There’s just something about a well dressed gentleman in a cravat! If you missed the first part of this series, you can find links at the bottom of this post. As we talk about fashion and dress, it is easy to forget about the gentlemen. So let’s take a few moments to talk about their mode of dress. As with ladies, menswear also had categories of Undress, Half Dress and Full Dress. Undress meant informal, … Continue reading →
Most gentlemen were sent to public boarding schools to prepare them for university. These schools bore little resemblance to public schools today. Public schools were public in the sense that boys were taught in groups outside of their private homes, not in the sense that these institutions were funded by public funds. A number of public schools existed, but the landed elite in particular chose to send their sons to a select number of these … Continue reading →
A gentleman’s education set him apart from lesser men, even in his early life. What did that education look like? In all well-regulated states, the two principal points in view in the education of youth, ought to be, first, to make them good men, good members of the universal society of mankind; and in the next place to frame their minds in such a manner, as to make them most useful to that society to … Continue reading →
If one wanted to marry a gentleman, one must identify said elusive creature first. So how exactly could one pick out a gentleman from the rest? The nuances of social class and what makes a gentleman a gentleman remains a perennial source of confusion for Austenesque and Regency readers. The pages of Austen’s stories are littered with gentlemen, but offer absolutely no explanation of what that title actually meant. Of course, her readers knew exactly … Continue reading →
What was life like for the widows of Jane Austen’s world? When a woman’s husband died, she was expected to spend a full year (long enough for a baby conceived in her marriage to be born) in full or deep mourning. During this time she was expected to dress in all black, refraining from public appearances. Movie adaptations of Sense and Sensibility portray Mrs. Dashwood in widow’s weeds. The next six months she would wear subdued colors like … Continue reading →
