![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1027\/2017\/06\/3-9-300x92.jpg\")
Francis Place. \u201cCity of Bath.\u201d 1678. [Public Domain] via Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. http:\/\/collections.britishart.yale.edu\/vufind\/Record\/3647411.<\/p><\/div>With this transformation, the city\u2019s social life began to operate through stricter rules and social codes for what was considered socially acceptable and materially fashionable. In an 1811 history of Bath,\u00a0<\/span>A New Guide Through Bath, and its Environs<\/span><\/i>, Richard Warner points out that these \u201cimprovements in manners\u201d and customs created the \u201celegant\u201d amusements that Bath became famous for, including balls and plays<\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n While these elegant amusements attracted many of Britain\u2019s elite to the city, they also drew scorn from satirists of the time. Austen herself critiques Bath\u2019s fashion culture in her letters to her sister Cassandra. In a May 1801 letter, she writes, \u201cAnother 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, & talk nonsense to each other.\u201d She goes on to describe one guest as \u201cany other short girl with a broad nose & wide mouth, fashionable dress, & exposed bosom.\u201d Austen\u2019s personal dislike for the spa town (and its tendency to expose female vices in particular) permeates <\/span>Northanger Abbey <\/span><\/i>as well, from Mrs. Allen\u2019s preoccupation with fashion to Isabella\u2019s constant flirtation. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The <\/span>manners and mores of Austen’s time affected both men and women, but <\/span>they were often manifestations of gender inequalities and assumptions that disproportionately regulated women. For example, Austen frames a visit to the Pump Room in gendered terms: \u201cMr. Allen, after drinking his glass of water, joined some gentlemen to talk over the politics of the day and compare the accounts of their newspapers; and the ladies walked about together, noticing every new face, and almost every new bonnet in the room\u201d [50].<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n At the same time, women like Austen were finding a new degree of autonomy in cities like Bath, coinciding with their growing sense of agency as readers and writers of the early novel. Describing how Catherine and Isabella choose to spend their time, Austen writes, \u201cif a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together\u201d [23]. Indeed, Catherine\u2019s trip to Bath not only introduces her to the rules of fashion and courtship; it also introduces her to new people and lifestyles. In judging the relative merits and flaws of these new people, Catherine cultivates her growing independence of thought. For example, she forms her own opinion of John Thorpe despite the way others praise him: <\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span><\/i>Little as Catherine was in the habit of judging for herself, and unfixed as were her general notions of what men ought to be, she could not entirely repress a doubt, while she bore with the effusions of his endless conceit, of his being altogether completely agreeable. It was a bold surmise, for he was Isabella\u2019s brother; and she had been assured by James that his manners would recommend him to all her sex; but in spite of this, the extreme weariness of his company, which crept over her before they had been out an hour, and which continued unceasingly to increase till they stopped in Pulteney Street again, induced her, in some small degree, to resist such high authority, and to distrust his powers of giving universal pleasure\u201d <\/span><\/i>[47].<\/span> \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Below, an essay from <\/span>The Mirror<\/span><\/i>, an eighteenth-century conduct periodical mentioned in <\/span>Northanger Abbey<\/span><\/i>, models the pervasiveness of fashion culture in cities such as Bath. Then, a set of newspaper articles from <\/span>The Bath Chronicle <\/span><\/i>displays Georgian Bath as a place that confined women to fashion and courtship standards, but also opened new possibilities for them to engage in intellectual pursuits of their own. Finally, a timeline featuring period works of visual satire shows the ways in which artists in Austen\u2019s day critiqued Bath\u2019s fashionable society, echoing the commentary in Austen\u2019s letters and <\/span>Northanger Abbey<\/span><\/i><\/span>.<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_code admin_label=”The Mirror Digital Book” _builder_version=”3.0.53″]\n\n