Marianne’s indulgence in her emotions nearly leads to her death. After her recovery, she apologizes to Elinor, and one of the offenses she charges herself with is leaving Elinor to do all the heavy lifting in their social interactions: “Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected… Your example was before me; but to what avail?... Did I imitate your forbearance, or lessen your restraints, by taking any part in those offices of general complaisance or particular gratitude which you had hitherto been left to discharge alone?—No;—not less when I knew you to be unhappy, than when I had believed you at ease, did I turn away from every exertion of duty or friendship...”
    Sometimes the ”post of civility” is an exertion, and Austen doesn’t pretend otherwise. It's even referred to as something you "pay" in Emma, when Emma inwardly groans at the burden of being nice to Jane Fairfax: "She was sorry to have to pay civilities to a person she did not like! - to be always doing more than she wished, and less than she ought!"
    Austen herself, from what we can gather, devoted many a tedious hour to chatting with people, especially during her residence in Bath, when she would have preferred to be doing almost anything else. Her compensation was making catty remarks in her letters to Cassandra: "Wednesday. -- Another stupid party last night; perhaps if larger they might be less intolerable, but here there were only just enough to make one card-table, with six people to look on and talk nonsense to each other."
      Austen doesn’t insist upon smiling, gracious behaviour to everyone and in all circumstances. Elinor speaks sternly and bluntly to Willoughby when talking over his treatment of Marianne and Eliza. Sometimes Elinor  says nothing, as when Edward's brother Robert did not deserve “the compliment of rational opposition.” And then there is her little dig at Lady Middleton’s children, "I confess that while I am at Barton Park, I never think of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence."

   As Paula Marantz Cohen points out in a 2019 Wall Street Journal article, other Austen characters -- like Mr. Elton in Emma and Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park -- drop their assumed pose of civility when they are angry and embarrassed. Their true nature is revealed “when their guard is down or when they are no longer invested in getting what they want… In Austen, manners for bad people are only skin deep.”
    Professor Cohen sees the questions of civility and good manners in Austen as being more than skin deep, more than superficial. Good manners are a reflection of our inner character. Cohen thinks our own “longing for civility in an age of coarseness and meanness” is “central to [Austen’s] popularity."
     Austen's belief in the moral importance of civility probably owes something to Lord Shaftesbury. Austen might never have read Shaftesbury's works, but his ideas were diffused in the culture, just as we know about Darwin’s theory of evolution without actually reading his books. Shaftesbury argued that people did not always act out of self-interest, that we are born with an instinct for benevolence -- doing good for others brings us pleasure. He saw civility as more than a mere gloss on behaviour, though he uses the analogy of a polished stone to describe how civility works to improve human interaction in society:
    "We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Men’s Understanding. ‘Tis a destroying of Civility, Good Breeding, and even Charity itself…” ​​
   Historian Christine Zabel explains: “For Shaftesbury, it is clear, politeness was a concept that went far beyond mere rules of good conversation or behavior… politeness was directly linked to political liberty” and freedom of speech. Civility was a mark of civilized society.
     But not all academics today take such a positive view of civility, or its effect on society.  

Next post: Civil and Servile

   Virginia Wolf famously said of Jane Austen that "of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness." 
  Perhaps, but we can certainly catch her in the act of cleverness -- for example, in the way she uses weather to shape events.
​  "Austen makes her plots turn on the weather," writes John Mullan in his insightful and delightful What Matters in Jane Austen?  "Having arranged her characters and defined their situations, having planned her love stories and hatched the misunderstandings that might impede them, she lets the weather shape events. It is her way of admitting chance into her narratives."

   The weather naturally plays a important part in Regency life and in Austen's novels. In a world where roads were unpaved, and a large portion of the population were farmers, and there was no central heating and double-glazed windows, people were not as isolated from the effects of a rainy day or a hot day as we are today.
    But Jane Austen subtly, cleverly, uses the weather to bring events about. Professor Mullan illustrates this with the example of the rainy day in Bath when Anne Elliot, her sister Elizabeth and the artful widow Mrs. Clay go shopping on Milson Street with Mr. Elliot. It begins to rain and Austen arranges matters so that after some bustle about carriage rides and errands, Anne and Captain Wentworth encounter one another in a shop. He  watches as Anne walks off with Mr. Elliot in the "manner of the privileged relation and friend." The captain's walking companions remark on how Mr. Elliot is obviously taken with his cousin Anne. 
    (And I think -- after all the punishment Anne has endured, watching Captain Wentworth thoughtlessly flirt with the Musgrove girls -- I think she has the right to take a little pleasure in his discomfort.)
    Another example of using weather to shape events is the light snowfall in Hartfield on the night of the Westons' dinner party which results in Mr. Elton being alone in a carriage with Emma.
     A further example, which was so subtle I hadn't noticed it, occurs also in Persuasion. Near the end of the novel, the rain prevents Anne from setting out for the White Hart Inn to meet the Musgroves, where she knows she will also encounter Captain Harville and Captain Wentworth. 
   Austen uses the rain to "arrange her characters" and bring about the emotional climax of the novel:

    Because Mary and Henrietta had gone out, Anne does not sit and talk with them. The climax of the book can only happen because Anne is free to hear the conversation between Mrs. Croft and Mrs. Musgrove, and is free to talk with Captain Harville by the window, and be overheard by Captain Wentworth. If Henrietta and Mary had been in the room, that wouldn't be possible. Henrietta would be talking about her wedding, Mary would be complaining about something. Both of them would be demanding Anne's attention. ​ 
​     Instead, Anne is free to hear Mrs. Croft decidedly pronounce: "To begin without knowing that at such a time there will be the means of marrying, I hold to be very unsafe and unwise, and what I think all parents should prevent as far as they can."

   Then, of course, follows the interesting conversation with Captain Harville, Anne's confession that women love longest, when existence or when hope is gone, followed by what is known in Austenlandia as The Letter.
    But none of that could have happened in that way, without a little rain shower!

The rainy day on Milsom Street also features in my short story about Mrs. Clay in the Rational Creatures anthology, but it is told from Mrs. Clay's point of view. Click here to see more about Rational Creatures.