the end of 1957, when Fido was still alive, the Comune of Borgo San Lorenzo commissioned the sculptor Salvatore Cipolla to create a monument of the dog as a testimony of that exemplary story of love and fidelity. The work, entitled "Monument to the dog Fido", was placed in Piazza Dante in Borgo San Lorenzo, next to the municipal palace. Under the statue depicting the dog is the dedication: A FIDO, ESEMPIO DI FEDELTÃ€ (TO FIDO, EXAMPLE OF LOYALTY).[7] The monument was inaugurated by the mayor of Borgo San Lorenzo, in presence of Fido and Soriani's widow.[8] Originally, the statue was realized in majolica, but a few months after the inauguration some vandals destroyed it. Consequently, the mayor of Borgo San Lorenzo commissioned to Salvatore Cipolla a new statue, this time in bronze, which replaced the first one and that is still today in Piazza Dante.[9]

Fido is not the only dog to have become famous for public acts of extreme dedication to an individual person. Other dogs with very similar stories have captured the collective imagination, including the Japanese dog Hachikō, the American Shep, and the Scottish Greyfriars Bobby.


who was the king of england during pride and prejudice

Georgian society in Jane Austen's novels is the ever-present background of her work, the world in which all her characters are set. Entirely situated during the reign of George III, the novels of Jane Austen describe their everyday lives, their joys and sorrows, as well as their loves, and provide in the process an irreplaceable insight into the period.

Georgian society in Jane Austen's novels

Jane Austen's novels deal with such varied subjects as the historical context, the social hierarchies of the time, the role and status of the clergy, gender roles, marriage, or the pastimes of well-off families. Without even the reader noticing, many details are broached, whether of daily life, of forgotten legal aspects, or of surprising customs, thus bringing life and authenticity to the English society of this period.

Nevertheless, the point of view from which Jane Austen describes England is that of a woman of the English gentry (albeit from its lower fringes), belonging to a reasonably well-off family, well connected and remarkably well educated for the time, and living in a very small village of rural England around the late 1790s or early 19th century. Thus, some essential aspects of the Georgian era are virtually absent from her novels, such as the American Revolutionary War and the loss of the Thirteen Colonies, the French Revolution, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the birth of the British Empire. Indeed, rather than a depiction of the history of English society at large, Jane Austen's novels provide an understanding of the way of life of the lowest level of the gentry in rural England at the turn of the 19th century.

All of Jane Austen's novels are set against the background of daily life in English Georgian society at the turn of the 19th century. As the name indicates, the Georgian period covers the successive reigns of kings George I, George II, George III, and George IV.[1] That of William IV is also sometimes included.

This was a period of considerable progress, and was the precursor to the Victorian era which followed. During Jane Austen's own life, Britain suffered first the loss of its American colonies, then anxiety about the French Revolution, after which it confronted and finally overcame the Napoleonic Empire, and finally laid the foundations of the British Empire.

From the social point of view, a new social order emerged at this time with the beginnings of industrialisation. This was followed in the early years of the 19th century by serious social unrest (such as the revolt of the Luddites) caused by the economic changes it gave rise to and the anxieties that accompanied it.[2]

The Arts also flourished at this time, with tremendous output in all fields. In architecture Robert Adam, John Nash and James Wyatt were active, and the neo-gothic style emerged. In painting Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds were the great names, and new painters such as J. M. W. Turner and John Constable were gaining recognition.

In literature too there were a host of famous writers such as Samuel Johnson and Samuel Richardson, and poets such as Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and Lord Byron. It was a time of progress in education for women, leading to the proliferation of novels written and read by women, women writers who included Jane Austen herself, and also predecessors such as Fanny Burney, Ann Radcliffe and Maria Edgeworth.[3]

Finally, the Georgian period was a time of moral questioning and debate. The beginnings of feminism appeared at this time with Mary Wollstonecraft and her groundbreaking work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Growing concern about slavery was another major development, which soon led to the abolition of the slave trade (1807), and ultimately to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833.

Jane Austen's purpose never was to write historical or social novels, nor to provide a balanced and objective picture of late 18th century England. Her stories—considered as "comic", because of their happy endings—[4] all take place in the society she knew, that of a small rural gentry family, rather well-off though without fortune, around the 19th century. As she wrote in one of her letters to niece Anna Austen: "three or four families in a Country Village [is] the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work".[5]

Consequently, some aspects of Georgian society, despite their importance, are ignored, or, at most, hinted at, in Austen's novels: thus, the loss of the Thirteen Colonies, as the Declaration of Independence took place when she was barely one year old, as well as the war with the former colonies itself and the ensuing Treaty of Paris in 1783, when she was eight, do not have any part in her novels.

Similarly, the French Revolution does not find its way into her work, except as regards her cousin Eliza Hancock, comtesse de Feuillide and her French husband, Jean-FranÃ§ois Capot de Feuillide, who was guillotined in 1794.

Even the birth of the British Empire is largely absent from her world. However, the owners of Mansfield Park have a plantation in the Caribbean, and the Austens had a connection with India, since that is where Eliza and her mother, Philadelphia Hancock, had arrived from around 1786. Indeed, the Austens were warm supporters of Warren Hastings, Philadelphia's long time friend (and possibly Eliza's father),[N 1] when he was sued for serious misdemeanour in India[6] before being cleared in April 1795.

Though the Industrial Revolution had started in England as early as the 1750s, it is not apparent in the way she lived as well as in her novels.[N 2] Life in the small rural village of Steventon, Hampshire, where the family rectory was, kept her quite far from this new world. Besides, she belonged to the local gentry, in a reasonably well-off family whose head was the village parson, nurtured by the reading of Samuel Johnson's works;[7] as such, a Tory at heart, she lived in unison with her position in society.[8]

But her point of view was that of a woman of her times: clever and perceptive, very well read, she lived however in a society organised by men for men; this meant for a woman considerable difficulties to become financially independent through her own trade, and the fact that social status as well as economic security had to be expected from marriage;[9] these themes are consequently ubiquitous in her novels.

The reign of George III—if one includes in it the Regency period that took place during his final illness – encompasses all of Jane Austen's life, and even beyond, as it started in 1760, just before her parents married in 1764, and ended up in 1820, after the death of Austen in 1817 and the posthumous publication of her two novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey in 1818.[10]

It is through her cousin Eliza de Feuillide, married to a French aristocrat, that Jane Austen first heard of the French Revolution and of its violence. Eliza stayed in England in 1786 and 1787, and made several trips between France and England from 1788 to 1792. In January 1791, Eliza was in Margate, and was hoping that her husband, who had just joined a royalist group in Turin, could come back to her in June. After a brief stay in England during the winter of 1791, he then returned to France, as he wanted to come to the assistance of a friend, the Marquise de Marbeuf, accused of conspiring against the Republic. Unfortunately, he was unmasked while trying to suborn a witness, and duly arrested and guillotined.[11]

The memory of Eliza de Feuillide can be seen in several of Austen's Juvenilia, such as Love and Freindship (sic)—dedicated, as it was, to "Madame la Comtesse de Feuillide"—or Henry and Eliza.

As the same time, the French Revolution led in England to the Revolution Controversy, involving such thinkers as Mary Wollstonecraft and her groundbreaking book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Thomas Paine and Joseph Priestley. Austen, as the staunch Tory supporter she had always been, was herself in favour of the family as bringing stability in the midst of the turmoils of the times.[11]

The Napoleonic Wars are the series of wars that took place in Europe while Napoleon was France's head of state. They are the continuation of the wars that arose as a result of the French Revolution in 1789, saw France briefly dominate most of Europe, and continued until the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815. These were wars on a formerly unprecedented scale, largely as a result of mass conscription, and Britain remained at war with France throughout the period of 1803 to 1815, only two years before Austen died. Two of Jane Austen's brothers, Frank and Charles, made their careers in the Royal Navy.

This period of warfare accounts for the importance of the military in the novels, where some of the protagonists are officers, and the presence of officers at social functions is frequently a factor in the social life of a neighbourhood. Hence in Sense and Sensibility Marianne's suitor is Colonel Brandon, the dastardly Wickham in Pride and Prejudice is an officer in the militia, and the youngest Bennet girls are obsessed with the officers at the nearby training camp in Meryton. In Mansfield Park, Fanny Price's brother is a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and in Northanger Abbey, Frederick Tilney is an army officer and his father a retired general. Persuasion's Frederick Wentworth is a naval officer whose career takes him from poverty to success and wealth.

The income spread seen in Jane Austen's novels allows us to better determine the social status of her different characters. Except in the case of heiresses, where we talk about the total fortune, these revenues are always annual.

In any case, it is easy to calculate the income corresponding to a given fortune, since money invested in government funds pays 5% a year (or only 4% in the case of a small investment). Thus Caroline Bingley's fortune of 20,000 pounds (Pride and Prejudice) guarantees her an income of 1000 pounds a year, already a large sum which guarantees her a competence, that is, everything that can be considered necessary to lead a pleasant life, including a carriage.[12]

Jane Austen's novels depict a whole income hierarchy which implies very different lifestyles.

One hundred pounds a year: in Jane Austen's novels, this is a very low income, that of a poor curate, for example, or of a civil servant working in a government office, or again of a small shopkeeper. However, it is rather satisfactory compared with that of a farm labourer which can be as little as twenty-five pounds a year[N 3] including extra work at harvest time.[13] With 100 pounds a year, the best one can expect is to have a maid of all work, as Mrs Jennings points out to Edward Ferrars and Lucy Steele (Sense and Sensibility) when they seem to be about to get married with only this level of income.[14]

Two hundred pounds: this is the income of Jane Austen's parents four years after their marriage in 1764; even though it is double what they had at the beginning of their married life, it is barely adequate due to the birth of their children. Three hundred pounds would better meet their needs, even though that is the income of which Colonel Brandon says to Edward Ferrars that it is a nice sum for a single man, but "insufficient to permit him to marry".[14]

Four, or better, five hundred pounds: this is the level above which one can lead the life befitting a member of the gentry. It is the income enjoyed by Mrs Dashwood, which permits her to give her daughters a decent existence, with two maids and a serving man, but neither carriage nor horses.

Seven hundred to a thousand pounds a year make a carriage possible: when George Austen, Jane's father, reaches an income of 700 pounds he buys himself one, even though he realises that it is a pleasure that is slightly too expensive.[15]

Two thousand pounds a year might seem a very comfortable sum, even for a gentleman. It is, for example, Colonel Brandon's income in Sense and Sensibility. But it is also the income of Mr Bennet, who, with a wife and five daughters, has difficulty living well on this sum. It is, however, true that his abilities in household management are very poor.[15]

Four thousand pounds and above are the level above which even a gentleman ceases to need to do too much counting.[15] It is the income enjoyed by Henry Crawford, Mr Rushworth (Mansfield Park), Bingley, and Mr Darcy (Pride and Prejudice) who actually has 10,000 pounds a year.[15] At this level of income, one has a manor house or even a country estate, a carriage and everything that goes with it, and also no doubt a house in London to be able to make a comfortable stay in the capital.

But these incomes, large as they are, are exceeded by the real-life 100,000 pounds a year at the disposal of the owner of Chatsworth House, the Duke of Devonshire.[16][N 4]

The fact remains, however, that Jane Austen's universe is a privileged world which conceals the harshness of the living conditions of the vast majority of the rural population, a population which is impoverished, uneducated and brutal. Thus common amusements include the omnipresent dog fighting and cockfighting. In the spirit of the times, this brutality is considered by many politicians as being necessary to get the British people accustomed to the sight of blood, and to forge "the true British bulldog character".[17]

Jane Austen's novels are set in the social context of the gentry, to which Jane Austen herself belonged. Some of her heroines have no fortune (Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park), others on the other hand are very well off (Emma), but the social class remains the same.

The concept of gentleman in England is more flexible than that of nobleman in France. A gentleman is distinguished by his personal qualities as much as by his status as a member of the landed gentry. He does not need to be of noble lineage, like his French counterpart the gentilhomme, or to have a noble name. As the successor to the franklin, the free landed proprietor, who occupied the lowest rank of the nobility in the Middle Ages, the simple gentleman therefore comes after the Esquire (title derived from Squire, the chief landed proprietor in a district), who in turn is inferior, in ascending order of precedence, to the Knight, the Baronet, the Baron, the Viscount, the Earl, the Marquess, and finally to the Duke. Only the titles of Baron or higher belong to the peerage, to which simple knights or baronets do not therefore belong.

It is the gentleman of the Georgian period who is the precursor to the gentleman of the Victorian period in that he establishes a code of conduct based on the three Rs: Restraint, Refinement and Religion. During the reign of George III, the British begin, by their reserve and emotional control, to distinguish themselves from the peoples of southern Europe who are of a more hot-headed temperament. The literature of the 19th century does nevertheless privilege emotion, often to the point of pathos, as in Dickens.

The differences in income and fortune reflected in Jane Austen's novels are considerable. In real Georgian society, the Duke of Devonshire maintains a household of 180 people in his magnificent country house, Chatsworth House. Just to feed that number of people, five cattle and fifteen sheep are slaughtered each week. In return for this wealth, it is customary for the proprietor to use his huge kitchens to have thick soups prepared and distributed to the most needy villagers during the winter, when bad weather sets in and fuel becomes scarce.

In Great Britain, the 18th century is a period of considerable wealth generation; the nobility therefore live in sumptuous country houses, among them Blenheim, Knole House, Castle Howard, and of course Chatsworth, all of which are comparable with the royal family's most beautiful homes. The style of the great houses and manors constructed at the beginning of the century is almost always Palladian, with the great architect William Kent. This strict Palladian style becomes freer with Robert Adam. It is possible to imagine that Rosings Park, Lady Catherine de Bourgh's house, and Mansfield Park, both of which Jane Austen describes as modern, belong to the style of houses constructed by Robert Adam.

During the same period, rich owners devote a lot of time and money to beautifying the grounds surrounding their house, and to making the approaches and the views from the windows more impressive. The famous English landscape artist "Capability" Brown is in fact active during the Georgian period; his nickname is based on his favourite declaration that certain grounds offered "a great capability of improvement". The beauty of English estates at this time also becomes a symbol of national identity when in 1780 Horace Walpole contrasts their natural style, an expression of freedom, with the geometrical layout of French gardens, which according to him bears witness to the authoritarianism of France's political rÃ©gime.

We find this preoccupation with landscaping aesthetics reflected in Mansfield Park, during the long discussion where Mr Rushworth speaks of his ambition to improve the grounds of his Sotherton house and the views it offers.

Following Capability Brown but going even further, Humphry Repton softens the transition between the houses themselves and their surroundings, where Brown had simply extended lawns right up to the house. This too is in reaction against French-style gardens. It is Repton who at Adlestrop in Gloucestershire, where Jane Austen's cousins the Leighs live, remodels the vast grounds of Adlestrop House to combine them with the garden of the adjoining vicarage, and diverts a watercourse to compose a lovely landscape which can be admired equally well from the manor house and from the vicarage.

The memory of the beauty of English parks is a constant in Jane Austen's novels, and she associates it with the poems of William Cowper, the poet of the English countryside. And in perfect keeping with the aesthetic principles promoted by Thomas Whately in his Observations on Modern Gardening in 1770, the description of the grounds of the houses she depicts is as important as that of the house itself, for the beauty of the place consists of the harmonious and natural union of the two:

[Pemberley] was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills â€“ and in front, a stream of some natural importance, was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.

The clergy occupy an essential place in Jane Austen's work, even more than the Royal Navy, because Jane Austen's father himself was a clergyman, as were her brother James, and briefly her brother Henry. The moral principles taught by her father are found in the moral precepts sprinkled throughout the novels.

The position of clergyman at the time was a special one from several points of view. Firstly, being a clergyman was a profession like any other. Any well-educated, well-spoken man of sound morals could enter it, and no particular religious vocation was called for. And as Mary Crawford points out in Mansfield Park, the living attached to the post of vicar guaranteed a good income for work that was not onerous. Moreover, thanks to the living, a clergyman was in a position to start a family earlier than a naval officer, who might have to wait for years before raising enough money to do so.

Nor do clergymen in the novels benefit from any special consideration on the part of the author. On the contrary, they are frequently depicted in a very unflattering light, although there are others who are shown as more sympathetic and admirable characters.

Mr Elton, in Emma, demonstrates an excessive social ambition in proposing to the eponymous Emma Woodhouse, and once he is married later in the novel, he and his wife Augusta patronise the villagers and disgust Emma with their pretentiousness.

In Pride and Prejudice, Mr Collins is an example of what a clergyman ought not to be. He is obsequious towards the powerful, arrogant towards the weak, sententious and narrow-minded. In spite of his faults, however, he seems to be more involved in his job than an Edward Ferrars or a Henry Tilney.

Henry Tilney, in fact, in Northanger Abbey, is absent from his parish half the time and takes holidays in Bath, so that in spite of his intellectual and moral qualities, he bears witness to the lack of commitment of certain clergymen towards their flock.

As for Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility, he does give evidence of a more definite vocation when he insists that he has "always preferred the Church" as his profession, even though his family consider a career in the army or the Royal Navy "more appropriate", or the law more worthy of a gentleman.

Edmund Bertram alone, in Mansfield Park, shows an unshakeable vocation that all Mary Crawford's charm and seductiveness never succeed in weakening. Try as she may, incessantly praising the superior merits and prestige of a military career, the solidity of his principles and his deep conviction prevent him from doubting.

The income of a clergyman varied a great deal depending on the living assigned to him. A small, poor, rural parish like Steventon might be worth only about £100 a year, while a good parish could be worth nearly £1000. The allocation of the living, and therefore of the benefits attached to it, was in the hands of the local lord of the manor. (This right was called the right of advowson.) The two components of the living were the tithe and the glebe of which the incumbent was the beneficiary.

The tithe in theory guaranteed the clergyman one tenth of the product of all the cultivated land in the parish; it constituted a sort of tax which had existed in England since the 9th century, with the clergyman himself as the tax-collector. Legally, however, the beneficiary of the tithe was not the clergyman (who might find that only part was allocated to him), but the rector. Thus when Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility informs Edward Ferrars that "Delaford is a rectory", he is also informing him that if he were awarded the parish, he would receive the whole of the corresponding tithe. Jane Austen's father was himself rector of Steventon. Once collected, the revenue had to be managed, since in a poor rural economy the tithe was often paid in kind. This led to a clergyman's needing to have the use of a tithe barn in which to store what he had collected. He also had to negotiate with his parishioners to get all that he was owed. The parishioners did not always react well to his role as tax collector, which took up a large part of a clergyman's time, so much so that Mr Collins, at the Bingleys' ball (Pride and Prejudice), lists it as the first of his duties, ahead even of writing sermons, which comes in second place. The patron of the living also of course had an interest in increasing the revenue raised by the incumbent since this raised the value of the charge he could sell or bestow. The curate or rector's protector is a major personage in the region, as for example are Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr Collins' patron in Pride and Prejudice and Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility. Moreover, this patron may want to reserve a living for a younger son, as does Sir Thomas Bertram with respect to Edmund in Mansfield Park, or General Tilney in favour of Henry in Northanger Abbey.

The glebe was a parcel of land donated to the church, often in the distant past, whose produce was designated for the incumbent of the corresponding parish. This necessarily made the clergyman into a farmer, a job which therefore took up a large part of his time. Thus Parson Trulliber, in Henry Fielding's 1742 novel Joseph Andrews, spends six days out of seven on his farming activities, and Parson Adams, when he visits him at home, finds him "with an apron on and a pail in his hand, just come from serving his hogs". Even when it didn't go that far, this necessary farm work further reduced the time actually spent on religious tasks as such.

In Jane Austen's time, girls' boarding schools already existed, even if for the aristocracy a governess was the normal choice for the education of the girls in the family.

Thus in Emma, young Harriet Smith, whose origins are very modest, is placed in Mrs Goddard's boarding school to receive a minimal education. On the other hand, Emma Woodhouse, daughter of a good family with a fine fortune, has her own governess, Miss Taylor. And Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Pride and Prejudice) is scandalised to learn that the five Bennet girls, who belong to the minor gentry, have not benefited from the services of a governess.

Jane Austen herself, whose family was no better off than the Bennets, got her education essentially through contact with her father and brothers, and through making good use of her father's well-stocked library.

Slow progress in the education of girls needs to be seen in relation to the absence of suitable employment for women from good families, except, in fact, for a job as a governess or schoolmistress. The very idea that a woman might have a profession, with the attendant status and financial independence, was virtually inconceivable. As Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in 1792 in her famous A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: "How many women thus waste away the prey of discontent, who might have practiced as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads?"

This state of affairs was well-known to Jane Austen, since being unmarried herself, she was seeking through the sale of her novels to contribute to earning her own living by her work. Her writing perfectly reflects her situation, even though she did not rebel against it directly, in that she almost never depicts women involved in anything other than domestic activities, except for those who teach either as a governess or at a boarding school. The situation of Jane Fairfax in Emma is the best illustration of this: of very humble origin, but intelligent, cultured, close to the ideal of the accomplished woman (she sings and plays the piano perfectly), her only prospect for the future is a post as governess in the home of people much inferior to her in terms of talent.

Lady Bertram (Mansfield Park), whose faults Jane Austen makes fun of, offers a perfect example of the ideal fashionable at the time of the elegant, leisured lady so strongly denounced by Mary Wollstonecraft.

The situation of women appearing in Jane Austen's novels shows at times their inferior status, on a legal as well as a financial level.

Thus, according to William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford, 1765), man and woman become, by marriage, one and the same person: as long as the marriage lasts, the woman's legal existence is viewed as "suspended", and all her actions are done "under her husband's cover" (becoming herself a feme-covert). The rights and duties of the spouses derived from this principle. Thus, a man could not donate any piece of property, nor enter into any agreement with her, as her separate legal existence would be required for such deeds. On the other hand, he could bequeath property to his wife by will, since his wife's "coverture" would cease with his death. A woman who had been wronged—either herself or through her property—could not sue whoever had wronged her without the agreement and legal involvement of her husband. Conversely, no one could sue a married woman except through prosecuting her husband.[19]

This lack of any legal existence for married women was at the heart of the long and sensational divorce case that opposed, starting in the 1830s, Caroline Norton and her brutal, drunkard husband.[20] Indeed, after years of conjugal misery, she finally left her husband, who retained total custody of her children; on top of which she came to realise that all her earnings as an author belonged to him (since he legally represented her), while at the same time he did not pay her the allowance he had agreed to. In spite of this much-publicized case, it was only in 1882 that, through the Married Women's Property Act, the legal rights of married women became equal to those of unmarried women (called 'feme sole') in that they gained the right to retain full control of their own property.[21]

An accomplished woman, who draws the admiration of men by her accomplishments, has to master so many things that, as Elizabeth Bennet says to Mr Darcy, "'I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.'"

The list of accomplishments is indeed long, as can be seen in Pride and Prejudice, in the discussion Mr Darcy, Mr Bingley, Miss Bingley and Elizabeth Bennet have on the subject. If Mr Bingley's requirements are initially limited ("'paint tables, cover screens, and net purses'"), Mr Darcy and Miss Bingley are agreed in demanding some much more serious talents, such as a "'thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages'", as well as "'a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions'". To these, Mr Darcy adds "'the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.'"

Jane Austen's novels offer several answers to the question of the purpose of these accomplishments. If some of them, embroidery for example, are useful from a domestic point of view, others have hardly any practical use at all. This is the case for a knowledge of the French language, an essential accomplishment at the time, even though England and France are at war. The goal therefore appears to be to honour her (future) husband by acquiring knowledge, a deportment and manners worthy of a lady. But another aspect often appears: it is on women that the pleasures of social life depend. At a time when the opportunities to hear music are rare and expensive, a musical woman can charm guests with a few piano pieces, sing as Emma Woodhouse and Jane Fairfax do at the party at the Coles' (Emma), or provide the necessary accompaniment for an impromptu dance. In the same way, in the absence of photography, the possibility of recording a beloved face depends on women's talents in drawing or watercolour painting. This can be seen when Emma makes a portrait of Harriet Smith at the request of Mr Elton, and in the fact that the only known portrait of Jane Austen herself is one drawn by her sister Cassandra.

An essential role of women in the Georgian period is to have children. This is a major role, reflected in the growth of England's population at this time, a role with which Jane Austen is well acquainted since she herself has no fewer than thirteen nieces and eleven nephews. It is also a difficult role, and dangerous at this time, since three of her sisters-in-law die in childbirth. This aspect however finds little place in Jane Austen's novels. Other than Pride and Prejudice, in which Mrs Bennet struggles to marry off her five daughters, the families portrayed in her novels have few children compared with the reality at the time. A second exception to this is Northanger Abbey, where the heroine, Catherine Morland, is one of ten children. It is true that Jane Austen's great novels are all situated before marriage, and that is what is really at stake. Married women and young girls are also very active in corresponding with those close to them, and this constitutes almost the only source of information on members of the family living in other parts of the country.

By the 1780s, hairstyles with the hair piled high and decorated with ostrich feathers were falling out of fashion and being replaced by a style consisting of long curls hanging loose, that could occasionally be powdered for greater formality. It is this new fashion that makes it possible for Willoughby to cut a lock of Marianne's hair in Sense and Sensibility.[22]

As at the French court, where Marie Antoinette was setting the fashion for a "pastoral" style of clothing, women were wearing broad-brimmed hats decorated with ribbons. This is what Eliza de Feuillide, Jane Austen's cousin who is familiar with the receptions at Versailles, explains to Phylly Walter, another cousin, when she inquires after the latest fashions in France.[23] This same Eliza complains in turn about the stiff fashions still being worn at the Court of St. James's where, she says, "she had to stand for two hours on end wearing a pannier dress whose weight was not negligible".[23] At the same time as dresses with hoop skirts were becoming unfashionable, heavy brocade and embroidered silk fabrics too were disappearing, replaced by muslin dresses worn with petticoats to give them volume. This volume, and the vaporous appearance it gave these muslin dresses, were considered to give women a more natural silhouette. This natural fashion soon also became much more revealing, to an extent bordering on scandalous, as Eliza de Feuillide gleefully noted during a stay in Bath in 1798. For it was Bath, and still more London, that was the fashion leader.

When Jane Austen's characters talk about buying a dress, it means in fact that they are going to buy the necessary fabric, which they will then give to a specialised dressmaker who will make a dress to their specifications, based on the latest fashion in the capital. This is the case for Harriet Smith (in Emma) when she wants to obtain a pattern-gown (a dress from a pattern), to be made of the muslin she has just bought. Patterns for dresses in the latest London fashion were found in all the women's fashion newspapers, and based on these, the customer could explain to the dressmaker the particular adjustments she wanted made.[24]

The homes in which Jane Austen's novels are set are all situated in the southern half of England, and with the sole exception of Mansfield Park, in counties and towns she knew personally. It is characteristic of Jane Austen's period that all sorts of houses exist there side by side, houses of very different origins, periods and status, and that the characters in her novels are sensitive to these differences. This diversity is the reflection of the successive strata of the English habitat.

Jane Austen's heroines thus occupy cottages (Barton Cottage in Sense and Sensibility), abbeys converted into vast residences (the titular Northanger Abbey, or Donwell Abbey in Emma), parks (mansions surrounded by a vast park, like Mansfield Park in the novel of the same name, or Rosings Park in Pride and Prejudice), courts (another type of mansion, in theory approached via a vast courtyard, like Sotherton Court in Mansfield Park), halls (manors, like Uppercross Hall in Persuasion, and finally simple houses, like Longbourn House, the home of the Bennet family in Pride and Prejudice. This is why Catherine Morland is so delighted when she discovers Northanger Abbey, thinking, "With all the chances against her of house, hall, place, park, court, and cottage, Northanger turned up an abbey, and she was to be its inhabitant."

The mansions referred to above can have so many works of art worth seeing that some of them receive visitors who come simply as tourists. In Jane Austen's novels, however, this is the case of only two of them, Pemberley and Sotherton Court, since even Mansfield Park does not possess an art collection fit to interest a tourist.

The layout of these traditional grand residences is not necessarily very rational: Sotherton Court, as well as Northanger Abbey, are laid out en suite, that is, each room opens into the next. On the other hand, much more modest but "modern" homes, like Longbourn in Pride and Prejudice, are organised in a way that is much better suited to their use: the public rooms where visitors or guests are received, dining room, drawing room, etc., are located on the ground floor, while the private rooms such as bedrooms are upstairs.

In Jane Austen's England, interiors are very varied, both as a function of the wealth of the home, of course, and also as a function of its age. The walls are often papered, paper having been a less expensive substitute for the tapestries of noble homes since the 16th century. But it is not until the 18th century that manufacturing processes become capable of producing wallpaper whose appearance can satisfy people of quality. At the same time, some very fine wallpapers are being imported from China by the East India Company. Wallpaper is thus the indoor decoration typical of the well-off, and we see for example Edward Ferrars and Elinor, as soon as are they married and installed at Delaford, start looking for some to suit them. As for the impressive Gothic Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland is very disappointed to find wallpaper on the walls of her room, which she was expecting to be much less prosaic.

In fine houses in the 18th century, however, the fashion is for wainscoting, with only the upper part of the wall papered. Paint, more expensive than wallpaper, is also preferred in sumptuous residences such as Rosings Park or Mansfield Park, since it permits contrasting colours, sometimes highlighted with gilding.

As for the floor, it is left bare if it consists of beautiful tile or paving; in the 18th century this is the case too for handsome parquet floors, which may be set off by a small Turkish rug placed in the centre of the room. At the same time, progress in the textile industry now makes it possible for companies in towns such as Kidderminster to produce carpets to cover the entire floor in the reception rooms.

The windows that let light into the rooms can be very different, going from leaded glass to modern sash windows, a style imported from France. When Catherine Morland arrives at Northanger Abbey, she is devastated to find that the reception rooms have been modernised, and that the gothic frames hold only large panes of glass allowing the light to flood in: "To be sure... — the form of them was Gothic... — but every pane was so large, so clear, so light!... To an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions, and the heaviest stone-work, for painted glass, dirt and cobwebs, the difference was very distressing."

In Jane Austen's time meals are eaten late. Breakfast, in fact, is never eaten before ten o'clock, leaving time for various activities before this first meal: Edward Ferrars (Sense and Sensibility) walks to the village of Barton to inspect his horses, and Edmund Bertram (Mansfield Park) has a long conversation with Fanny Price, then a tense discussion with his brother Tom, and only afterwards does he goes to breakfast.

After breakfast, there is no regular meal before dinner, which is never taken before three o'clock in the afternoon. It is however appropriate to offer light refreshments (cold meats, cakes and fruit in season) when a visitor arrives between these two meals.

After dinner, tea is taken at about six or seven o'clock in the evening, actually a high tea including a light meal. It is not until still later, about nine o'clock, that people sit down for the last meal of the day, supper.

But these times, late as they are, are the ones in use at the beginning of the 18th century. Towards the end of the century, times get even later. It is, moreover, good form (socially advantageous) to eat late, and Jane Austen's characters affirm, if not their actual social status, at least their concerns about it, by eating later still. At Barton Cottage, in fact, the home of Marianne's and Elinor's mother Mrs Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility), dinner is eaten at about four o'clock in the afternoon, as it is at Hartfield, the home of Emma Woodhouse's father. General Tilney, on the other hand, in Northanger Abbey, dines at six o'clock, while the rich and snobbish Caroline Bingley (Pride and Prejudice) does not dine until half past six, and her supper is not until about midnight.

At table, during a sit-down meal as opposed to light refreshments, the guests are offered two or three courses served à la française as it is called, that is, with all the dishes on the table at the same time, with each guest helping themselves only to what they want. These dishes, which can number from five to about twenty per course, include soup, large pieces of meat or fish served whole, poultry, vegetables, seasonal game, sauces and condiments, cakes, etc. When the first course is finished, the table is cleared and the second course brought in, with just as many dishes, sweet as well as savoury. Finally, after the second course, comes dessert, including pastries, fruit in season, dried fruits, nuts, ices, and dessert wines.

Such a large number of dishes – and the wealthier the home the more of them there are – requires the housekeeping to be of a very high standard, and costs a considerable amount of money. This abundance upon others' tables makes the miserly Mrs Norris (Mansfield Park) jealous, but she consoles herself with the "conviction of its being impossible among so many dishes but that some must be cold." Similarly Frank Churchill and Emma Woodhouse (Emma), seated beside each other at the time of the meal at the Coles' house, have to interrupt the lively conversation they are engaged in in order "to share in the awkwardness of a rather long interval between the courses".

Average speed for carriages of this time was seven miles an hour. When general Tilney left Bath for Northanger, his 'handsome, highly-fed four horses' performed the journey of thirty miles at a sober pace, broken into two stages with a two hours' rest in between.[25] Even then, roads could be in poor state, as remarked by Mrs Norris, between Mansfield and Sotherton (Mansfield Park),[25] or even snowy. Normally only the privileged who earned seven hundred to a thousand pounds a year could afford a carriage.