DANCING IN THE "EYE OF THE WORLD": 
VOYEURISM, PERFORMANCE, AND THE PUBLIC TEXT 

IN JANE AUSTEN'S SCENES OF DANCE 

by 

PALMA BJARNASON 

B.A., The University of British Columbia, 1997 

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF 
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF 

MASTER OF ARTS 

in 

THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES 

(Department of English) 

We accept this thesis as conforming 
to the required standard 

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA 

December 1999 

® Palma Bjarnason, 1999 



In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements f o r an advanced 

degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that t h e Library shall make it 

freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive 

copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my 

department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or 

publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed w i t h o u t my written 

permission. 

Department of tjfl^h'sh 

The University of British Columbia 
Vancouver, Canada 

Date 1^'^ h tce/n ber 'jj 

DE-6 (2/88) 



11 

ABSTRACT 

Life in Jane Austen's fictional world is carried on under the 

constant public scrutiny of the "eye of the world." The 

consciousness of being watched reaches its most intense for 

Austen's heroines during social dances, one of the only societally 

sanctioned opportunities for the sexes to intermingle openly. 

Austen is thereby enabled to use the dance scenario for an 

investigation of female response to a "surveillance society." 

In exploring aspects of the dancing-watching relationship 

(voyeurism; performance; public text), I have grouped the novels 

into three pairs, according to the aspect which seems to 

predominate. In Chapter I, I look at voyeuristic acts of observing 

dance in Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion. Marianne Dashwood, 

an avid dancer, represents the passive watched object; the other, 

"active" alternative for women is to watch -- both Elinor Dashwood 

and Anne Elliot relinquish dance, and thereby preserve themselves 

from the threats of the performative space. In Chapter II, I focus 

on performance in Northanger Abbey and Emma: for both Catherine 

Norland and Emma Woodhouse, awareness of audience becomes a 

requisite feature of relation to a spectator society, as Austen 

illustrates the responses of the innocent and the experienced 

female, respectively, to a performative environment. In Chapter 

III, I look at Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park, where a 

close examination of Austen's construction of the dance scenes 

reveals clearly that she emphasises the powerlessness of watched 

females within the ballroom, and by extension within society. 

Austen uses the ballroom as a microcosm of a voyeuristic and 

performative society: the actions of her heroines during scenes of 

dance are therefore illustrative of the various ways in which a 

female may negotiate dancing -- and living -- in the eye of the 

world. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

111 

Abstract ii 

List of Figures iv 

Preface v 

Introduction 1 

CHAPTER I Voyeurism 12 

1.1 Sense and Sensibility 13 

1. 2 Persuasion 23 

CHAPTER II Performance 31 

2.1 Northanqer Abbey 3 3 

2 .2 Emma 4 0 

CHAPTER III Public Text 49 

3 .1 Pride and Preiudice 5 0 

3 .2 Mansfield Park 61 

Conclusion 70 

Nomenclature 81 

Works Consulted 82 



IV 

LIST OF FIGURES 

1. "Longitude and Latitude of St. Petersburgh." Caricature 

by George Cruikshank of Countess Lieven dancing at Almack's. 

(13th May, 1813) x 



V 

PREFACE: On the Treatment of Dance 

This paper is not a study of the dances which are done by the 

characters in Jane Austen's novels. There is already a significant 

body of scholarship on dance of the Regency period; such work is, 

in addition, more pertinent to the field of dance history than to 

literature. For these reasons I have chosen to focus instead on 

what transpires at dances. This approach is, I believe, in keeping 

with Jane Austen's own treatment of dancing, as Langdon Elsbree 

notes: "In none of the novels does Jane Austen devote her attention 

to the details of dancing per se. Rather, she is interested in the 

occasion for the dance, the people involved, and the events that 

result" (DFC 115). These will be my concerns as well. 

Critical work focussing on Austen's "politics" (as much of it 

does) has been of mixed value in contributing to this aim. To the 

extent that Austen's treatment of dance -- one of the most 

obviously "gendered" areas of Regency life -- necessarily includes 

commentary on the (disadvantaged) state of women, discussions of 

Austen as "feminist" do become relevant (for instance, Margaret 

Kirkham's assertion that "As a feminist moralist, Jane Austen 

criticises sexist pride and prejudice as embedded in the laws and 

customs of her age" (82)); whether or not Austen's dance scenes 

ought to be "politicised," however, remains problematic: 

One problem of the newly politicised Jane Austen is that 
once the field of politics has been redefined to include 
the subject of gender difference at its centre, then 
almost any item can be included in what Claudia Johnson 
calls 'the lexicon of politically sensitive terms,' a 
word such as 'sensibility' becomes inevitably loaded with 
controversial reference, and the thesis is self-
confirming, even though nothing like an explicit 
political position is declared or overt allusions are 
made. (Wiltshire 4) 



VI 

I am therefore reluctant to take a stance that posits Jane Austen's 

scenes of dance as overtly "political" statements. Nonetheless, 

their socio-critical implications cannot be ignored: "[Austen's] 

heroines share with their creator the capacity to celebrate what is 

intrinsically fine in social dancing, despite its secondary co-

option into the mercantile and patriarchal scheme of things" 

(Sulloway 138). Insofar as I attempt to explore Austen's 

acknowledgement of this "secondary co-option" -- particularly with 

regard to the public text -- and her concurrent investigation of 

the state of females under male domination, I have consulted works 

written from a feminist standpoint; of particular usefulness as 

well have been evaluations of the gender issues and definitions 

affecting female characters in Austen (Moreland Perkins' Reshaping 

the Sexes in Sense and Sensibility especially). 

Work done specifically on dance in Jane Austen ranges from 

small sections of larger studies (such as the chapter on "Dancing 

and Marriage" in Alison Sulloway's Jane Austen and the Province of 

Womanhood) and brief "asides" on relatively minor issues ("Dancing, 

Romeo and Juliet, and Pride and Prejudice" --a two-page article by 

Alan Hertz on a Shakespeare reference made at the first dance in 

Pride and Prejudice) to detailed discussions of dance in Austen's 

novels, including a dissertation and two articles by Langdon 

Elsbree, and articles by Timothy Dow Adams and Jacqueline Reid-

Walsh. The common tendency amongst the latter three authors has 

been to focus primarily on the dance-marriage connection in 

Austen's work: Elsbree takes up the "fidelity and complaisance" 

theme suggested in Volume 1, Chapter 10 of Northanger Abbey, 



Vll 

investigating the "ritual" nature of dancing in its connection to 

the courtship-love-marriage cycle; Adams, in his own words, is 

"concerned with dancing as a metaphor for marriage and marriage 

proposals in only four novels" (65); Reid-Walsh includes details on 

dance conventions and rules of etiquette while analysing the 

entrance into society -- and onto the marriage market -- of three 

Austen heroines. 

All these authors discuss dance as a "metaphor for marriage"; 

a related and relatively unexplored issue is the way in which 

dance, the most visible of the rituals through which Austenian 

couples must play out their courtship, takes place so entirely in 

the public eye, becoming a social "performance." Recognising this 

feature of Austen's dance scenes allows appropriate emphasis to be 

placed on the fact that it is not only prospective marriage 

partners, but all members of society -- and, more suggestively, 

"society" as an undifferentiated whole, an entity in itself^ --

that are enabled to make their evaluation of various characters 

through the medium or forum of "the ball." Social dance as a series 

of codified, socially learned and transmitted symbols or acts --

including both the actual dance figures and the social "movements" 

that frame them -- becomes a text, one which is read simultaneously 

by participants and spectators. My concern is with the way in which 

ballroom scenes in Austen's novels are constructed around acts of 

performing, watching and interpreting social dance --an interplay 

producing a distinct and readable "public text" whose societal 

ramifications ultimately extend far beyond the ballroom -- and with 

the different ways in which Austen's heroines respond to these 



Vlll 

circumstances. 

In exploring aspects of the dancing-watching relationship 

(voyeurism;^ performance; public text), I have grouped the novels 

into three pairs, an early with a late, according to the aspect 

which seems to predominate; the issues are interrelated, however, 

and each is pertinent to all the novels to some degree. The very 

fact that the same focus and/or approach appears in early and late 

novels suggests that there is no coherent chronological "line" of 

development to be traced in Jane Austen's use or presentation of 

dance. 

I have chosen to focus on Austen's female characters for the 

obvious reason that she focusses on them herself; in addition, 

however, the female's "disempowered" status within the dance room 

intersects with Claudia Johnson's claim that "the device of 

centering her novels in the consciousness of unempowered characters 

-- that is, women. . .enables Austen to expose and explore those 

aspects of traditional institutions -- marriage, primogeniture, 

patriarchy -- which patently do not serve her heroines well" 

(xxiv). Although the Regency country dance is notable for the 

"equality" of its structure ("Both women and men are equal agents 

while dancing, their movements are largely in parallel, 

synchronized and in exact balance to one another" (Reid-Walsh 

116)) , the fact remains that there can be no uniform experience for 

males and females in this setting, since outside of the actual 

steps the practice of the dance is still the self-expression of a 

male-dominated society: 

A culture is that which is shared by all of the members 
of a society. In practice, however, the possibilities of 
such intersubjectivity will always be limited by 



IX 

differences of gender. For this reason, it is necessary 
to distinguish between male and female realities within 
the context of any social group.... 

Dance -- the distillation of culture into its 
most metaphysical form -- always embodies and identifies 
this gender-generated division of cultural realities. 
Whenever men and women dance together, therefore, 
cultures collide: male culture and female culture. 

The men's dance style is a crystallisation of what 
it means to be a male member of their culture. The 
women's dance style is a crystallisation of what it means 
to be a female member of that culture. (T. Polhemus 11) 

Given that the experience of the dance is always gender-specific, 

the experience of being watched that accompanies it is also 

different for women, who must be "sought" by men and therefore must 

encode their appearances accordingly. Thus investigating the female 

experience of voyeurism, performance, and the public text 

simultaneously allows Austen to comment on the general social 

differences for women within her world. 

N.B. : All underlinings in quoted passages are my emphases; all 

italics are the authors'. 





INTRODUCTION 
"...she not only longed to be dancing, but was 
likewise aware that, as the real dignity of her 
situation could not be known, she was sharing 
with all the scores of other young ladies still 
sitting down all the disgrace of wanting a 
partner. To be disgraced in the eye of the 
world, to wear the appearance of infamy while 
her heart is all purity, her actions all 
innocence... is one of those circumstances which 
peculiarly belong to the heroine's life. II 

- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, I.VIII 

"The narrator describes the ignominy in hyperbolic 
terms but note the image of the social gaze or 
'eye'...." 

- Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, p.119 

In her book Tellincr Glances: Voyeurism in the French Novel, 

Dorothy Kelly refers to a voyeuristic scenario in which the female 

is "trapped in a structure in which gazes constantly determine her 

activities and limit her freedom, even in her own home" (193) --a 

description that could equally apply to any Jane Austen heroine. 

Life in Austen's fictional world is carried on under constant 

public scrutiny: Austenian characters have a ceaseless surveillant 

and critic in the "eye of the world." In the contained and 

conservative social sphere upon which Austen focusses her 

attention, the smallest visible deviation instantly produces public 

comment; the, greatest may result in disgrace and universal 

condemnation. Isobel Armstrong's diagnosis of the "world" of Sense 

and Sensibility is applicable to any Austen setting: 

Jane Austen lived through probably one of the most 
repressive political eras of recent history, and her 
texts understand the culture of espionage. ... [Sense and 
Sensibility] describes a world which is not open, but 
more important than this Mrs Jennings is part of, caught 
up in, a chronic structure of surveillance and 
concealment. Surveillance breeds concealment and 
concealment breeds surveillance: secrets breed gossip and 
gossip breeds secrecy; there is a presupposition that 



everyone has something to hide, whether in the domestic 
context or at large in the state. (87) 

The consciousness of being watched reaches its most intense for 

Austen's heroines during social dances, one of the only societally 

sanctioned opportunities for the sexes -- and to a limited extent 

the classes --to intermingle openly and with relative freedom. By 

this means, Austen is enabled to use the dance scenario as the 

locus for an investigation of female response to a "surveillance 

society." 

Social dances are the forum where evaluations of potential 

marriage partners may be carried out; as "it was commonly accepted 

during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that ballrooms were 

arenas of courtship" (Reid-Walsh 115), Austen makes full use of 

these all-important social occasions as pivotal events in the 

(love-)lives of her heroines. Although dance scenes comprise a 

small fraction of any one of Jane Austen's novels, Elsbree notes 

that "in all of the novels except Persuasion, Jane Austen uses the 

events of the dance to complicate the actions of the plot" (DFC 

115) --a plot always concerned with the marital aspirations of its 

central characters.^ 

By examining dance events, Austen is able to highlight the 

interdependent relationship of the two acts which concur in 

ballrooms: dancing and watching. Austen's heroines, whether or not 

they wish to dance themselves, must by their attendance at social 

dances participate in the rite of voyeurism which surrounds the act 

of dancing in public view. The emphasis placed on prestige and 

social acceptability -- and on the state of disgrace that is their 

alternative -- shows the value that is given to public approbation 



3 

and the fear engendered in Austen's female dancers by an 

everpresent and inescapable social scrutiny.* The forum of the 

ballroom, so often the site for important encounters, overheard 

discoveries, and exposures of character, is the location where the 

gazes of Austen's characters reach their most complex entanglement. 

Judith Mackrell states that "Space also connects the dancers --it 

is the arena into which they project emotion and movement" (172) . 

Thus for Austen's heroines the ballroom becomes the nexus of 

intersecting gazes and the desires and intentions these represent. 

Under an external gaze, all social acts of dancing become 

performances; all social acts of observing dance(rs) constitute 

spectatorship. This constant interplay of dancing and watching and 

the consequent need to interpret what is seen result in the 

communal creation of a "public text": a tacit consensus on the 

signification allotted to the social acts relating to dance. 

"Movement is a primary not a secondary social 'text'.... Its 

articulation signals group affiliation and group differences, 

whether consciously performed or not" (Desmond 31) ; the observation 

and judgment of social dance hereby becomes an act of reading and 

interpretation, the analysis of a text: 

. . .we can ask what movements are considered "appropriate" 
or even "necessary" within a specific historical and 
geographical context, and by whom and for whom such 
necessities obtain. We can ask who dances, when and 
where, in what ways, with whom, and to what end? And just 
as importantly, who does not dance, in what ways, 
under what conditions and why? By looking at dance we 
can see enacted on a broad scale, and in codified 
fashion, socially constituted and historically specific 
attitudes toward the body in general, toward specific 
social groups' usage of the body in particular, and about 
the relationships among variously marked bodies. . . . 
(Desmond 32) 

Taking a similar approach to Jane Austen's scenes of dance and 



4 

tracking the "relationships among variously marked bodies" is thus 

illustrative of the greater social patterns existing in her 

fictional world and of their implications for her main characters. 

Austen's female protagonists are all objects and/or 

perpetrators of social dance-voyeurism; they are all performers 

and/or spectators; all both read and write the pervasive public 

text, with varying levels of fluency. "Because Catherine, Emma and 

Fanny are competent in ballroom etiquette, to varying degrees they 

also understand the 'politics' of the ballroom" (Reid-Walsh 115). 

Given that the ballroom is a symbol of society, the ability of 

Austen's central characters to grasp "ballroom politics" is of far 

more moment than simply influencing how they will fare at dances; 

their adeptness in this arena also signals their maturity, 

independence, and world-wisdom, and is a measure of their 

competence in understanding the greater context of their society as 

the ballroom represents it. Thus the reasons for and ways in which 

Austen's heroines partake in, accept, defy, subvert, or excel at 

the social acts of spectating and performing as these occur at 

dances•provide an index to their position on the marriage-market 

and in society. 

Voyeurism 

In her essay "An-Other Voice: Young Women Dancing and 

Talking," Helen Thomas quotes a well-known passage from Laura 

Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," itself "perhaps 

the most influential discussion on what has now come to be termed 

'the male gaze'" (Thomas, AV note 22, p.91): 

...a number of feminist writers have argued that the idea 



of the mirror, of looking at oneself as if one were being 
looked at, the sense of surveillance, the relationship of 
how one looks to one's sense of identity or self-worth, 
for the most part, is gender-specific. As Mulvey has 
argued: 

'In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in 
looking has been split between active/male and 
passive/female.... In their traditional exhibitionist 
role women are simultaneously looked at and 
displayed, with their appearance coded for strong 
visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to 
connote to-be-looked-at-ness' (Mulvey 19). 
(Thomas 88) 

It is possible (though not necessarily desirable) to take such an 

approach to Jane Austen's female characters, especially as these 

characters appear at dances. The notion of "to-be-looked-at-ness" 

is particularly resonant with reference to the more openly 

"exhibited" female characters such as Fanny Price, but is relevant 

to any female described by Austen as having a concern that her 

ballroom appearance be sufficiently "attractive" to garner the 

coveted (or, for such as the dowerless Bennet girls, requisite) 

male attention. In this aspect of dance scenes, ideas of the 

dominating male gaze are relevant; Roger Copeland, however, advises 

discretion when applying Mulvey's cinema-inspired gaze theories too 

freely to dance: 

... I would caution against too literal a transference of 
Mulvey's ideas from cinema studies to dance. Mulvey for 
example is very quick to point out that 'This complex 
interaction of looks is specific to film'....More 
importantly, these theories of the omnipresent, 
inescapable male gaze proceed on the assumption that it's 
always the man who holds the camera (or the brush or the 
pen) and the woman who holds the pose....' 

Indeed, in dance the cinematic notion of the 'male' 
gaze is less relevant and useful to the theoretician than 
a more generalised consideration of the gaze itself, 
whether male or female.... (146) 

A different dimension is therefore opened when we consider 

that within the Austen dances, gazing is not the sole prerogative 



6 

of men: there is also the presence of the female gaze. Kelly states 

that "women write of woman's desire, a desire that is linked to her 

gaze and to her different way of looking and writing" (193). This 

comment is particularly relevant to Austen -- not only because she 

is a woman writing of women, but because she often highlights the 

disparity between male and female perspectives and ways of viewing. 

Austen investigates from various angles the situation of the female 

watcher, and suggests the paradox embedded in the actions of this 

figure: a woman who watches removes herself from the arena of 

physical involvement and display, and is thus excluded from the 

dance "action" even as she is most active as viewer (whereas the 

actively dancing female is nonetheless a passive object of other 

gazes). 

What can compound the difference of the female gaze is its 

linkage to the desire for invisibility. The exercise of the female 

gaze is often bound up with a wish to remain unseen; this aspect 

returns us once again to the active-passive dichotomy endemic to 

the dance and to society. For the female in a male-dominated 

society, generally expected to be passive and granted only the 

power of refusal, the gaze must remain a surreptitious one -- she 

should not "take the lead" in gazing, one presumes, any more than 

in dancing or proposing. The female gazer at dances (whose gaze may 

be considered the visible manifestation of her desire) must be 

careful not to violate societal protocol by allowing her 

forthrightness to be apparent to those only too vigilant social 

sentries surrounding her.^ 

In addition to the gaze of individual male or female 

characters, Austen's novels acknowledge the presence of a 



7 

generalised social or public gaze, the "eye of the world." This 

gaze is frequently a threat to its objects; recalling Austen's 

reference in Northanger Abbey to "'a country like this,...where 

every man is surrounded by a neighourhood of voluntary spies. . . . ' " 

(NA 159) , Nancy Armstrong comments that "The terrors of 

aristocratic power have given way to ones that are less terrible 

and more effective, as Austen represents a social world regulated 

by surveillance or, in her words, 'voluntary spies'" (206). This 

image of a society in which one is continually aware of being under 

scrutiny evokes in turn Foucault's description of "panopticism." 

According to Foucault, the effect of such a system is "to induce. . . 

a state of conscious and permanent visibility" such that "the 

constant pressure acts even before the offences... have been 

committed" (201, 206). This description is distinctly reminiscent 

of the state of affairs in an Austen novel -- especially in 

ballrooms -- where characters are deterred from "undesirable" 

behaviours by an awareness of watching eyes. Hence Foucault's 

statement that "The panoptic schema...was destined to spread 

throughout the social body; its vocation was to become a 

generalized function" (207) has most resonance with regard to Jane 

Austen when related to the poly-gazed ballroom assembly, where a 

potentially inflammatory mix of movement and desire is kept in 

check by a multiplicity of watchers.^ 

Performance 

A brief reference to dance in Chapter 6 of Persuasion is 

significant for its depiction of the feminine sphere as composed of 

mostly performative concerns: "...the females were fully occupied 



8 

in all the other common subjects of house-keeping, neighbours, 

dress, dancing, and music" (P 69) . In contrast to the idea of a 

male-public/female-private division,'' four of the five "female" 

concerns listed here involve other people: neighbours; dress 

(important only insofar as it is seen by others) ; dancing and music 

(which require participants and an audience). What can be concluded 

from this is that female concerns, as delineated here, are in a 

sense not at all private, since they are performative -- they 

involve putting on a show, impressing others with appearances. 

Furthermore, since within these socio-performative areas the women 

themselves become the "performance piece," we can conclude that 

women are socialised to be aware of their own visible exterior 

selves as a vital part of an ongoing public show. 

If females are on display even in their everyday lives, how 

much more so in the overtly performative setting of the ballroom. 

Terry Castle's study of the masquerade in eighteenth-century 

English culture and fiction contains a passage that describes 

Austenian balls nearly as well as it does masquerade: 

The masquerade had its undeniably provocative visual 
elements: one took one's pleasure, above all, in seeing 
and being seen. With universal privileges granted to 
voyeurism and self-display, the masquerade was from the 
start ideally suited to the satisfaction of scopophilic 
and exhibitionistic urges. (38)® 

Thus the performative space privileges by its own nature the acts 

of watching and being watched. Each character, in stepping into the 

ballroom, is entering a public arena where she is offered, not only 

to eligible men, but also to all of society, for evaluation. In a 

social world where privacy is impossible, the dance is one area 

where eligible young women may assess and be assessed. The 



9 

"mercantile" implications are not nonexistent for being subtle: 

nowhere is the marriage "market" more apparent as such than in a 

room where nubile young women meet virile young men in a series of 

requisite and highly codified performative motions, the whole 

having been arranged by mothers keen to "sell" prospective suitors 

on the charms of their daughters and by a society eager to see 

matches made. Within this setting, any action is a performance: 

just as Foucault comments that within the Panopticon the cells are 

"like so many small theatres" and the inmates "actors" (200), here 

too one becomes an actor, a performer, simply by the consciousness 

of being watched. That the need to put on an impressive performance 

in this arena should be most heavily felt by women -- a situation 

of which Austen seems well aware --is due to the fact that, denied 

the right to initial action, females must seek to attract and 

impress solely with their appearances. 

Public Text 

The consciousness of being continuously viewed and critiqued 

is responsible for the suffocating, secretive atmosphere often 

pervading balls. Inside the ballroom there is little certain 

knowledge -- only conjecture, suspicion, rumours, gossip. With open 

communication at a minimum, "sexual relations are declared by the 

slightest gesture or the briefest glance" (N. Armstrong 144); 

convictions are formed without any solid basis for belief; 

important knowledge is gained surreptitiously, without any 

intention of telling or being told. Direct verbal communication is 

noticeably absent,^ and "overhearings" are constant. This is due to 

the social stigma attached to speaking freely and to a general fear 



10 

of self-betrayal; any desire to communicate openly has habitually 

been neutralised by the social necessity of stringent self-control. 

Hence Roger Gard's description of a "typically Austenian ethos": 

...a group of people with more or less private concerns 
who are hindered by politeness from expressing them. 
Really intimate and sensitive matters, especially those 
concerning the relations of the sexes, cannot come out at 
all directly. Sociability inhibits expression. The 
alternative of private meetings is nearly out of the 
question. (EP 90) 

Within such an ethos, evidencing a society with an aversion to 

the uncivilised and the unrestrained, the vagaries of attraction 

have been neatly codified and encapsulated in a series of social 

"motions" which in turn are "acted out" in the ballroom, with a 

series of eligible partners and for a host of observers. These in 

turn must be interpreted: "The procedures for reading and writing 

have extended beyond the page to the dance floor and parlor" (N. 

Armstrong 13 8) -- thus the eye of the world observes and "reads" 

the women who dance. The act of watching is considered the way to 

find "truth" within a ballroom; public judgments are formed with 

nothing more than observation for basis. The unreliability and bias 

inherent in such a process make it potentially highly detrimental 

to those it takes as its objects, and dissimulation and disguise 

become necessities as females anticipate their "reading" in the 

public text. 

A motif of concealment characterises all of Austen's ballroom 

scenes. The interplay of concealed and revealed marking the social 

relations of Austen's heroines comes to the fore in the charged 

atmosphere of the ballroom, where the public gaze is at its most 

intense. The tension between what is shown and unshown, seen and 



11 

unseen, known and unknown, emerges as a dominant feature of 

Austen's scenes of dance, and a connection is drawn between the 

patterns of ballroom interaction and the undercurrent of social 

negotiations and divisions these superficial movements represent 

and reinforce. Austen uses the ballroom as a microcosm of a 

voyeuristic and performative society: the actions of her heroines 

during scenes of dance are therefore illustrative of the various 

ways in which a female may negotiate dancing -- and living -- in 

the eye of the world. 



12 

I. VOYEURISM: Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion 

In both these novels, dance appears only as an incidental; 

while Austen makes clear that social occurrences involving dance 

are frequent and are attended by all the protagonists, these events 

are rarely described. Unlike Pride and Prejudice or Mansfield Park, 

where important social dances occupy entire chapters, dance in 

Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion is often relegated to no more 

than a line. This does not diminish the centrality of dance to the 

characters' lives, however: as a standard social activity, a 

location for interpersonal evaluations to be carried out, and a 

purveyor of "the voyeuristic and erotic pleasures that dance has 

traditionally offered" (Copeland 143), it is very much present. 

In the dance scenes of Sense and Sensibility, the focus, as in 

so much of the novel, is on the contrast between the two sisters. 

Marianne is fully in and of the dance: she participates whole-

heartedly, and, in so doing, embraces the role of passive watched 

object endemic to the performative dance space. She virtually does 

not exist as watcher (and hence as active subject), since her gaze 

is entirely confined within the narcissistic Willoughby connection 

and she is completely oblivious to everyone and everything else, 

including social dance decorum. Elinor, on the other hand, opts out 

of the performance space (going so far, according to Jane Nardin, 

as to "ma [k] e a fetish of privacy" (41)) in favour of a removed and 

autonomous position as spectator. Elinor watches; Marianne is 

watched. Both participate, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or 

unknowingly, in the voyeur dynamic of the Austenian dance, and by 

their actions illustrate two possibilities for females within this 

ethos. 



13 

In Persuasion, Austen does not place any significant focus on 

the dance participant/passive object. Such characters as do 

represent this option (Mary, the Musgrove sisters) are relatively 

unimportant and receive little attention. What is investigated in 

greater depth is the plight of the female character who chooses the 

role of spectator while accepting the exclusion from the social 

sphere which is necessitated by this choice. Anne's deliberate 

rejection of the dance is made clear in a way which Elinor's is 

not, as are her motivations for this choice. The desire to "remain 

unobserved" comes into play as a powerful motivating force; and 

with it, necessarily, comes an acknowledgement by the female of 

watching as an integral and inescapable part of the dance scenario. 

That is, Anne, in order to make the decision to reject dance so 

that she may remain unseen, has obviously recognised the watched 

nature of the dancer's role (as Marianne, for instance, has not) 

and perceives the hazards this presents. Elinor counsels Marianne 

against allowing all she feels to be so easily discernible to the 

eye of the world; Anne does not require such counsel, as she is 

already painfully aware of the pressure of the social eye. 

Withdrawing entirely from the dance arena, Anne represents the 

opposite end of the voyeuristic spectrum from Marianne. Being the 

least participatory physically (and socially), however, allows her 

not only to be one of Austen's most active onlookers, but also 

ultimately to attain a kind of victory over the public gaze. 

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY 

The first reference to dance in Sense and Sensibility comes 

from Sir John Middleton, who, in describing Willoughby to the 



14 

Dashwood girls as an eligible prospect, asserts that "at a little 

hop in the Park, [Willoughby] danced from eight o'clock till four, 

without once sitting down" (SS 38). It is significant that Sir John 

chooses this particular evidence to support his view of Willoughby 

as being "as good a sort of fellow...as ever lived"; Willoughby's 

tireless dancing is proof of both spiritedness and health. (In 

contrast, characters such as Fanny Price betray their physical 

frailty by their inability to dance for long periods without 

fatigue.) The fact that Sir John adds to his testimony Willoughby's 

having "risen at eight to ride to covert" is further proof that he 

offers this plea on Willoughby's behalf partly as evidence of 

physical prowess. In addition. Sir John cites Willoughby's dancing 

to convey a general sense of the younger man's social adeptness and 

pleasant demeanour. Unlike Darcy, who cannot bring himself to stand 

up at a common assembly, Willoughby has no aversion to 

participating in an event even less prestigious: the "little hop at 

the Park" is almost certainly one of those spontaneous revelries 

(elswhere referred to as "private balls" and "unpremeditated 

dances") in which Sir John frequently indulges. Thus Willoughby is 

confirmed for the Dashwoods as being very much "on the market." 

These opening remarks of Sir John's on the subject of dancing 

have a significance beyond the affirmation of Willoughby's status; 

they show clearly that possession of desire, willingness, and 

ability to dance is evidence of eligibility, whether male or 

female. Where, when, why, and how a man or woman in a Jane Austen 

novel chooses to dance and to be seen dancing is proof of his or 

her status in society and on the marriage market. Darcy ceases to 

be eligible when he will not stand up to dance (as evidenced by the 



15 

fact that Mrs Bennet and presumably other matrons instantly remove 

him from their list of possible or desirable husbands for their 

daughters); Bingley reaffirms his eligibility by his willingness to 

attend, to hold, and to participate in dances; Willoughby is 

established as a normal, healthy, eligible male by the fact, 

frequency, and manner of his dancing. In the vigilant eye of the 

world, evidence presented at dances is translated into an important 

expression of eligibility. For women a display of vigour in 

particular may be even more requisite: "Health, for a woman, may be 

in the first place a commodity, and the novels pay their due to 

that part of patriarchal culture in which the question of the 

woman's body is resolved into its appeal to the male gaze" 

(Wiltshire 9) . Already, then, Austen has subtly hinted at the 

action by which an external gaze evaluates a dancing body, to which 

process the Dashwood girls themselves will soon be subject. 

The eye of the world is personified in this novel partly by 

the confederacy of Sir John and Mrs Jennings. These two, while 

superficially benign, have a less innocuous dimension: together, 

they function as a kind of matchmaking unit, an amalgam of the 

ever-observing, gossip-mongering "madam" who often serves rather to 

menace than to protect her young charges (as when Elinor must 

censure Mrs Jennings for having indiscriminately announced 

Marianne's "engagement"), and the male pander: 

...the spiral of secrecy, censorship, and surveillance 
is outrageously open and scandalously on display, an open 
secret of which people are curiously oblivious. Mrs 
Jennings is its raucous representative, with her 
perpetual discoveries....Her conversation is one long 
sexual revelation, one long consent to social spying. 
(I. Armstrong 85) 

If Mrs Jennings is the "representative" of voyeurism, imbuing 



16 

social interrelations with her "libidinal energies" (I. Armstrong 

85), Sir John is equally active in overseeing male-female 

interaction, promoting relations between his younger companions by 

arranging events at which they may encounter each other. The 

"private balls" and "parties on the water" which Sir John hosts 

serve to further the evaluative opportunities of eligible young 

members of society. Specifically, such social events facilitate 

those acts of watching which constitute a kind of social 

"appraisal." In Volume 1, Chapter 11, for example, Austen states 

that the events organised by Sir John give Willoughby the 

"opportunity of witnessincr the excellencies of Marianne" and "of 

marking his animated admiration" (SS 45). That is, they present the 

opportunity of watching and being watched that is so vital in a 

society where private interaction is nearly impossible to achieve. 

While dances allow Willoughby and Marianne to be watched by each 

other, however, to "witness" and to "mark" their mutual interest, 

they also allow the voyeuristic eye of the world an unobstructed 

view of all that transpires between the young dancers/lovers. 

Marianne and Willoughby are almost never unobserved even in their 

"private" moments together; when they do contrive to be alone, they 

are chastised for their impropriety. Any interactive pleasures 

allotted to young people in the Austen world must always be 

voraciously and vicariously enjoyed by a host of onlookers; at 

dances the presence of an extrinsic gaze magnifies private 

interactions into public significance .-̂^ 

Marianne Dashwood is in many ways the quintessential observed 

object: not only does she conform to Kelly's description of the 

watched woman -- "trapped in a world of investigations in which she 



17 

fails to guard her inner self from exposure" (193) -- she wilfully 

lowers her guard and displays this inner self to the world, 

boasting to Elinor of her contempt for all concealment. Heedlessly 

expressive, "Marianne's inner life is communicated in instantly 

readable physical signs" (Wiltshire 34). Marianne's behaviour with 

Willoughby at dances is proof of this carelessness : the two refuse 

to dance with any partners but each other, even though this is 

contrary to convention. "Such conduct made them of course most 

exceedingly laughed at; but ridicule could not shame, and seemed 

hardly to provoke them" (SS 46) .-̂-̂  Despite Elinor's warnings, 

Marianne continues to invite public censure by refusing to 

recognise and respect the voyeuristic aspect of public dances. 

While preoccupied with Willoughby, Marianne Dashwood becomes 

the object of another gaze, in one of the most blatant acts of 

watching in Austen: "...one evening at the park, . .. [Colonel Brandon 

and Elinor] were sitting down by mutual consent, while the others 

were dancing. His eyes were fixed on Marianne..." (SS 47). With 

this image Austen presents Colonel Brandon as the determined and 

obsessive voyeur. Although he has had "no encouragement" to attach 

himself to Marianne, he watches her intently without her knowledge 

or consent. Notable, too, is the fact that he is watching her while 

she is engaged in a physical activity with another man. Colonel 

Brandon's having sat down with Elinor Dashwood and elected not to 

dance, then, is almost certainly his contrivance of an acceptable 

way to watch Marianne; his choice not to dance, at least, can only 

be deliberate, since in the case of a man -- gifted with the 

privilege of asking -- the act of not dancing is always a voluntary 

one. Brandon's gaze, while not implicated in the general public 



18 

one, exemplifies in its intensity the extent to which the dancing 

Marianne becomes the voyeurs' object -- simply by being a dancer 

she "connotes to-be-looked-at-ness." 

Marianne and Willoughby, meanwhile, are utterly absorbed in 

one another, and by their actions make their mutual attachment 

visibly clear: "Marianne abhorred all concealment where no real 

disgrace could attend unreserve....Willoughby thought the same, and 

their behaviour, at all times, was an illustration of their 

opinions" (SS 45) . In terms of the public text, the "instantly 

readable" Marianne is quite explicitly declaring herself "off the 

market" -- yet Colonel Brandon continues to regard her as a 

desirable object. In fact, throughout most of the novel Colonel 

Brandon's attachment to Marianne develops through observation (one-

way) rather than interaction (two-way). She becomes, in her 

"watchedness, " entirely an object, while he -- since she 

steadfastly refuses to observe or even to recognise him -- remains 

entirely a watcher and a subject. (His likening of her to the woman 

in his past is proof of how much Marianne becomes to him in her 

objectified state a "type" -- to the point that he actually 

contradicts Elinor's sensible and concerned desire to see her 

sister's behaviour change for the better.) The nature of the 

general attitude toward dance facilitates and renders socially 

acceptable this continued surveillance. Although Brandon himself 

does not threaten Marianne, Austen's description of the situation 

serves to highlight Marianne's vulnerability to external gazes. 

Despite the removed and "impotent" quality of Brandon's 

watching, the watcher, the non-dancer, is in another sense the 

empowered one, with the dancer or performer as the passive object 



19 

of his/her gaze. This is true of female watchers as well, and is 

the aspect of public behaviour represented by Elinor. At the 

"musical party" in Volume 2, Chapter 14 (which, while not strictly 

a "scene of dance, " is one of the few described performative 

occasions in the novel), Elinor, indifferent toward the spectacle 

ostensibly offered by the gathering, freely turns her power of 

watching on those surrounding her: "Elinor...made no scruple of 

turning away her eyes...whenever it suited her, and unrestrained... 

would fix them at pleasure on any other object in the room" (SS 

218) . All the phrases used by Austen in this passage serve to 

emphasise Elinor's bold autonomy: Elinor holds herself above the 

hypocrisy of petty social decorum ("made no scruple"), is free and 

independent of any outside control ("unrestrained"), and consults 

only her own inclination in determining her actions ("whenever it 

suited her"/"at pleasure"). This firm reliance upon her own 

judgment and reason is a hallmark of many of Austen's most 

admirable female characters: strong, decisive women like Elizabeth 

Bennet and Elinor Dashwood use their own minds as freely and 

adroitly as they do their own gazes. In contrast are those, like 

Fanny Price, who are perpetually indecisive and unsure of their own 

judgment (Fanny's greatest predicament is always to be left without 

outside guidance, as in her state before her debut: "young and 

inexperienced, with...no confidence in her own taste" (MP 210)); 

those who have a history of allowing themselves to be swayed by 

outside pressure (Anne Elliot); or those who have a misplaced 

belief in their own capacity which is proven wrong by time 

(Marianne Dashwood; Emma Woodhouse). Elinor is already beyond all 

these, and the power of her free, perceiving, unguarded gaze 



20 

becomes the metaphor for her own power as a female and as a 

character. 

The power to watch is the power to make discoveries, and 

Elinor, having already removed herself from the passive-

participatory arena of the performative space, now declares herself 

the equal of the other spectators, male included, by virtue of her 

own watching. This forthrightness is evidenced by the way in which 

she encounters Edward Ferrars' brother. Austen begins by stating 

that Elinor, ignoring the performers, fixes her eyes randomly on 

"any other object in the room" (SS 218). There is a subtle irony to 

the fact that this statement is directly followed by Elinor's 

discovery of Robert Ferrars, an effete social butterfly transferred 

by her gaze into the passive and generally female position of 

watched "object": "In one of these excursive glances she perceived 

among a group of young men, the very he, who had given them a 

lecture on toothpick-cases at Gray's. She perceived him soon 

afterwards looking at herself." This passage is significant because 

it is Elinor who first perceives Robert Ferrars and then becomes 

aware of his gaze upon her. She has, in a sense, overstepped the 

male-female protocol which always allocates to the male the 

prerogative of initial action, upon which Austen herself comments 

ironically in Northanger Abbey with the notion that Catherine 

Norland perhaps ought not to dream of Henry Tilney before he dreams 

of her. If it can be said -- albeit ironically -- that "it must be 

very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before 

the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her" (NA 15), then 

there may also be some ironic truth to the idea that a woman's gaze 

should not precede a man's. That Elinor is self-assured enough to 



21 

disregard such strictures is proof of her as "Austen's most 

flagrantly gender-dissonant heroine" (Perkins 40) . Elinor has 

already effectively "disarmed" the watching male by taking on the 

masculine privilege of initiative and by refusing to look 

submissively away once he returns her gaze.-"-̂  The freedom permitted 

her by Austen in this arena would therefore seem to support 

Moreland Perkins' view of Elinor as a female character endowed with 

"masculine" traits and abilities, one whose characterisation is 

evidence of Austen's "intention to reshape gender in this early 

novel" (12); certainly her behaviour at performative occasions is 

representative of the strongest and "safest" position for females 

within a watching society. 

Even the few references to dance which Austen provides in 

Sense and Sensibility confirm the voyeuristic nature of the setting 

within which her characters must function. "This is a novel in 

which everyone watches each other for good and bad reasons.... 'By 

indirections find directions out' {Hamlet, II i 66) is the motto of 

everyone in the novel except, perhaps, Marianne, whether they like 

it or not" (I. Armstrong 85). Marianne is a watched character, so 

utterly absorbed in acting, in participation, that she is all but 

unaware of herself as a spectacle. On the dance-voyeurism spectrum, 

she is at one extreme, dancing without observing, being watched 

without watching.-"-̂  The "over-expressiveness" implicated in her 

carelessness for society's regard and regulations is responsible 

for Marianne's vulnerability as a character, and contributes to her 

near-downfall.^* Marianne's passage from this unrestrained 

heedlessness to a greater awareness of self, sense, and society is 



22 

paralleled by her attitude to dance (her movement from the defiant 

openness of her dance-conduct with Willoughby to more circumspect 

behaviour and an alliance with the reserved non-dancer Colonel 

Brandon). She has endangered herself by being too readable, 

declaring herself too openly "in the language of gesture and bodily 

display" (Wiltshire 34) . Although her end (marriage to Brandon) has 

been read by some as a disappointing concession, a containment and 

quenching of sexual energies (Wiltshire 58-9), it is also possible 

to conclude that Marianne's personal transformation is indicative 

of the same sentiments on the part of the author as those that 

produced in the contemporary minuet a progression from "initial 

unrestrained expressiveness into the classical ideals of clarity, 

balance and regularity" (Katz 523). 

Elinor -- who personifies the latter ideals -- is never seen 

dancing in Sense and Sensibility. Her presentation as a non-

participant in dance scenes is deliberate on Austen's part, as it 

enables us to see the antithesis of Marianne's choice. Elinor holds 

herself back from performative opportunities to a greater extent 

than any other Austen heroine: she neither dances, plays, nor 

sings. In contrast to her sister and Willoughby, both "passionately 

fond" of music and dancing, Elinor and her preferred partner Edward 

Ferrars are a thoroughly non-performative pair. While this 

reticence removes Elinor from the "display zone," it also permits 

her a freedom as watcher that is generally reserved for males, and 

she exhibits a perspicacity in this role that is, arguably, 

unexceeded by any other Austen character. Elinor's trespass on the 

male preserve of initiative and her refusal to become a passively 

watched dancing body thus allow Austen subtly to showcase more 



23 

radical ideas about the rights and abilities of women. 

PERSUASION 

The first reference to dancing in Persuasion appears only a 

few pages into Chapter 1 and immediately strikes the usual 

dancing/watching note: "Thirteen winters' revolving frosts had seen 

[Elizabeth Elliot] opening every ball of credit which a scanty 

neighbourhood afforded" (P 38). This statement appears as part of 

a delineation of the various activities which occupy Elizabeth: 

Thirteen years had seen her mistress of Kellynch 
Hall, presiding and directing. ... For thirteen years had 
she been doing the honours, and laying down the domestic 
law at home, and leading the way to the chaise and four, 
and walking immediately after Lady Russell out of all the 
drawing-rooms and dining-rooms in the country. Thirteen 
winters' revolving frosts had seen her opening every ball 
of credit which a scanty nighbourhood afforded.... (P 38) 

The statement about dance is in obvious counterpoint to the first 

sentence describing Elizabeth; in both sentences the subject of the 

"seeing" is left unstated -- an omission which adds to the idea 

that Elizabeth is observed by society at large, by everyone, by the 

"eye of the world." The confluence of these opening and closing 

statements suggests that most of what Elizabeth occupies her time 

with is immaterial, both to herself and to society -- the important 

thing is that she be seen to occupy a primary position both at her 

family seat and on the dance floor. The social dance is the social 

milieu in microcosm, concentrated and magnified, and for Elizabeth 

to retain her dominion over the latter she must be seen to dominate 

and lead in both spheres. In this way the status of the "seen" 

dancer mirrors her stature in society. 

This is the only reference in the novel to the "balls of 



24 

credit" which Elizabeth patronises. All other dance references in 

Persuasion (apart from a casual mention by Captain Wentworth of 

balls on board ship) are in connection with dances of a much lower 

calibre and prestige, those "unpremeditated little balls" which so 

delight the Musgrove sisters. That Anne Elliot chooses to efface 

herself even at these casual, impromptu festivities emphasises the 

extent to which her position, values, and social ambitions differ 

from her sister's: evidence once again of Austen using dance 

response to dramatise a character contrast between sisters. 

Far from sharing her sister's desire to be seen at dances, 

Anne Elliot is the Austen female most determined to avoid dancing 

altogether. There are two brief passages in Persuasion that 

actually discuss dance, and Austen emphasises Anne's voluntarily 

withdrawn role in both. The first passage appears in the middle of 

Volume 1, Chapter 6, and includes a testament to Anne's "solitude" 

in the exercise of her musical abilities ("In music she had been 

always used to feel alone in the world" (P 73)). It is not despite 

this habitual indifference on the part of her listeners, but rather 

jbecause of it, that Anne chooses to remain an accompanist instead 

of becoming a participant in the dance; unlike the Musgroves and 

their other guests, who evince a perpetual and insatiable eagerness 

for all kinds of revelry, Anne continues "very much preferring the 

office of musician to a more active post" (P 73). The language used 

here is telling: Anne's choice to forgo dancing for playing is not 

simply a preference between two equal options, but an intentional 

choice of the least "active" position. Anne consciously withdraws 

herself from the participatory, performative, and above all visible 

role of dancer in favour of the accompanist's "backstage" 



25 

invisibility. 

The deliberateness of this choice cannot be overstated: Austen 

herself emphasises it with reference to Anne's complete awareness 

of the indifference with which her musical efforts are always 

greeted ("her performance was little thought of,...as she was well 

aware" ; "She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only 

to herself"; "In music she had been always used to feel alone in 

the world" (P 73)). Anne is therefore choosing to play precisely 

because she knows she will be largely ignored and unnoticed. 

Steadfast in her celibacy as she was in her attachment, Anne is 

definitively "off the market," and she shows this by removing 

herself from the game of gazes endemic to even the most casual of 

dances. ̂^ 

The end of Volume 1, Chapter 8 contains the only described 

dance scene in the novel; again Anne's withdrawn role is noted: 

The evening ended with dancing. On its being 
proposed, Anne offered her services, as usual, and though 
her eyes would sometimes fill with tears as she sat at 
the instrument, she was extremely glad to be employed, 
and desired nothing in return but to be unobserved. 
(P 95) 

Here again we are given testimony of Anne's motivations in choosing 

to avoid the dance floor and maintain her post at the piano: the 

"backgrounded" office keeps her both employed (as, were she idle, 

she would be more likely both to draw unwanted attention and to 

betray her emotional state to others) and unobserved. Still more 

important, however -- though not acknowledged by Anne -- is that 

from where she sits she may herself observe. Like another of the 

great fictional female recluses, Charlotte Bronte's Lucy Snowe, 

Anne has actively sought a post "whence unobserved [she] could 



26 

observe" (Bronte, 211). Thus the desire to remain unseen is in this 

case not only to avoid being watched but to avoid being watched 

watching. "It would seem that the loss of power in the self 

occasioned by the love one feels for the other is the reason why 

one feels the need to be hidden when one looks" (Kelly 108); the 

betrayal of her own potentially unrequited sentiments to their 

object or to the public eye would entail a further loss of power, 

and is thus the event which Anne is most eager to avoid. 

Anne is fairly successful in her aim of observing while 

unobserved, and the result of her quiet study is to discover at 

once the current disparity between Captain Wentworth's situation 

and her own: "She felt that he had everything to elevate him, which 

general attention and deference, and especially the attention of 

all the young women could do" (P 95). Wentworth is in high spirits, 

Anne is hiding her tears; Wentworth is "elevated," Anne is 

physically and spiritually abased. Most significantly, of course, 

Anne is -- or hopes to be -- "unobserved," while Wentworth has both 

"general attention" and "the attention of all the young women." The 

redundancy of the latter two phrases attesting to Wentworth's 

visible popularity is clearly evocative of Anne's own fixation and 

worry as she voyeuristically pins her eyes on the object of her 

desire now actively dancing with other partners. If Anne has 

withdrawn from the dancing/watching arena, Wentworth has re-entered 

it with all flags flying, and is now the satisfied object of 

"universal...eager admiration." Anne, maintaining a post outside 

the dance, is able to observe freely -- yet is removed from his 

regard. This paradox of power within powerlessness is conveyed by 

Austen with Anne's character more than with any other, as is the 



27 

renunciation demanded of a woman who wishes to watch rather than to 

be watched. 

In the paragraph which follows, Anne begins to sense herself 

being drawn into the voyeur-pattern, for she admits that "Once she 

felt that he was looking at herself" (P 96) . This statement 

introduces one of the most distinctive features of Austen's dances: 

uncertainty. Anne is not certain that Wentworth watches her; she 

only feels that it may be so. Looking back over the preceding 

paragraph, one can see, in the light of Anne's uncertainty here, 

that the entire passage is filled with similar indefinites: "No one 

seemed in higher spirits"; "She felt that he had everything to 

elevate him"; "The Miss Hayters...were apparently admitted to the 

honour of being in love with him"; "Henrietta and Louisa...both 

seemed so entirely occupied by him, that nothing but the continued 

appearance of the most perfect good-will between themselves, could 

have made it credible that they were not decided rivals"; "If he 

were a little spoilt, who could wonder?" Nothing is definite here: 

all is nebulous conjecture, the product of rumour, suspicion, and 

tacit observation. 

Austen's conclusion, at the commencement of the paragraph in 

which Anne senses Wentworth's gaze, explains the mystery: "These 

were some of the thoughts which occupied Anne" (P 96). It becomes 

obvious, then, by means of this easily overlooked comment, that the 

entire dance scene has been presented through Anne's eyes. This 

personal perspective is the reason that the scene has such a 

subjective, even an "internal," feel to it -- we are not receiving 

an objective reporting of data, the recording of which dances were 

done and who did them, but rather the scene as Anne's own bias 



28 

colours it -- the dance as it appears in her inner world, as it 

affects her (supporting Card's assertion that "in Jane Austen the 

dances are almost always psychological dramas" (JAN 152)) . There is 

no reason to consider Anne an even remotely impartial observer; on 

the contrary, she is still so involved in the unfolding drama that 

she sits at the piano with tears in her eyes. Nor can she 

conceivably be unbiased in her estimation of the other young 

women's regard for Captain Wentworth. Thus, while he is undoubtedly 

both popular and attractive, only through the magnification of 

Anne's tearful gaze do we receive the picture of him as sole and 

sanguine possessor of every other female glance in the room. "The 

dance... objectifies the structure of a character's inner life, the 

way living in the world feels to him" (Elsbree, BC 12); the watcher 

projects these impressions back onto the scene viewed, imbuing it 

with private significance. By this means, delving into the 

consciousness of her central female, Austen is able to explore the 

nature of the gaze itself, demonstrating the distorting effect of 

the dance-watcher's own bias on outside reality (a phenomenon that 

can have negative effects when the female is the object rather than 

the subject of the gaze -- as with Darcy's biased viewing of Jane 

Bennet). 

The last reference to dancing in Persuasion is one of the most 

"romantic" lines in Austen's work, and makes a final comment on the 

gaze-ridden nature of the author's world and the way in which dance 

is implicated. The reference appears in Chapter 23, after Anne and 

Wentworth have reconciled; their mutual bliss in the reunion is 

described --in unusually ecstatic terms for Austen -- with the use 

of a poetic dance metaphor: "There could not be an objection. There 



29 

could only be a most proper alacrity, a most obliging compliance 

for public view; and smiles reined in and spirits dancing in 

private rapture" (P 242) . With this phrase Austen postulates an 

ideal dance: one which would not involve the critical commentary of 

onlookers or the satisfaction of stifling social regulations, but 

would serve only to please its two participants. Such a dance could 

never take place in a ballroom, nor even a drawing-room, where the 

presence of spectators would mar its perfection. Throughout the 

novel, in fact, Anne and Wentworth have never danced together, even 

though dancing with one another is an experience that almost all of 

Austen's other couples (with the notable exception of Edward and 

Elinor) are permitted to enjoy. If Anne and Wentworth are denied 

the pleasure of dancing together in reality, however, Austen grants 

them the far greater privilege, in keeping with their serious and 

introspective love-story, of dancing together in spirit. Having 

been cowed and silenced time and again by various external forces, 

Anne is finally able to assert her own wishes in spite of outside 

scrutiny in this intensely personal moment with Wentworth. 

From the beginning more sombre and subdued than an Elizabeth 

Bennet or an Emma Woodhouse, Anne finds her greatest satisfaction, 

not in open defiance, but in this quiet subversion of the public 

eye (which she has all along denied the pleasure of seeing her 

dance). Austen's exploration of voyeurism in this novel 

counterposes Anne's profoundly personal gaze to the intrusive and 

insensitive scrutiny of the eye of the world; here we see the same 

dichotomy Kelly identifies in La Chartreuse de Parme: "The world of 

the gaze in the novel...splits up between the paranoid, aggressive 



30 

gaze of the political order and the gaze of the other (usually 

female) counterposed to that order" (106) . ̂^ This split creates a 

sense of a female aware of her surroundings and her potential 

imperilment, and able to assert herself against these. There is a 

sense in which Anne's response to the eye of the world is 

ultimately the most satisfactory of anyone's: rather than either 

consenting to exhibit herself, or continuing to deny herself the 

pleasure of dance (and by extension any other "felicities of rapid 

motion" denied to the confirmed celibate-̂ )̂ Anne now simply 

internalises her dance, while preserving outwardly "a most obliging 

compliance for public view." Having at last obtained the male 

partner of her choice, she dances and is not watched -- a quiet 

victory befitting her status as Austen's most "serious" and 

introspective heroine. 

Perkins contends that "of the five novels. Persuasion is the 

least aggressive about fictionally remodeling its protagonists' 

gender" (5) , and it is certainly true that Anne nowhere exhibits 

the kind of "unfeminine" boldness for which Elizabeth Bennet is so 

famous (though she perhaps does possess a measure of the 

"masculine" intellect with which Perkins credits Elinor). With 

Anne, then, Austen would seem to be illustrating the possibility 

for a female to "work within the system" -- Anne is a "feminine" 

female who nonetheless is able to achieve her own aims and thereby 

to defy various repressive outside forces^® --a culmination evoked 

by Austen's proposal in dance imagery of a positive outcome for a 

female in constraining circumstances. 



31 

11. PERFORMANCE: Northancrer Abbey and Emma 

In these two novels one finds not the largely informal dances 

of Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility, but more elaborate events. 

In Northancrer Abbey in particular, dances are not spontaneous 

drawing-room revelries but large-scale public occasions. The 

primary issue involved in these dance scenes is the individual's 

relation to society, as figured through the performer-audience 

relationship at balls. Elsbree refers to the society of Austen's 

novels as a "play community": "The relationship of the individual 

to his society in her novels is his relationship to a play 

community, and his success depends upon how faithfully he follows 

the rules and how skilfully he performs, whether in dancing or 

marriage" (PPP 3 64). As the dancer conducts this performance, 

he/she is watched by "the community, itself a body of spectators" 

(PPP 3 68) . For both Catherine Morland and Emma Woodhouse, awareness 

of audience becomes a requisite feature of relation to a spectator 

society, as Austen illustrates the responses of the innocent and 

the experienced female, respectively, to a performative 

environment. 

All of the dancing in Northanqer Abbey occurs during the 

first section of the novel, at Bath, where there are five separate 

ballroom scenes (in addition to numerous brief references to 

dancing) . Bath is itself the most artificial and "stagey" of 

Austen's chosen settings, and Catherine Morland's experiences there 

chronicle her initiation into a society obsessed with performing; 

at each of the balls Catherine attends is revealed to her some new 

facet of social performance. She herself almost immediately becomes 

a participant in these events; more gradually developed are her 



32 

awareness of the nature of the "theatre" in which she is now 

appearing for the first time, and her ability to discern the 

fundamental insincerity beneath exteriors composed of the showy and 

artificial -- "the dangers lying in wait beneath the graceful, 

savage superficiality of the courtship dance" (Hertz 207). Austen 

uses Catherine's response to these discoveries as a metaphor for 

her development as a character. Simultaneously, Austen investigates 

the dilemma of the naive and powerless female in isolation: "The 

moral and physical coercion of powerless females which figures so 

predominantly in gothic fiction is here transposed to the daytime 

world of drawing room manners" (Johnson 37) -- a world including 

dance. 

Emma Woodhouse thrives in a performative setting. Although she 

attends only two dances in the course of the novel, her concern 

with performance is in evidence throughout. Emma is the most aware 

of Austen's heroines of her own social appearance, and is always 

calculating the effect she has on those around her. For this 

reason, the two dance scenes in Emma show her at her most assured. 

Having recognised the performative nature of her society and the 

need to put on a memorable show, Emma is able to exploit these 

factors for her own benefit. That this process should be "acted 

out" most overtly in an environment that is literally as well as 

figuratively a performance space shows Austen's full awareness of 

the ability of a socially experienced female to utilise these best 

of performance opportunities to her own advantage. This results in 

the author's perhaps clearest display of female power, and in 

addition further showcases Austen's use of balls and ballrooms as 

symbolic of their larger communal context. 



33 

NORTHANGER ABBEY 

We are informed early in Northanqer Abbey that by the time 

Catherine Morland was fifteen she had already begun to "long for 

balls"; thus the desire to dance and to attend dances has been a 

natural part of her maturation process. Even more importantly, this 

desire is explicitly linked to her improvement: "at fifteen, 

appearances were mending; she began to curl her hair and long for 

balls" (NA 3). As Catherine's appearance -- complexion, features, 

figure --is becoming more pleasing, she experiences a simultaneous 

desire to display these newly developed visible assets in public. 

In fact, Catherine's "longing for balls" is the only trait 

mentioned as part of her improvement which does not directly 

involve physical attributes. Catherine is growing into "normalcy," 

and not only is it fully expected that she will want to dance, but 

she herself has a new vision of her person as now fit to attend and 

to be seen at public spectacles. This is proof of the link between 

physical appearance and being in public: Austen's suggestion that 

a visually attractive woman wishes to be seen at dances complements 

the idea that a dancing woman "connotes to-be-looked-at-ness." 

Attending her first ball, Catherine is anxious to see all she 

can (similarly, Fanny Price at her debut is occupied with observing 

the nature of this new environment: "She must watch the general 

arrangements and see how everything was done" (MP 227) ) . With 

effort, she and Mrs Allen succeed in attaining a position from 

which "Miss Morland had a comprehensive view of the company beneath 

her" (NA 8). The "beneath," although evoking the spectators' 

physical elevation, is also suggestive figuratively: Catherine, 

although a neophyte, becomes simply by virtue of her ability to 



34 

watch the superior spectator, raised above the rank-and-file into 

a position of (ad)vantage. Austen here portrays the inherent 

weakness of the watched position in which Catherine will soon be. 

Catherine is.quickly disenchanted with her removed situation, 

however. All of the terms used to describe the other people --

"mob," "throng," "crowd" -- emphasise the disturbing mass anonymity 

of the "general public" attending the ball: 

Catherine began to feel something of disappointment --
she was tired of being continually pressed against by 
people, the generality of whose faces possessed nothing 
to interest, and with all of whom she was so wholly 
unacquainted, that she could not relieve the irksomeness 
of imprisonment by the exchange of a syllable with any of 
her fellow captives. (NA 8) 

Although in constant physical contact with the people around her, 

Catherine is mentally and emotionally isolated (not least of all 

from her mindless chaperone, who can only repeat endlessly the same 

vain and vapid sentiments until Catherine ceases to speak to her). 

Catherine's attendance at the ball has become "imprisonment": not 

only because she is physically walled in by bodies, but also 

because the social etiquette forbidding her to speak to a stranger 

immures her in silence and solitude. Although another instance of 

Austen's hyperbolically "Gothic" irony, the choice of imagery is 

unusual and striking: here as elsewhere (notably in Harriet Smith's 

need to be "rescued" by Mr Knightley) Austen shows a sensitivity to 

the plight of a lone female in a ballroom. The woman's inability to 

rectify this situation on her own is one of the most obvious 

examples of the way in which female disempowerment within the 

ballroom mirrors that outside, and while Austen never openly 

condemns this situation, she repeatedly presents it in an 

unpleasant light. 



35 

Catherine herself is as yet aware of little of this, and if 

her first ball is a disappointing experience, it is because she, 

unlike some other Austen heroines, is completely unhappy to be a 

spectator. Catherine is on the cusp of life; her healthy normalcy 

has been emphasised; she has neither previous social disgrace nor 

great personal insecurities to overcome. Like Lizzy, she is lively; 

like Fanny, she is innocent; like Marianne, she is ardent -- yet 

she differs from all these in a good-humoured naivete that has been 

alloyed neither by recognition of societal evils nor by over-

consciousness of her own deficiencies. Catherine is among the most 

eager of Austen's characters to participate. Watching only makes 

her desire involvement ("It was a splendid sight...she longed to 

dance" (NA 8) ) . She is not a perspicacious spectator, and the sight 

of other people quickly becomes wearisome to her. Her greatest 

satisfaction in the whole experience of the dance comes at the end 

of the ball, when she is finally seen: 

She was looked at, however, and with some admiration; 
for, in her own hearing, two gentlemen pronounced her to 
be a pretty girl....she immediately thought the evening 
pleasanter than she had found it before -- her humble 
vanity was contented -- she...went to her chair in good 
humour with everybody, and perfectly satisfied with her 
share of public attention. (NA 10) 

This being looked at is a far greater reward to the essentially 

passive Catherine than all the looking she has done throughout the 

evening. Thus Catherine represents a fairly conservative female, 

content to accept and even embrace her status as watched object; 

her passivity is continually emphasised by Austen to this effect. 

Not until the third ballroom scene at Bath does Catherine 

become suddenly and forcefully aware of the negative side to the 

social eye, when Mr Thorpe's failure to appear compels her to sit 



36 

out as though unsolicited: 

...as the real dignity of her situation could not be 
known, she was sharing with the scores of other young 
ladies still sitting down all the discredit of wanting a 
partner. To be disgraced in the eye of the world, to wear 
the appearance of infamy while her heart is all purity, 
her actions all innocence, and the misconduct of another 
the true source of her debasement, is one of those 
circumstances which peculiarly belong to the heroine's 
life....she suffered, but no murmur passed her lips. (NA 
36) 

Jane Austen is clearly being ironic here, and "mocks the serious 

agony of being without a partner" (Adams 58). The author's ironic 

tone does not take away, however, from the situation's continuing 

to be felt by Catherine herself as a "serious agony." Not only does 

Catherine "suffer" under the disparaging scrutiny of the rest of 

the company, she is also "left to the mercy of Mrs Thorpe and Mrs 

Allen, between whom she now remained" -- against her will, she is 

relegated to the ranks of spectators and chaperones. ̂^ Once again, 

the emphasis on the extreme unpleasantness of sitting alone or 

being otherwise isolated or out of place shows the stigma of 

solitude in a social society, and the shame attached to being 

insufficiently "attractive" (for which misfortune Darcy will be so 

scornful toward Elizabeth). 

Catherine's situation is not improved when John Thorpe comes 

to claim her, as she quickly realises that the "engagement" she 

thought so favourable is also an entrapment with a partner she does 

not want: 

...nor did the particulars which [Thorpe] entered into 
while they were standing up...interest her so much as to 
prevent her looking very often towards that part of the 
room where she had left Mr Tilney. Of her dear Isabella, 
to whom she longed to point out that gentleman, she could 
see nothing. They were in different sets. She was 
separated from all her party, and away from all her 
acquaintance. (NA 38) 



37 

Here Catherine again becomes cognizant of her state of isolation. 

Only her gaze signals her true focus and desire, and is an 

expression of her interior self in an extrinsically constraining 

atmosphere; the futility of this visual gesture is indicative of 

her true state of powerlessness. 

Recognition of this weakness in her position teaches Catherine 

a new aspect of ballroom interaction: to attract Tilney, she must 

avoid Thorpe altogether. In order to attain this end, she is forced 

both to limit her own power (as represented by her gaze or 

"seeing") and to resort to passive and surreptitious behaviours. 

Because she is denied the power of openly and actively refusing 

Thorpe (or at any rate, to refuse him would be to deny herself the 

opportunity of dancing at all), she must find devious and 

clandestine ways of avoiding him, all of which consist in freeing 

herself from the "gaze-net" and pretending neither to see nor to 

hear. The strategies Catherine is forced to adopt prove how 

impossible it is for a woman to be truly empowered in a ballroom 

setting -- how she is compelled even against her will to be 

passive. Catherine has a distinct desire and plan when she enters 

the ballroom, but cannot actively carry it out: 

She entered the rooms on Thursday evening with 
feelings very different....She had then been exulting in 
her engagement to Thorpe, and was now chiefly anxious to 
avoid his sight, lest he should engage her again; for 
though she could not, dared not expect that Mr Tilney 
should ask her a third time to dance, her wishes, hopes 
and plans all centred in nothing less....As soon as they 
were joined by the Thorpes, Catherine's agony began; she 
fidgetted about if John Thorpe came towards her, hid 
herself as much as possible from his view, and when he 
spoke to her pretended not to hear.... 

The others walked away, John Thorpe was still 
in view, and she gave herself up for lost. That she 
might not appear, however, to observe or expect him, she 
kept her eyes intently fixed on her fan.... (NA 54) 



38 

Thus although Catherine is clear, decisive, and focussed in her own 

intentions, she is compelled by ballroom etiquette to behave 

outwardly with an almost pathetic passivity belying her true state 

of mind. In order to avoid Thorpe, she "fidgets," "hides herself," 

"pretends" not to hear him, and finally, in a truly comical action, 

stares fixedly at her fan to avoid telegraphing unintentional 

messages to him with her eyes. The gaze appears here to have become 

a separate entity, virtually uncontrollable. Catherine is therefore 

at risk not only from Thorpe's gaze (from which she is "hiding 

herself"), but also from her own -- since it is in order to subdue 

the latter that she confines her eyes to her fan. A gaze --

especially a female one -- let loose in a room is obviously a peril 

even to its own wielder. Hiding herself, masking her intentions, 

and stifling her own power of seeing, Catherine appears so utterly 

powerless in this scene that there is no surprise when, after 

finally attaining her wish of dancing with Tilney, she regards his 

solicitation as a chance occurrence, and cannot even conceive of 

his having "sought her on purpose." 

With Catherine Morland, Austen presents the "unspoilt" female 

who has yet to learn to dissimulate. The various discomforts and 

dissatisfactions Catherine experiences within the highly 

performative setting of the ballroom are evidence of how this arena 

is not set up to favour straightforwardness or strength of will in 

women, demanding instead a series of artificial and superficial 

behaviours. Catherine's initial entry into ballrooms as an avid, 

active and assured young woman is offset by the fact that, like 

Fanny Price, she is never in control at dances or able decisively 



39 

to arrange her encounters.^" Like all women, she retains the "power 

of refusal" (NA 57), and does attempt to exercise it -- however, 

"in Austen's novels...women's power of refusal is severely 

compromised" (Johnson 36), and, as with Elizabeth Bennet's dilemma 

regarding Mr Collins (refusal of whom as dance partner disallows 

Elizabeth to continue dancing), Austen uses Catherine's situation 

to express a critical attitude toward the limitations of this 

feminine "power." 

Compounding these struggles are Catherine's encounters with 

constant social performances on the part of those around her; 

Isabella Thorpe, for instance, "is continually acting out a script" 

(Gibson 130) . Via Henry Tilney, however, Austen introduces to 

Catherine and to the reader an alternate vision of the dancing 

f emalê -̂ : Henry Tilney's famous dance-marriage speech is notable for 

proposing an "exclusivity of gazing," in which there will be no 

performance for outside eyes ("'He has no business to withdraw the 

attention of my partner from me....Nobody can fasten themselves on 

the notice of one, without injuring the rights of the other'" (NA 

56). In addition, both Henry Tilney and the author juxtapose to the 

sham Isabella the modest and honest Miss Tilney; in contrast to the 

voyeuristic commonplace -- feared by men -- that women at a ball 

must "'want to please all who look at them'" (Kelly 202), Miss 

Tilney "seemed capable of being young, attractive, and at a ball 

without wanting to fix the attention of every man near her" (NA 

38). Thus Catherine's "education" is utilised by Austen to 

introduce gradually an alternative to the performer-female model 

exemplified by Isabella and demanded and created by the ballroom 

society of Bath. 



40 

EMMA 

There are two dance scenes in Emma. The first is the party at 

the Coles' in Volume 2, Chapter 8, where a short informal dance 

follows the other festivities. Here Emma, taking to the dance 

floor, is quick to esteem Frank Churchill an apt partner: "she 

found herself well matched in a partner. They were a couple worth 

looking at" (E 207). There is a subtle ambiguity to Emma's reason 

for making this claim, which is illuminated by dividing the 

statement into two halves: A) She found herself well matched in a 

partner, B) They were a couple worth looking at. There are two 

possible interpretations of these halves as they appear together: 

1) A --> B 
She found herself well matched in a partner [and therefore] 
they were a couple worth looking at. 

I.e., they are a couple worth looking at because Frank is 
a skilful dancer and well matched to Emma. 

2) B --> A 
She found herself well matched in a partner [because] they 
were a couple worth looking at. 

I.e., they are a couple worth looking at, and therefore, 
because of their aesthetic value as a performative object, 
Emma considers herself to have been well matched. 

Either interpretation shows Emma's full cognizance of the relation 

between dancing and watching. Moreover, both prove that she is not 

only fully aware of this dynamic --as characters such as Marianne 

Dashwood and Fanny Price are not -- she is also able to exploit i t 

for her own benefit. Emma, in addition to being a performer (and 

one who is aware of her role) is the impresario of her own 

performance; her approval of Frank Churchill as a partner carries 

the sense of a director's self-congratulation for an apropos 

casting choice: 

Although Frank and Emma seem a perfectly matched pair, 
Frank's impetuosity in securing Emma's hand so quickly. 



41 

and in most likely being the anonymous person who 
suggested dancing in the first place, and Emma's concern 
with watching Mr. Knightley suggest that they are both 
posing, using each other to produce 'a couple worthy of 
looking at.' (Adams 60) 

Intent upon making the most memorable stage appearance possible, 

Emma primes herself for the opportunity, overseeing every 

theatrical detail. The only other female protagonist to rival her 

in this respect is Elizabeth Bennet, who prepares for the 

Netherfield Ball with the express aim of captivating Mr Wickham by 

her appearance and bearing. The difference between these two, 

however, is that while Lizzy wishes to conquer one man, Emma, 

already fatuously convinced that her male prey is secure, is bent 

upon conquering her audience. Able to manipulate public opinion, 

she not only acknowledges but embraces the opportunity to perform. 

Thus with this character Austen offers a female who unabashedly 

"possesses and enjoys power" (Johnson 125) and recognises the 

opportunities provided by public peformance. ̂^ 

Austen makes Emma's desire to control the performance space 

clear right from the beginning of the chapter describing the Coles' 

party, in Emma's initial reception of Mr Knightley. Due to the 

latter's having arrived "like a gentleman" (i.e, in his own 

carriage) , Emma declares, "Now I shall really be very happy to walk 

into the same room with you" (E 192) . Only when he conforms to 

protocol and reifies in appearance and action his elevated social 

status can Emma approve Mr Knightley as a fit escort for her 

"entrance." Of the other guests, she is especially pleased with 

Frank Churchill's behaviour toward her, as he shows "a cheerful 

eagerness, which marked her as his peculiar object" (E 192) . Marked 

her, that is, in the eye of the world. Emma would not be content 



42 

with his esteeming her privately: open display at these public 

occasions is far more gratifying to her, since it is not really 

Frank's regard but that of the community at large which she covets. 

Such regard, she believes, will be more readily attained with this 

public proof of her desirability gilding her public image. "Emma 

divined what every body present must be thinking. She was his 

object, and every body must perceive it" (E 198). Emma continually 

gauges the wishes of her spectators, what would most impress them, 

and acts accordingly. The paramount importance of impressing an 

audience is further augmented by her running interpretation of the 

success of her performance. If Austen has previously shown a 

sensitivity to the way in which the spectatorial eye victimises the 

dancing female, she takes fictional revenge here by portraying a 

female who regards this situation as desirable rather than daunting 

and who makes an art of pleasing the public: "Enma recuperates a 

world Austen savages in novels such as Mansfield Park and 

Northanger Abbey in order to explore what was precluded in those 

novels, the place such a world can afford to women with 

authority..." (Johnson 127). Emma gains her power from an ability 

to anticipate and enact what will be most gratifying to the eye of 

the world. 

Emma's constant deference to the public eye constitutes a 

primary difference between Austen's "strong" heroines: Elizabeth 

Bennet is prepared to flout public opinion and defy the eye of the 

world (a recklessness she has to be talked out of by Charlotte 

Lucas at the Netherfield Ball), and by her willingness to "confuse 

rank" and openly favour Mr Wickham is even guilty of the same 

sentiment Emma criticises in Frank Churchill as "inelegance of 



43 

mind" (E 178) (when he argues for the revival of dancing at the 

Crown Inn without crediting Emma's caveat about "the want of proper 

families"). Emma herself, on the other hand, is ever-conscious of 

social mores and modes, and asserts her independence, not by 

defying these, but by upholding them and demonstrating how much 

better at them she is than others: "She herself obeys the 

conventional rules to the letter, but she does so only because she 

wishes to appear ladylike and elegant to herself and others" 

(Nardin 114) . Austen presents Emma as the consummate performer, one 

who has internalised the need to "appear" well under public 

scrutiny to such a degree that the wish is no longer separable from 

her own character, nor identifiable as an extrinsically generated 

desire. If such a presentation can be read as an exaltation of the 

female daring enough to take advantage of a potentially victimising 

situation, it is also Austen's incisive, hyperbolic, and perhaps 

even ironic vision of the female as society demands that she be: 

ever-aware of scrutiny, constantly on show, moulded by external 

forces into the apex of performative excellence. 

The response of the eye of the world is aired during the scene 

at the Bates' in Volume 2, Chapter 10. Miss Bates, speaking for 

popular opinion, observes to Mr Knightley, "Did you ever see such 

dancing? Was not it delightful? Miss Woodhouse and Frank Churchill; 

I never saw anything equal to it" (E 220). Miss Bates vocalises the 

reaction Emma is already sure of having inspired, proving Emma 

quite correct in her appraisal of the aesthetic value of 

partnership with Frank: the public is duly impressed and esteems 

her all the higher for her fine dancing. Mr Knightley, however, is 

a dissonant voice, refusing to concur except ironically. Holding 



44 

himself aloof from the performance-play enables him (and Jane 

Austen through him) to comment satirically upon the workings of 

this social "game": 

"Oh, very delightful, indeed! I can say nothing 
less, for I suppose Miss Woodhouse and Mr Frank Churchill 
are hearing everything that passes. And" (raising his 
voice still more) "I do not see why Miss Fairfax should 
not be mentioned too. I think Miss Fairfax dances very 
well; and Mrs Weston is the very best country-dance 
player, without exception, in England. Now, if your 
friends have any gratitude, they will say something 
pretty loud about you and me in return; but I cannot stay 
to hear it." (E 220) 

This passage is a comment simultaneously on the gossip engendered 

by dances, on the learning of others' opinions by overhearing, and 

on social hyperbole, all of which play a role in the formulation of 

the public text which is the response to public performance. Mr 

Knightley mocks the "incurable habits of flattery and deception" 

(Kirkham 128) of those around him, and is virtually the only 

character able to see past Emma's performance. The fact that "the 

novelist grants Knightley authority to read the human character --

authority that is nearly equal to her own" (N. Armstrong 152) 

argues for his having even more claim than Henry Tilney to be 

deemed in some measure an "authorial surrogate" (see note 21) ; 

neither Knightley nor Austen herself will allow Emma's performance 

unalloyed praise. 

The second dance event in Emma is the ball at the Crown, which 

finally occurs -- after many debates and delays -- in the second 

chapter of Volume 3. Emma, already contemplating this event in 

Volume 2, Chapter 11, is quick to identify her motivation for 

wishing it to take place: "But still she had inclination enough for 

shewing people again how delightfully Mr Frank Churchill and Miss 



45 

Woodhouse danced" (E 222) . The Crown ball will be a prime 

performance opportunity for her; the pleasure of dancing, admitted 

by her to be an additional incentive, takes a decided second place 

to the pleasure of exhibiting. Far from privileging her own private 

enjoyment, Emma most anticipates the gratification others will 

receive from the spectacle of the two most eligible young people in 

the community enjoying the "felicities of rapid motion" together, 

aware that her own stature in the public eye can only be raised by 

the visual delight she will present; again Austen emphasises Emma's 

mastery over the nuances of public appearance and performance. 

Mr Knightley, in contrast, responds to the prospect of a ball 

with stubborn taciturnity, and protests vehemently against the idea 

of watching dancing. The spectatorial aspect to balls in particular 

draws the most negative response from him as he denies all 

complicity in the voyeurist scenario: "Pleasure in seeing dancing! 

Not I, indeed -- I never look at it -- I do not know who does. Fine 

dancing, I believe, like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who 

are standing by are usually thinking of something very different" 

(E 231) . Mr Knightley here sounds something like Mr Tilney, and 

takes on a similar role: both are aware that the women they are in 

love with are the objects of other gazes and intentions, and 

therefore try to suggest to these women an alternate dance-image, 

in which spectatorship does not figure so prominently. Tilney does 

this by calling on Catherine to behave with "fidelity and 

complaisance" to her partner; Knightley draws a similar analogy 

between "fine dancing" and virtuous behaviour. The presence of this 

"opposition" suggests that the author herself recognises the need 

for balance in the performative zone. 



46 

Emma's privileged and empowered status at the ball is 

emphasised by Austen via a contrast with Harriet Smith. Unlike 

Emma, Harriet enters the ballroom in a state of vulnerability. 

Dependent, without fortune, and of dubious ancestry, she is at the 

mercy of the assembly in a way that her confident, wealthy, 

socially esteemed "sponsor" is not. This vulnerability becomes 

evident in the altercation between Harriet, Mrs Weston, and the 

Eltons, which culminates in Mr Elton's "snubbing" Harriet and 

leaving her without a partner. (The scene in its entirety is 

witnessed by Emma, who not only overhears Mr Elton's remarks but 

"perceives" his wife "encouraging him by significant glances" (E 

2 94); the gaze pattern which develops around these characters, as 

so often, originates with the solitary, passive watched female (see 

page 57) . Being left alone in a ballroom, especially for a 

character who is already socially vulnerable due to her lack of 

family, status, and financial stability, is always a perilous 

situation, and there is a sense in this scene that Harriet is being 

actively menaced by Mr Elton's refusal to dance with her. In 

contrast to this position, Emma's own security and strength are 

clear. 

Emma's assurance is further displayed before her dance with Mr 

Knightley, which comes about through an unusual verbal exchange: 

"Whom are you going to dance with?" asked Mr 
Knightley. 

She hesitated a moment and then replied, "With you, 
if you will ask me." 

"Will you?" said he, offering his hand. 
"Indeed I will. You have shown that you can 

dance...." (E 298) 

The form of this "proposal" reveals a new dimension to the usual 

male-initiated overture. Assuming a familiarity few other Austen 



47 

females would dare, Emma has already proposed Knightley as a 

partner before he asks her, and thus virtually shares the 

initiative in taking the couple to the dance floor. In addition, 

her reasoning ("You have shown that you can dance") places her 

clearly in a position that is not only spectatorial but also 

"evaluative": she has observed Mr Knightley dancing and appraised 

his social performance, and can now condone him as an appropriate 

partner. The uniquely "forward" manner of Emma's behaviour with a 

man suggests that Austen did intend her portrayal to be one of 

female power -- power that is not "feminine," since Emma comes 

closer to usurping the male role of forthright "solicitor" than to 

conforming to coy female delicacy. Once again, ballroom tendencies 

are used by Austen to reflect and reaffirm those outside: Emma's 

display of dominance in her "choice" of Knightley as dance partner 

foretells both her success in gaining him as a husband, and his 

cession of power to her by moving into her house (Johnson 143). 

Whether or not Austen intended to present Emma the performer 

as a positive authority figure or as a foolish and ostentatious 

female with something to learn from the older, wiser, detached man, 

may not be conclusively determinable from the text.^^ What is 

clearer is that Austen uses Emma's behaviour at dances to show a 

female who is in command of her surroundings and of the public text 

while at the same time the author continues to comment 

ironically on performative "games" through Mr Knightley. The ideal 

reconciliation of these two is a situation wherein "male and female 

echo one another in a mutually authorizing relationship" (N. 

Armstrong 151) -- not unlike the evenly balanced country dance 



48 

itself. In a gesture that is both radical and conciliatory, Austen 

proposes a state of shared initiative: just as Emma and Knightley 

confer and agree on their dance together, so Austen displays with 

their union both a recognition of female performative power, and a 

consciousness that it must be tempered. "Emma is an authority 

figure responsive to the morally corrective influence of public 

opinion" (Johnson 130); thus one interpretation of Austen's 

portrayal is that Emma's very performative prowess, the awareness 

of audience she demonstrates clearly at dances, is intended to 

convey this character's willingness to improve herself and so to 

surpass the vanity of performing in becoming a social example. 



49 

III. PUBLIC TEXT: Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park 

Between the voyeurs and the performers at an Austenian ball 

subsists a tenuous pattern of interaction; public action produces 

public reaction, with a general interpretation given to each act. 

In Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park, where dances are large 

and significant social events, Austen's writing illuminates this 

public-text-creating process. The relation of dancers to watchers 

is emphasised, and a series of influential overhearings and 

conjectures reveals new dimensions to the ever-current public text 

and its effects on the women it judges. 

In Pride and Prejudice, as in Sense and Sensibility, Austen 

uses dance partly to illuminate a contrast between sisters, one 

acquiescent and one insurgent when faced with the formal occasion 

of dance. ̂* That we should be invited to perceive such differences 

partly through the medium of the dance points to the analytic 

progression from dance-performance to basic character which is made 

by the public eye: "...'reading' or rereading of behaviour and 

character becomes a theme within the novel" (Fergus 83), and 

ballroom dances are a prime opportunity for these readings to be 

taken. More important than the differences between females, 

however, are their similarities on the dance floor. The negative 

aspect of public judgment predominates in this novel, where one of 

Austen's "preoccupations" is "women's marginality within society" 

(Fergus 82) ; through the situation of her female characters at 

dances, Austen explores the powerful and potentially harmful 

effects of the external gaze on women, while acknowledging the 

mitigating effect of an alert female gaze in response. 

In Mansfield Park, dance is about public declaration. Those 



50 

who watch dancers expect and intend to find couples; Sir Thomas 

expressly utilises the dance to make a show of Fanny's eligible 

status, and "Mansfield Park is the most explicit about the dance as 

a ritual which celebrates a girl's desirability and 

marriageability" (Elsbree, DFC 122). Fanny's relationship to dance 

is a particularly tenuous one, fraught with all the insecurities 

and uncertainties bred by her growing consciousness of personal 

helplessness. Her powerlessness in "real life" is mirrored by her 

sense of her own objectification within the ballroom. The public 

and the domestic gazes merge to become an actively threatening 

force in Mansfield Park; Austen uses the introverted Fanny to 

display the effect concerted watching may have on the psyche. The 

dance in this novel represents in many ways the worst tendencies 

and intentions of a "marriage-market" society toward a disempowered 

female. 

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE 

Dance, which plays a relatively large role in Pride and 

Prejudice, is introduced into the novel with the assembly ball in 

Volume 1, Chapter 3. This scene contains Elizabeth's famous first 

encounter with Darcy: "turning round, he looked for a moment at 

Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own" (PP 59) . 

Darcy's behaviour in this fleeting moment is significant. He has 

been coaxed by his friend Bingley -- via many appeals to the eye --

into deigning to bestow a glance on Elizabeth; what he cannot 

countenance, however, is that she should return his gaze. This is 

because in such a situation, the one-way becomes two-way, and 

voyeurism is superseded. Voyeurism implies a one-way gaze, a one-



51 

way exercise of power; there is a dominant and a submissive, a 

watcher and a watched. The moment the watched object gains 

awareness , of this disempowering gaze, however, the situation is 

transformed: "The voyeur's sense of power often depends upon 

invisibility and anonymity. Thus, to openly acknowledge the gaze of 

the viewer may be more disruptive than to ignore it" (Copeland 

144) . Darcy is willing to take up a voyeuristic stance toward 

Elizabeth as a "viewable" female; not permissible is for her to 

reverse the process. Nancy Armstrong refers to a similar encounter 

in Wutherinq Heights, when Lockwood meets the young Cathy and is 

disconcerted by her eyes on him: "The woman does not behave like 

the docile object of the gaze, but returns the gaze in a 

manner... that displays the presence of subjectivity. Her eyes 

violate his aesthetically grounded notion of desire as they become 

the sign of an active female self" (196) (see also note 5) . Thus 

Darcy, having come to the dance solely to survey, is disconcerted 

by this proof of female subjectivity and by Elizabeth's having 

taken on a "masculine" forthrightness of action. 

Darcy himself justifies his reaction with his subsequent 

statement: "'She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; 

and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young 

ladies who are slighted by other men'" (PP 59) . Darcy here declares 

openly that not only the unattractiveness of Elizabeth's appearance 

in his own eyes dissuades him, but also the assumption that her 

appearance has displeased others, resulting in her inability to 

"attract" a partner. Thus Elizabeth's stature in the social gaze, 

the eye of the world, tempers her appearance in Darcy's, and the 

individual gaze is effectively coopted into the greater and more 



52 

powerful social one. 

The most important dance event in Pride and Prejudice is the 

Netherfield ball. The build-up to it begins in Volume 1, Chapter 17 

and the ball itself occupies all of Chapter 18. Near the end of 

Chapter 17, Austen describes the Bennet family anticipating the 

various pleasures they are to receive from the ball: Jane looks 

forward to the "attentions" of Mr Bingley, and Elizabeth the 

pleasure of "seeing a confirmation of every thing in Mr Darcy's 

looks and behaviour" (PP 129) . Jane, then, anticipates being 

watched, while Lizzy anticipates watching -- a fitting comment on 

their respective levels of passivity. Elizabeth, bolder than her 

sister and in many ways less correctly "feminine," is not afraid to 

level her gaze at Mr Darcy in order to find out the truth, 

reversing the "traditional voyeurist scenario" as described by 

Kelly ("men spy on desired women in order to learn their truths" 

(Kelly 192)) .̂^ In addition, her intentions introduce the idea that 

the truth can be gained from observation -- an idea which will 

recur, to much more detrimental effect, in Darcy. 

In contrast to the bold Elizabeth, Charlotte Lucas is the 

voice of social prudence and feminine orthodoxy at the Netherfield 

ball; recognising Elizabeth's rebellious intentions, she counsels 

her friend against disregarding the power and presence of the eye 

of the world, advising Elizabeth not to "allow her fancy for 

Wickham to make her appear unpleasant in the eyes of a man of ten 

times his consequence" (PP 133). Charlotte is fully aware of the 

watching dynamic prevailing at dances; she is also able to read the 

public text, and knows the importance of Elizabeth's continuing to 

be visually "attractive." This means not only looking, but acting 



53 

appropriately. Social dances may be the only times Darcy sees 

Elizabeth, and therefore all his subsequent judgments will be in 

light of her conduct there. Elizabeth, careful as she is with her 

dress, is nonetheless attempting to flout convention by being 

careless of her greater social "appearance." 

In spite of this rebelliousness, Elizabeth does evince her own 

consciousness of the public text during her dance with Darcy. As 

soon as she stands up with him she is instantly aware of the 

general surpise, "reading in her neighbours' looks their equal 

amazement in beholding it" (PP 133). The reading metaphor is one 

that will recur in Austen with regard to the public text: Elizabeth 

is able to translate this text because it is made visibly manifest 

in the expressions of her neighbours. She has no doubt as to what 

their reaction signifies, because the public text is a relatively 

unambiguous "document." One act elicits one uniform response; each 

public act has its corresponding public meaning, and these acts and 

meanings are read visually. In some cases, as here, the chain of 

visual judgments and apprehensions is self-reflexive (Elizabeth 

watches others watching her); Elizabeth's ability to watch and 

analyse the social eye even as it is watching her is the factor 

which ameliorates her situation. 

If Elizabeth is the aware and watching female, Jane Bennet is 

the unaware and watched. Via Sir William Lucas' address to 

Elizabeth and Darcy as they are dancing, Austen introduces the 

devastating effect which the eye of the world can have on such 

females as Jane represents. In Sir William's words we see the 

rapidity with which the eye of the world draws its conclusions --

and the way in which it may not only be mistaken in these 



54 

judgments, but have a tangible and negative impact on the lives of 

those it observes: 

"Allow me to say, however, that your fair partner does 
not disgrace you, and that I must hope to have this 
pleasure often repeated, especially when a certain 
desirable event, my dear Miss Eliza, (glancing at her 
sister and Bingley,) shall take place....but let me not 
interrupt you. Sir. -- You will not thank me for 
detaining you from the bewitching converse of that young 
lady, whose bright eyes are also upbraiding me." 

The latter part of this address was scarcely heard 
by Darcy; but Sir William's allusion to his friend seemed 
to strike him forcibly, and his eyes were directed with 
a very serious expression towards Bingley and Jane, who 
were dancing together. (PP 135) 

Austen shows us here the enormous influence wielded by a single 

glance. We are told that Sir William's "allusion" to Bingley is 

what strikes Darcy with such force -- yet Sir William does not ever 

mention Bingley by name. The allusion, then, is not a verbal but a 

visual one. Sir William's very visible glance awakens in Darcy's 

consciousness the knowledge of what may be transpiring between 

Bingley and Jane. Without the look, the words "a certain desirable 

event" would be no sure reference to Bingley; the "allusion," as 

such, is provided by the glance. Here we have clear proof of the 

way in which the pattern of gazes actually comes to constitute a 

visually decipherable text: looks are read and interpreted, and 

even have the power to dislodge or to redirect other gazes. What 

can be interpreted can equally well be misinterpreted, however (if 

Elizabeth's eyes are indeed "upbraiding" Sir William, it is for his 

indelicacy regarding Jane, and not for his interruption of her own 

converse with Darcy), and this is one of the ways in which the eye 

of the world ceases to be a benignly watching organ and becomes an 

active threat to the female objects of its insistent visual 

inquiry. 



55 

Elizabeth has cause to recognise this situation when, having 

ceased to dance, she retreats to the office of watcher. Her silent 

train of observations extends over several pages; during this time, 

she both "reads" the behaviour of those around her while they are 

watching, and employs a mute language of glances in an attempt to 

communicate with her family and forestall their imminent 

humiliation in the public eye: 

Elizabeth blushed and blushed again with shame and 
vexation. She could not help frequently glancing her eye 
at Mr Darcy, though every glance convinced her of what 
she dreaded; for though he was not always looking at her 
mother, she was convinced that his attention was 
invariably fixed by her. The expression of his face 
changed gradually from indignant contempt to a composed 
and steady gravity. 

At length however Mrs Bennet had no more to 
say. . . .Elizabeth now began to revive. But not long was 
the interval of tranquillity;... singing was talked of, 
and she had the mortification of seeing Mary, after very 
little entreaty, preparing to oblige the company. By many 
significant looks and silent entreaties, did she 
endeavour to prevent such a proof of complaisance, -- but 
in vain; Mary would not understand them; such an 
opportunity of exhibiting was delightful to 
her.... Elizabeth's eyes were fixed on her with most 
painful sensations; and she watched her progress through 
the several stanzas.... Elizabeth was in agonies. She 
looked at Jane, to see how she bore it; but Jane was very 
composedly talking to Bingley. She looked at his two 
sisters, and saw them making signs of derision at each 
other, and at Darcy, who continued however impenetrably 
grave. She looked at her father to entreat his 
interference....He took the hint.... (PP 141) 

This is hardly the fearless Elizabeth we habitually envision: 

instead, Austen presents her heroine in a state of complete 

vulnerability. The effect of this placement is to provoke a 

realisation that even the most powerful of females cannot escape 

subjection to the power of the external gaze. Out of Elizabeth's 

desperate series of visual appeals to those around her, she manages 

to communicate only with her father. She is alone, however, in 



56 

witnessing the import of the entire scene, and suffers acutely from 

her observations. 

Elizabeth is reminiscent in this spectatorial guise of Elinor 

Dashwood or Anne Elliot -- females of perceptive mind who take with 

them to the role of spectator all the discrimination which they 

possess in life. Elizabeth's observations are painfully accurate; 

her gaze is less successful, however, in communicating her desires 

or influencing her family by non-verbal means, and her awareness 

thus serves only to frustrate and humiliate her the more: 

To Elizabeth it appeared, that had her family made 
an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could 
during the evening, it would have been impossible for 
them to play their parts with more spirit, or finer 
success; and happy did she think it for Bingley and her 
sister that some of the exhibition had escaped his 
notice, and that his feelings were not of a sort to be 
much distressed by the folly which he must have 
witnessed. That his two sisters and Mr Darcy, however, 
should have had such an opportunity of ridiculincr her 
relations was bad enough.... (PP 143) 

Austen deliberately uses performative language to convey the fact 

that all this takes place within a public setting, a "theatre" of 

social appraisal. Elizabeth is left to regard her family's 

behaviour as an unfortunate performance, with herself, Darcy, and 

the Bingley sisters as the unimpressed spectators.^^ 

All further instances of dancing in Pride and Prejudice are 

recollections of or comments on the Netherfield ball. These include 

the references made in Darcy's letter to Elizabeth, where he 

mentions several details significant to our understanding of the 

function of balls and to the vulnerable position in which females 

attending them are placed. That Darcy draws such important and 

influential conclusions about Jane Bennet from a single dance gives 

evidence of the importance of balls, not only as places where young 



57 

men and women may have contact with and "evaluate" each other, but 

also as the locus for other members of the community to form their 

own judgments of potential relationships -- and thereafter to 

encourage or to thwart them. The ball provides the occasion for a 

reading of the public text to be taken; Darcy, preferring the role 

of spectator at dances, is one of the readiest interpreters of the 

public text, and does not hesitate to use the information he 

gathers against a female victim. He writes: "At that ball, while I 

had the honour of dancing with you, I was first made acquainted, by 

Sir William Lucas's accidental information, that Binqley's 

attentions to your sister had qiven rise to a general expectation 

of their marriage" (PP 227). This is the operation of the eye of 

the world as it acts to validate the visually received public text. 

Suppositions become truths because everyone has seen and believed 

the visual evidence. The import of the public text is absorbed 

indirectly or haphazardly, following a chance chain of events. 

The initial transactions in this chain -- which originates 

from Jane as an attractive watchable object -- are purely visual, 

not verbal: Bingley pays assiduous attention to Jane Bennet; the 

eye of the world watches him watching her. From this point on, 

however, the visual evidence is converted into verbal communication 

(albeit indirectly received). Thus the movement of information can 

more accurately be seen to proceed in two different directions, one 

visual (Jane Bennet <-- Bingley <-- eye of the world) and one 

verbal (eye of the world --> Sir William --> Darcy). When the two 

are taken together, we can see that all the actions, while 

originating in Jane's attractiveness (her "to-be-looked-at-ness"), 

radiate outward from the responses of the eye of the world. This 



58 

"entity" is the crux of the entire public text apparatus; it is the 

watcher and the informant. Without the eye of the world there would 

be only private actions and reactions, and no public text of any 

kind. (Again Austen highlights the contrast between the private 

interactions of individuals and the community's wish to see the 

"courtship game" being played -- see note 10) . At publicly attended 

venues like dances, however, the public eye is virtually 

unrestricted in its operations, and thus the "attentions" of 

Bingley to Jane -- during the course of which no intent regarding 

marriage is ever verbalised -- are transmuted via the collective 

gaze and voice of the community into "a general expectation of 

their marriage" that marks this dubious possibility "as a certain 

event." 

Darcy, holding himself somewhat removed from the gossip of the 

commonalty, is made privy to these communally drawn conclusions 

only by the "accidental information" provided by Sir William Lucas. 

This chance communication is instrumental in redirecting the full 

force of Darcy's gaze onto Bingley and Jane: 

From that moment I observed my friend's behaviour 
attentively; and I could then perceive that his 
partiality for Miss Bingley was beyond what I had ever 
witnessed in him. Your sister I also watched. -- Her look 
and manners were open, cheerful, and engaging as ever, 
but without any symptom of peculiar regard, and I 
remained convinced from the evening's scrutiny, that 
though she received his attentions with pleasure, she did 
not invite them. (PP 228) 

The phrase "the evening's scrutiny" suggests that Darcy spends a 

good portion of the ball observing Jane Bennet. This evidence in 

turn points to the most significant feature of Darcy's speech: the 

idea that observation may actually lead, without any sort of verbal 

confirmation, to knowledge. Darcy does not merely have notions and 



59 

suppositions -- he is "convinced from the evening's scrutiny." 

Twice more in his letter he uses this term: 

I shall not scruple to assert, that the serenity of your 
sister's countenance and air was such, as might have 
given the most acute observer, a conviction that, however 
amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be easily 
touched....! will venture to say that my investigations 
and decisions are not usually influenced by my hopes or 
fears. -- I did not believe her indifferent because I 
wished it; -- I believed it on impartial conviction. (PP 
228) 

Even having confessed his own bias in this particular case, Darcy 

nonetheless insists that his silent and solitary observations alone 

are enough to have produced in him the complete certainty that he 

is correct about Jane. Although he is in fact incorrect, as 

Elizabeth's greater knowledge of her sister's feelings proves, he 

does not hesitate to act on what he calls his "impartial 

conviction." Having followed a series of unreliable cues (the 

opinion of the voyeuristic eye of the world, voiced via the gossip-

mongering Sir William, as it is accidentally ascertained by Darcy), 

Darcy observes Jane with his friend for a single evening and then 

takes the actions which will be so detrimental to Jane's happiness. 

Precisely because the external judgments which take place at 

dances are so swift and their consequences so damaging, the visible 

female must be constantly on guard against foreign intrusion, and 

avoid providing any cause for censure. This necessity becomes 

painfully but belatedly evident to Elizabeth as Mr Darcy's 

criticisms of the Bennets' social conduct bring her to a full 

realisation of her own family's complicity in aggravating the 

ruthlessness of the external gaze against herself and Jane: 

...the circumstances to which he particularly 
alluded, as having passed at the Netherfield ball, and as 
confirming all his first disapprobation, could not have 



60 

made a stronger impression on his mind than on hers. 
The compliment to herself and her sister, was not 

unfelt. It soothed, but it could not console her for the 
contempt which had been thus self-attracted by the rest 
of her family; -- and as she considered that Jane's 
disappointment had in fact been the work of her nearest 
relations, and reflected how materially the credit of 
both must be hurt by such impropriety of conduct, she 
felt depressed beyond any thing she had ever known 
before. (PP 237) 

This discovery of Elizabeth's is a clear example of how victimising 

to the "unprotected" female (Jane, Elizabeth, Harriet Smith, and 

all others not protected by the mantle of independent wealth, 

status, et cetera) are the operations of the public eye, the public 

voice, and the public text. 

With the dances in Pride and Prejudice Austen intends to 

expose the way in which a female's stature in the social gaze 

influences her marriage (and hence life) prospects. To this end, 

Austen uses Elizabeth and Jane Bennet much as she used Elinor and 

Marianne Dashwood -- to dramatise different aspects of and 

responses to the same situation. The differences between Elizabeth 

and Jane are by no means so striking, however, and an examination 

of the two at dances produces a surprisingly similar picture of 

females under threat. The substantial difference here is 

Elizabeth's awareness of her circumstances -- yet even this, as we 

see, does little more than make her suffer. This unusual aspect of 

a character generally imagined as Austen's strongest, brightest, 

and most empowered shows how deeply ingrained in Austen's own 

consciousness was an awareness of the public gaze as a power to be 

reckoned with. This novel demonstrates that ballrooms are the 

location where Austen's heroines must take the greatest care to 



61 

ensure that no infraction of the unwritten dogma of the public text 

will bring down on them an external judgment possessing the power 

irreparably to sully their reputations and blight their prospects. 

MANSFIELD PARK 

The central dance event in Mansfield Park -- as well as one of 

the most important in Austen's fiction -- is Fanny's "coming-out" 

ball, in Volume 2, Chapter 10. If Marianne Dashwood's dancing 

allows her to be the object of one man's voyeurism, Fanny Price's 

at her "debut" will invite a much wider scrutiny. Through the end 

of Chapter 7 and beginning of Chapter 8 in the second volume of 

Mansfield Park, where this ball is first introduced, Austen 

provides clear evidence of the voyeuristic motives of those who 

hold and/or attend dances, and of the objectified position in which 

this places the watched female dancer. This section could logically 

be re-entitled "Seeing Fanny Dance," since it contains no fewer 

than ten variations on this phrase, all spoken by male characters 

who hold influence over Fanny: 

1. "'I should like to go to a ball with you and see you 

dance'" (William) (MP 207) 

2. "'I should like to see you dance'" (same) 

3. "'I have never seen Fanny dance since...'" (Sir Thomas) 

(MP 208) 

4. "'when we do see her, which perhaps we may have an 

opportunity of doing ere long'" (same) 

5. "'I have had the pleasure of seeing your sister dance' " 

(Henry Crawford) (MP 208) 

6. "he had once seen Fanny dance" (narrator/Henry) (MP 208) 



62 

7. "he passed... for an admirer of her dancincr" (same) 

8. "William's desire of seeing Fanny dance" (narrator/ 

William) (MP 209) 

9. "to gratify anybody else who might wish to see Fanny dance" 

(narrator/Sir Thomas) (MP 209) 

10. "'It would give me great pleasure to see you both dance'" 

(Sir Thomas) (MP 209) 

The cumulative effect of all these references to seeing Fanny dance 

is that she, like Mulvey's film heroines, comes in her watched 

state virtually to "connote to-be-looked-at-ness." Having been 

entirely objectified, she almost ceases to exist as an autonomous 

individual; her only actions throughout the two-page discussion are 

to feel "dismay," to "not know which way to look," and to "look 

distressed." One is not surprised to find that the retiring Fanny 

experiences only dismay and distress as she is talked over by three 

of the four males who hold most sway over her life.^^ That she 

should be so entirely unconsulted on a matter which is purportedly 

about and for her is already proof of her objectification; but that 

the purpose behind the giving of the ball should be, not to allow 

Fanny to dance, but to allow her to be seen dancing, is perhaps the 

clearest instance in Austen of how the dance functions to further 

the watcher-watched dichotomy prevailing in this society and most 

intimidating for the powerless and voiceless female on display. 

Even the supposedly beneficent William is not exempt from 

collaboration here -- indeed, the unpleasantness of Fanny's 

situation is compounded by the fact that there is not a single 

character of all those surrounding her whose motives are entirely 

clear or who does not in some way threaten her. Chapter 8 begins 



63 

with the phrase "William's desire of seeing Fanny dance," and this 

driving male force propels forward the plans for the ball which is 

to be a virtual "showcase" of his sister. We are told that this 

desire is an "amiable" feeling on William's part (an ambiguous word 

in Austen, often used to whitewash other feelings), but it is Sir 

Thomas who says so. His motives in pursuing the idea of the ball 

are even more questionable than William's, since he extends his 

wish to "gratify" Fanny's brother to a wish to "gratify anybody 

else who might wish to see Fanny dance, and to give pleasure to the 

young people" (MP 209). This intention is an even clearer instance 

of the "pandering" evident in Sir John's behaviour in Sense and 

Sensibility. Fanny's nubility and eligibility are to be displayed 

openly by her male guardian, with or without her consent, and a 

host of onlookers to be "gratified" by the vicarious enjoyment of 

her charms. 

According to the practice of "coming out," Fanny is now viewed 

as "making her first appearance"; the sense that she has never been 

. seen before (whereas in fact she has technically already attended 

her first ball in Volume 1, Chapter 12) is due to the fact that she 

is now appearing as an available female and an economically 

advantageous match, her display as such sanctioned by her male 

guardian and "exhibitor." She herself, although anxious about 

public scrutiny, has little awareness of the all-important 

mercenary aspect to her debut: 

Miss Price had not been brought up to the trade of coming 
out; and had she known in what light this ball was in 
general considered respecting her, it would very much 
have lessened her comfort by increasing the fears she 
already had, of doing wrong and being looked at. (MP 
220) 



64 

The word "trade" is crucial here, especially considering Sir 

Thomas' occupations outside the home. Having returned from his 

business dealings in Antigua (a volatile and much commented upon 

subtext^^), he transfers his mercantile, acquisitive influence and 

approach to the domestic sphere, with Fanny as one more valuable 

cargo to be exhibited and exported.^', 

In contrast to Sir Thomas' plan of making clear to all the 

readers of the public text the availability or "marketability" of 

his niece, she herself is entertaining Anne Elliot-esque hopes of 

being able to participate "without much observation" (MP 221). 

Unlike Anne, however, Fanny is completely unable to realise this 

ambition. Both she and Anne are quiet and passive, yet Anne is able 

to determine her own actions where Fanny is at the mercy of those 

who decide for her. Anne has removed herself from the performative 

arena --at the cost of renouncing participation in social events -

- whereas Fanny is continually thrust into it by other hands. 

Fanny's inability to make any autonomous decisions regarding the 

ball -- or to feel confident in those she does make -- causes her 

repeated feelings of unhappiness and unease. Although as retiring 

in character as Elinor Dashwood or Anne Elliot (in some sense more 

so, since Fanny's desire for invisibility is a consequence of her 

own nature rather than of a disappointment in love), she is enabled 

neither by personality nor position decisively to background 

herself as they do, and instead is pushed inexorably forward into 

a position of greater and greater social visibility. 

The two pages detailing the arrival of guests and commencement 

of the ball are written almost entirely without dialogue; instead, 

Austen gives a description of Fanny's mobile gaze, as once again 



65 

Fanny becomes the focal point of a "net" of surrounding males. 

Called upon to greet the arriving guests, Fanny cannot perform this 

fearsome task "without looking at William, as he walked about at 

his ease in the back ground of the scene, and longing to be with 

him" (MP 226). As the female on display, she is not permitted the 

freedom of her male counterpart, and her gaze surreptitiously and 

fruitlessly expresses her regret that this is so. As with Catherine 

Morland's gaze during her dance with Thorpe or Elizabeth Bennet's 

toward the misdemeanours of her family, Austen uses the futile and 

"unreceived" female gaze to symbolise the helplessness and 

isolation of its wielder. 

The culmination of the conflict of interest between Fanny and 

Sir Thomas will be the revelation of his plan that she open the 

ball. This communication is never made straightforwardly to her, 

and even at the ball is put in such a way that at first she cannot 

credit its truth. So distressed is she by the idea that she is even 

momentarily empowered to challenge Sir Thomas -- the only time 

until Henry Crawford's proposal that she does so. The aims of Fanny 

and her uncle are utterly at odds here: she wishes "to dance 

without much observation"; her uncle wishes to ensure that she is 

observed by everyone.^" Austen makes clear Fanny's extreme 

powerlessness in this situation -- there is never a question of 

whose will is to prevail. 

The moment Fanny begins to dance before the assembly, the 

public text coalesces around her out of the usual blend of visual 

cues, established prestige, and hearsay. The result of the 

spectatorial inquiry is approbative: "She was attractive, she was 

modest, she was Sir Thomas's niece, and she was soon said to be 



admired by Mr Crawford. It was enough to give her general favour" 

(MP 228). In two sentences, Austen conveys the rapidity with which 

the public text is formulated, the materials of its construction, 

and the voyeuristic pleasure which is taken in its reception. 

Among those so gratified, one of the keenest and most 

voyeuristically and vicariously satisfied observers of Fanny's 

dancing is her uncle: "Sir Thomas himself was watching her progress 

down the dance with much complacency." Austen's image evokes 

Fanny's uncle as a kind of "Pygmalion," supremely pleased with his 

own creation. This comparison is apt as well because Sir Thomas' 

intentions and inclinations shape and govern this ball, and he has 

predetermined the public reception which will be afforded to every 

spectacle offered up. Thus, if Fanny's dance with Henry is intended 

by her uncle to show the assembled company that the two may make a 

match, her dance with Edmund is intended to show that these two 

will not: "they went down their two dances together with such sober 

tranquillity as might satisfy any looker-on, that Sir Thomas had 

been bringing up no wife for his younger son" (MP 230). Sir Thomas' 

will dominates every significant event in the ballroom, proving him 

a master manipulator of a public text Fanny has barely even begun 

to fathom, and yet at whose mercy she will continue to be. 

Jacqueline Reid-Walsh investigates the response of several 

Austen heroines to the "pressure of the societal gaze on their 

conduct," and notes that this pressure is particularly heavily felt 

by Fanny: 

She is the focus of everyone's gaze for different 
reasons.... Sir Thomas's benign but evaluative gaze 
represents the power he wields over Fanny. Sir Thomas's 
generalized approval of Fanny's assets as an attractive 
young woman is paralleled by the very specific, admiring 



67 

gaze of Fanny's potential suitor, Henry Crawford. There 
is a sense that everything Fanny does is watched with 
almost microscopic attention. (118) 

Reid-Walsh here identifies the real nature of Fanny's position: she 

is not only a debutante at her first official ball, enduring "the 

critical regard of her contemporaries and their parents" (Wood, SHD 

145), but also a trapped and owned object, pinned like a 

microscopic specimen beneath the powerful and imprisoning gazes of 

those -- primarily male -- who control her and her destiny. The 

nature of the dance no less than of Fanny's position in her family 

allows male figures to determine all of her actions within the 

ballroom. 

This patriarchal control is further emphasised when, as Reid-

Walsh notes. Sir Thomas "makes a spectacle" of sending Fanny to 

bed. The fact that Sir Thomas would include this action as part of 

his "show" proves that he means not only to display Fanny's 

docility and tractability, but simultaneously to make an exhibit of 

his own power. Reid-Walsh opines that by sending Fanny to bed, Sir 

Thomas may be "preventing further obvious attentions by Henry 

Crawford, or showing to Henry by her biddable behaviour that he 

'might mean to recommend her as a wife by showing her 

persuadableness'" (123). Either way. Sir Thomas' action is evidence 

of his intention to retain sole control over the acts of showing 

and seeing within the ballroom. Having allowed Henry and the others 

to see Fanny dance ("gratified" them, as he himself views it), he 

now concludes the spectacle by removing her from their gaze. Fanny 

becomes the quintessential displayed object, titillatingly offered 

and withdrawn at will, and her participation in the dance is used 

by Sir Thomas to make a display of his own beneficence (in raising 



68 

her) , prestige (in offering her on the market) , and power (in 

removing her when he sees fit). 

Fanny's powerlessness and lack of autonomy as a character, 

signalled right from the beginning of the novel in her being denied 

her own family or place of abode, are clearly expressed by Austen 

through Fanny's troubled relationship with the dance. At Fanny's 

very first ball, she shows an unwillingness to remain among the 

gossiping spectators; this suggests an incipient consciousness that 

she herself will be similarly observed and critiqued: 

The feeling of shame...is based on what we believe others 
to think of us: it is our response to an awareness that 
we are or may be the object of an unfavourable judgement 
from outside. Thus, given the primacy of sight as the 
medium of perception, shame is the product of the sense 
of being seen, or rather of the possibility of being 
seen; so that, paradoxically, what deters us from being 
watchers is the fear of being watched. (Spearing 10) 

Later, at her debut, the same fear promotes a wish to participate 

unobserved. In neither case is Fanny successful -- undesired notice 

descends on her from all quarters in spite of her wishes to the 

contrary. Fanny's relationship with dominating males -- and 

especially with her "tyrant" uncle --is dramatised by Austen using 

the by now familiar tropes of the active male watcher and passive 

female dancer. Fanny represents an extreme of this dynamic, being 

almost totally passive at dance scenes, where she hovers fragilely 

within a web of male gazes and intentions. Her own gaze is feeble 

at best against this massed male force, and serves only to convey 

a sense of her isolation. 

What is significant in all this is that Austen so clearly 

indicates Fanny's lack of autonomy via a dance scenario. This 



69 

setting, with its built-in bias toward male leadership, provides 

the ideal means with which to portray Fanny's disempowerment under 

Sir Thomas' patriarchy. Austen's tone even becomes overtly critical 

when she discusses the ramifications of the "coming-out" arranged 

by Fanny's uncle: 

It is clear that the novelist sees that this ceremony 
simply clinches the patriarchal conception of its 
heroines as commodities, and of which Fanny's romanticism 
cannot prevent her from being a victim. This paradox is 
captured in the novel's shifts of tone, between the 
tender sympathy with which Fanny's consciousness is 
represented, and the surrounding narrative's worldly and 
astringent irony, whose harsher imperatives cannot 
indefinitely be refused. (Wiltshire 101) 

Here, more than anywhere else in her discussions of dance, Austen 

pays tribute to social dance's "co-option into the mercantile and 

patriarchal scheme of things." With Fanny Price she showcases the 

worst and weakest position in which the dance can place a female --

and in the process makes some of her sharpest comments against the 

state of females within her society. 



70 

CONCLUSION 

In Jane Austen's novels, dance is a metaphor for marriage 

(Elsbree, Adams passim); marriage is a "microcosm of society" 

(Fergus 88). Therefore dance becomes by syllogistic progression a 

microcosmic symbol for society. When Jane Austen investigates the 

position of her heroines in a dance scenario, she is simultaneously 

and by extension commenting on their position in society. As each 

main character illustrates a different facet of dance-interaction 

and a different place on the voyeuristic "spectrum," so she also 

represents a different option for women in a surveillance society. 

The dance space is a theatricalised representation of life -- who 

is watching, who is watched, and the way in which the strictly 

gendered, codified structure of the dance and of ballroom 

conventions permits and furthers this interplay of gazes all serve 

to reflect and reinforce gender divisions and social hierarchies 

within Austen's world. 

The disparity between having and lacking the male privilege of 

initiative -- common to both dance and marriage -- is central to 

Austen's exploration of the female experience of dance. Within a 

voyeuristic society, both males and females are watched; however, 

females are additionally disempowered because lacking the ability 

to choose. In the dance, in love, and in marriage, the female "must 

be reactionary... she can only respond to men, she cannot initiate 

relations with them or take the lead in showing feeling without 

great risk. Austen shows us assembly halls and drawing rooms that, 

for women, are like disguised mine fields" (R. Polhemus 48). All of 

Austen's heroines must at some point negotiate these dangerous 

arenas; the different strategies Austen allots to them allow her to 



71 

comment upon the various options available to women within this 

setting. For instance, Jan Fergus notes that in the late novels 

particularly, Austen is interested in exploring "the complex power 

relationships between women and a social world that reduces their 

options and makes them marginal" (146) . Austen can use dance to 

explore such power relations, including the one between watcher and 

watched, because these relations are inscribed in the dance 

environment; questions of disempowerment and lack of initiative may 

thus be subtly broached by means of dance scenarios. 

Voyeuristic acts of observing dance pervade all of Austen's 

novels, including Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion. Marianne 

Dashwood, one of Austen's most avid dancers, represents the passive 

watched object. With Marianne, Austen exposes a crucial paradox 

inherent in the status of women within the ballroom, which is that 

even as they act (dancing) they are at their most passive: 

...there is a disjuncture between the active doing female 
body and the appearing body....The active doing female 
body is countered by a more passive image of the body as 
one which is looked at and which is surveyed and 
perceived in terms of its ' to-be-looked-at-ness' . . . .this 
asymmetrical relation between the active doing body and 
the passive appearing body of the women does not seem to 
come through in the case of men. Rather, their ideas of 
both the dancing body and the appearing body are located 
in terms of activity and strength. (Thomas, AV 89) 

Thus Marianne as watched female dancer is at risk in a way that the 

watched male dancer (Willoughby) is not; Austen uses this 

discrepancy to reinforce the "gendered" nature of ballroom 

participation. 

The other, "active" alternative for women is to watch -- both 

Elinor Dashwood and Anne Elliot relinquish dance, and thereby 

preserve themselves from the threats of the performative space. 



72 

However, they also remove themselves from involvement and display. 

Characters who dance and are watched (Marianne Dashwood; Fanny 

Price; Catherine Norland) are passive and threatened, but also 

nubile and on the marriage market; those who watch (Elinor 

Dashwood; Anne Elliot) are in the stronger active position, but are 

in some sense "sterile" -- Elinor, for instance, Austen's only 

entirely non-performative female heroine, is not coincidentally 

also the least pursued by men. Austen does not shy away from 

presenting the ballroom as what it is: a marriage market, in which 

the female must make an appropriate display of herself in order to 

be sought. 

This exhibitionistic, performative aspect of dances comes to 

the fore in Northanger Abbey and Emma. Austen uses Catherine 

Morland and Emma Woodhouse to illustrate two kinds of female 

response to performance: Catherine's is naive, Emma's experienced. 

Whereas Catherine is a novice at performing and not yet entirely 

"literate" in the public text, Emma is both a veteran performer and 

an accomplished reader of public opinion. Austen furnishes Emma 

with her most developed images of female power, presenting this 

character as the decisive manipulatrix of her position within the 

ballroom; Catherine's ballroom encounters, on the other hand, are 

opportunities for Austen to reemphasise -- albeit humorously -- the 

plight of female innocence, ignorance, and "impotence." Thus 

although both are characters who embrace the opportunity to 

perform, their characterisations are utilised by Austen toward 

different ends. What links the two together, however, is that in 

both cases Austen includes a male who represents the opposite view 

of the performance issue: Tilney and Knightley both oppose 



73 

performance and all it stands for, proposing instead an "ideal" 

state in which dance will no longer be for the benefit of outside 

spectators. Whether or not this is Austen's vision as well cannot 

be said for certain; however, she does seem to present it in a 

favourable light. 

Furthermore, the less savoury aspects of dancing in public 

view receive a thoroughly unfavourable depiction in Pride and 

Prejudice and Mansfield Park. Here, a close examination of Austen's 

construction of the dance scenes reveals clearly that she 

emphasises the powerlessness of females within the ballroom (and by 

extension within society). Even such a confident character as 

Elizabeth is forced to adopt a more realistic view of the gravity 

of public opinion, coming to acknowledge the onus on females 

themselves to see that external judgments remain favourable. In 

this sense, Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Bennet, and Fanny Price, despite 

- all their differences in character, represent facets of the same 

situation: pinned under the eye of the world, a female's destiny 

may be determined by her behaviour (or that of her family) at 

dances. The public gaze scrutinises and subdues, and the verdict of 

the public text is often final. 

Counterposed to the "societal" gaze (the "eye of the world") 

is the individual female's gaze. The threat of this gaze is that it 

represents her capacity to desire --an active want as opposed to 

passive submission -- and her wish to choose for herself rather 

than to be chosen for (or simply chosen). This is the reason that 

Austen's heroines often chafe under the restrictive decorum of the 

dance floor: Elizabeth can refuse Mr Collins in the dance (as well 

as in marriage), but ballroom etiquette then forbids her from 



74 

dancing further with anyone else; Catherine Morland cannot actively 

choose Tilney over Thorpe, but must hope that this situation arises 

by itself; Fanny Price cannot choose whether or not to greet 

guests, to lead dances, or to retire early. In addition, when 

characters such as Elizabeth Bennet, Elinor Dashwood, and Anne 

Elliot attempt to make partner choices for themselves outside the 

dance, they are swiftly discouraged by the "eye of the world" 

characters (Mrs Bennet; Fanny Dashwood; Lady Russell) who guard 

them and keep them under surveillance. Austen makes clear that a 

female's trust in her own judgment is discouraged, and men deferred 

to; in life as in the dance, "the heroine cannot choose her own 

partner but must wait passively to be chosen" (Adams 56). For this 

reason, the exercise of the female gaze is itself often a futile 

expression of frustrated power and an acknowledgement of passivity. 

This points to Austen's clear consciousness that, whatever 

the varying details of plot and differences of character, female 

dancers are all subject to the same forces and the same 

limitations. Individual choices regarding dancing and watching are 

therefore superseded and constrained by the constants of female 

ballroom experience -- which, in turn, symbolise greater societal 

exigencies: 

In Austen's novels...women simply do not have 'the 
advantage of choice'....They can only wait for proposals. 
They can scrutinize their suitors' gestures, review their 
every word, differentiate acts of civility from acts of 
particular affection, and form all manner of conjectures 
about the likelihood of receiving proposals. But finally 
they can only wait. As bold as they are in every 
other respect, even Emma and Elizabeth Bennet can only 
wait. And of course waiting is practically all that Fanny 
Price and Anne Elliot ever do. (Johnson 59) 

Thus, dancing or spectating, watcher or watched, females remain 



75 

dependent on male intervention to ameliorate their state of 

passivity and powerlessness. 

For this reason, Austen's most favourable dance images show a 

male and female acting in concert, "mutually authorizing" each 

other and thereby forming a defence against an intrusive public. At 

a dance in Sense and Sensibility, Elinor Dashwood and Colonel 

Brandon are described as "sitting down together by mutual consent" 

while the others dance: here, even though the choice has been not 

to dance rather than to dance, the distribution of power is even 

and equal, since the wording suggests that the consent of both male 

and female has figuratively been asked. Similarly, Emma's dancing 

with Knightley is determined upon by an exchange in which it is not 

completely clear who is doing the asking --a situation appropriate 

to Austen's desire to show a powerful female character while 

remaining deferent to societal requirements for feminine behaviour. 

Finally, the image of Anne and Wentworth's "spirits dancing in 

private rapture," away from all spectatorship or public knowledge, 

evokes an ideal realm wherein the question of initiative and 

consent is rendered irrelevant. The dance, then, ideally represents 

equality between the sexes: Austen's positive dance images can be 

seen as illustrations of what Robert Polhemus identifies in both 

Elizabeth Bennet and the author herself as "the wish to unite the 

quality of her being with male power and opportunity" (31) . 

Ultimately, it is only in such a union, balanced and equal like the 

country dance figures themselves, that a Jane Austen heroine may 

hope to attain in her life the even equipoise of an ideal dance 

partnership, screened from the hazards of living and dancing in the 

eye of the world. 



76 

NOTES 

1. Foucault refers to this panoptic presence as "a faceless gaze 
that transformed the whole social body into a field of perception: 
thousands of eyes posted everywhere, mobile attentions ever on the 
alert..." (214). See page 7 of this paper. 

2. I have chosen this term to refer to the acts of watching that 
occur at dances in Austen's novels because of its connotations of 
purposeful or obsessive watching, and of the taking of vicarious 
gratification from watching others, both of which I believe to be 
applicable to the acts of dance-spectatorship which take place in 
Austen's novels. In addition, I feel that the sexual implications 
of the term are apt, given the intrinsically sexualised nature of 
dancing: "dance itself is not just a means to sex (although of 
course it may well be such) but... it is or can be a form of sexual 
expression in itself. Frith understands this well: 'the most 
obvious feature of dancing as an activity is its sexuality --
institutionalised dancing...is redolent with sexual tensions and 
possibilities, as private desires get public display, as repressed 
needs are proudly shared. . . ' " (Ward 21) . Thus when any one 
character watches another two dancing together, he/she is in a 
sense engaging in an act of voyeurism. 

3. Terry Castle includes commentary that could be applied to the 
Austenian ball, with the qualifications mentioned in note 8: "The 
masquerade episode seves as...a privileged site of plot. Above all, 
masquerade is the place where significant events 'take place'.... 
This plot-producing function follows from the nature of the 
diversion. . . .The eighteenth-century masquerade was a cultural locus 
of intimacy. There, persons otherwise rigidly segregated by class 
and sex distinctions might come together in unprecedented and 
sometimes disruptive combinations. Masquerading substituted 
randomness and novelty... for the highly stylized patterns of 
everyday public and private exchange" (120). Regency dances, of 
course, lacking the "licensing" effect of costume, retain "highly 
stylized patterns," and thus fall somewhere between masquerade and 
"everyday public...exchange." 

4. "Their entrances are moments of scrutiny when their gestures, 
actions and words are studied and discussed by the company at 
large" (Reid-Walsh 115). 

5. Nancy Armstrong raises this issue in connection with Wuthering 
Heights; she cites Lockwood's relation of his encounter with a 
young female who subsequently douses his attraction by showing 
signs of interest in him ("a real goddess in my eyes, as long as 
she took no notice of me") . Armstrong explains that "Lockwood 
brings to his understanding of human relations a notion of 
sexuality that designates the female as an object of desire. What 
spoils her beauty are signs of her desire for him; she does some 
looking of her own" (195). Such an explanation can also be applied 
to the response of certain Austen characters to gazing females (see 
Pride and Prejudice section, page 51 of this paper). 



77 

6. An interesting comparison is with the dance scene in Volume 1, 
Chapter 14 of Charlotte Bronte's Villette, where Madame Beck's 
enforcement of a constant state of surveillance not only controls 
but supplants the dangers of actual physical dance-interaction. 

7. Nancy Armstrong, for instance, states that the "domestic woman" 
possessed "dominance over all those objects and practices we 
associate with private life. To her went authority over the 
household, leisure time, courtship procedures, and kinship 
relations..." (3). I would argue in contrast that dance, as one of 
these same activities (included with both "leisure time" and 
"courtship procedures") becomes in another sense, due to the 
presence of the evaluative external gaze, among the most public of 
concerns -- especially as contrasted in this passage from 
Persuasion with the distinctive activities of the "domestic male." 
It is even possible to see in such a contrast evidence of 
"feministic" subversiveness on Austen's part (commented on at 
length by Margaret Kirkham and Claudia Johnson) as she subtly 
redefines the nature of the female realm. 

8. Castle also refers briefly to two events in Jane Austen's work -
- the "Lovers' Vows" episode of Mansfield Park, and Lydia Bennet's 
participation in "cross-dressing" a soldier -- among incidences of 
masquerade in fiction. The applicability of Castle's research to my 
topic, however, is limited by two factors: first, her note that the 
era of the English masquerade was already waning by the 1780s; 
second, the fact that the "promiscuous freedom" (41) and 
"hallucinatory reversals" (6) associated with masquerade were 
permitted by a donning en masse of concealing disguises, masks, and 
personae, and are in no way characteristic of the eminently ordered 
and "proper" Regency dance and assembly. In addition, although 
Castle emphasises the mixing of classes and sexes -- which I have 
referred to as a characteristic of Austen's balls -- she also 
states that this intermingling surpassed that of other public 
events, and that this was due to the presence of costumes: 
"Individual behaviour was freer at the masquerade than at virtually 
any other public occasion where the classes and sexes mixed openly. 
The presence of masks and costumes was responsible for this 
collective sense of increased liberty" (34) . Hence there are few 
useful similarities beyond this point. 

9. Alan Hertz notes that within the ballroom, communication takes 
place in a "language of veiled signals and enigmatic, double-edged 
remarks" (207). 

10. "Jane Austen acknowledges a contradiction between the community 
view of courtship as a serious game and the individual's view of it 
as a matter of personal passion, and this contradiction is clearly 
seen in the way she handles the dance" (Elsbree, PPP 369) ; thus 
what Marianne assumes to belong solely to herself is vicariously 
and voyeuristically partaken of by all around her by virtue of her 
willingness to dance in public. 

11. Austen refers to a similar instance in her own life, in a 
letter to Cassandra: "Imagine to yourself everything most 



78 

profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down 
together (L 1-2; 9 Jan. 1796)" (Fergus 76). Despite her humorous 
tone, the choice of terminology -- profligate, shocking -- bespeaks 
a developed awareness of public response to dance behaviour. 

12. Notable in connection is Robert Polhemus' comment on 
Elizabeth's effect on Darcy in Pride and Prejudice: "'Disarming' 
perfectly characterizes the function and effect of love in the 
novel" (34). While the contexts are different, the actions of both 
Elinor and Elizabeth might suggest that for the most part, females 
can only disarm -- they themselves are weaponless and from the 
outset are at a disadvantage vis-a-vis male power. 

13. This invites comparison with Foucault's description of the 
prisoner in the Panopticon ("He is seen, but he does not see; he is 
the object of information, never a subject in communication" 
(200)), and thereby points up the extent to which Marianne is 
representative of vulnerability within a panoptic schema. 

14. Claudia Johnson suggests that Austen is not condemnatory of 
this trait in Marianne herself, but rather in Marianne's 
environment: "Sense and Sensibility, then, criticizes, not the 
unseemliness or the rebelliousness of Marianne's emotionality, but 
rather its horrifying conformity to the social context she lives 
within" (69) . This is not an issue I hope to resolve; in either 
case, Marianne's behaviours on and off the dance floor are in 
parallel, supporting the idea that Austen uses a female's ballroom 
choices and actions to evoke her condition in society. 

15. The self-effacing nature of such a decision -- to accompany 
while others dance --is emphasised by the wording chosen by Claire 
Tomalin in this passage from her biography of Jane Austen: "Jane 
could play the piano, but at her age would not be expected to 
sacrifice herself when there were older fingers to work in the good 
cause of the young people's pleasure" (101). Unlike her creator, 
Anne, though still relatively young herself, does opt for "self-
sacrifice," deliberately negating herself as a participant and 
denying herself any share in active communal enjoyments. 

16. Similar is the contrast between Mrs Jennings and Elinor as 
watchers: Mrs Jennings "betrays her citizenship in the community of 
'voluntary spies' (Henry Tilney's phrase...), which surrounds the 
small, civilised community of good sense, good feeling, and good 
manners eventually established as the emotional centre of every 
Austen novel.... the good community as a whole is immeasurably 
superior to the larger social community" (Fergus 92). 

17. See Alison Sulloway, page 14 0, where she quotes Robert 
Polhemus' "delightfully frank gloss" on this phrase: "All dances 
are essentially mating dances, and the end, as well as the means, 
of dancing, is the felicity of rapid motion." Similarly, the 
coupling of the words "dancing" and "private rapture" could be seen 
to contain a suggestion of the long-delayed physical consummation 
which awaits the two lovers. 



79 

18. Given that these outside forces include both Sir Walter and Mr 
Elliot on one side, and Elizabeth Elliot and Lady Russell on the 
other, it seems doubtful, as Perkins suggests, that Austen's 
portrayal of Anne's "victory" can or should be read as a revolt 
against gender definition, as that of other Austen females perhaps 
might be. 

19. This is a situation which equally nonplusses the sensitive 
Fanny Price: "glad would she have been not to be obliged to listen, 
for it was while all the other young people were dancing, and she 
sitting, most unwillingly, among the chaperons at the fire...." (MP 
98) . In Fanny's case, I would argue, the unwillingness to spectate 
is due not only to a desire to dance but also to a personal 
rejection of subjectivity: her aversion to watching -- and to the 
gossiping that goes with it -- is indirectly attributable to her 
own fear of being watched and discussed (see quotation page 68 of 
this paper) . In Catherine's case, it is no more than frustrated 
desire to participate which occasions her dissatisfaction with 
being confined to the "sidelines." Catherine is altogether a 
simpler and more straightforward character than Fanny -- not least 
of all because she is part of a parody! 

20. Jan Fergus, on the other hand, envisions Catherine as a strong 
female character who defies the restrictions imposed on her: 
"Catherine Morland is unique among Austen's heroines in her naive, 
unaffected pursuit of the hero, who learns to care for her only 
because he cannot help perceiving that she prefers him. In this 
respect, Catherine violates conventional norms for female behaviour 
even more radically and more successfully than Elizabeth Bennet" 
(95). This picture of Catherine as taking the lead or initiative 
does not seem equally applicable to her behaviour within the 
ballroom (especially with Thorpe), where she must wait passively to 
be sought. 

21. Although Claudia Johnson states that Henry Tilney. is "too often 
mistaken for an authorial surrogate" (34), I must continue to 
regard him as at least occasionally the mouthpiece for some of 
Austen's own ideas -- approval of Miss Tilney, for instance, seems 
common to both character and author, as does disapproval of 
excessive artifice. 

22. I am for the most part in agreement with Johnson's analysis of 
Emma as the novel in which Austen shows "willingness to explore 
positive versions of female power" (126) -- power which includes 
taking initiative inside and outside the ballroom. However, it 
seems to me that Austen's approval of Emma as performer in 
particular is heavily qualified. Thus I cannot concur with a 
passage such as the following, which implies that Emma, along with 
Elizabeth Bennet, is rewarded for her performative prowess and 
breaking of feminine norms: "Here choosy men prefer saucy women --
not women who place themselves at the margins, letting themselves 
be noticed only so they may show that they are not so vain as to 
crave attention, but women who love even the unflattering 
limelight" (Johnson 142) . This seems overstated -- after all, is it 
possible that Austen's views had changed so much since her 



80 

presentation of Miss Tilney as a laudable female? A woman loving 
"even the unflattering limelight" is rather reminiscent of Isabella 
Thorpe. Emma needs and is given correction, which surely includes 
learning to be less in love with the "spotlight." 

23. I lean toward a "traditional" view of Knightley as teacher and 
to some extent authorial voice. Although I acknowledge that such a 
view is problematised by Knightley's own excesses and errors in 
some areas, I have found views on the opposite side to be equally 
problematic; I concur with Edward Neill, for instance, that "One 
can also see what is a 'definite false note' in a recent book by 
Margaret Kirkham when she congratulates 'Jane Austen' on her 
ability to free herself from 'that extensive class of literature 
which makes Gods of Baronets or Dukes', en route to the implausible 
conclusion that Emwa ' subverts the stereotype in which the heroine 
is educated by a hero-guardian'" (100). 

24. "Jane falls in love conveniently, while dining or dancing. On 
the other hand, when Elizabeth and Darcy meet formally, they 
alienate even more than they attract each other" (Hertz 207). 

25. The same might be said of Emma: "'Imaginism' of Emma's sort, 
then, is not a private matter; it refuses to rest content with 
placid surfaces defenders of public order call reality, and it 
arrogates to itself the right to penetrate...secrets some would not 
wish to see brought to light" (Johnson 133). 

26. This passage could be one of those that inspired Robert 
Polhemus' assertion that in Pride and Prejudice Austen "shows an 
almost unmediated yearning to find means to transform feminine 
powerlessness to influence" (48) . 

27. Similarly and symbolically, Fanny will appear at the ball with 
the proprietary "mark" of three males on her person, in the shape 
of her much discussed jewellery (William's cross; Edmund's chain; 
Henry's necklace). 

28. See Edward Said's chapter on "Jane Austen and Empire" in 
Culture and Imperialism. 

29. It seems likely that the terminology Austen employs to describe 
this "coming out" practice also "makes plain her feminist distaste 
for the ritual" (Wiltshire 100).) 

30. Emma and Mrs Elton, in contrast, wish to begin the ball 
precisely because they will be seen by everyone; each covets the 
visible affirmation of status attained by this action (Lange 92). 
For these socially aggressive females, the ball becomes a battle of 
vanities and the dance formation itself a site of contention for 
social power. The less worldly Fanny, on the other hand, places 
little value on the status that extra visibility conveys. 



81 

NOMENCLATURE 

Austen: E = Emma 
MP = Mansfield Park 
NA = Northanqer Abbey 
P = Persuasion 
PP = Pride and Prejudice 
SS = Sense and Sensibility 

Elsbree: BC = The Breakincr Chain 
DFC = "Jane Austen and the Dance of Fidelity and 

Complaisance" 
PPP = "The Purest and Most Perfect Form of Play" 

Card: EP = Emma and Persuasion 

JAN = Jane Austen's Novels 

Thomas: AV = "An-Other Voice" 

Wood: SHD = Some Historical Dances 



82 

WORKS CONSULTED 

Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. James Kinsley and David Lodge. Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 1971. 

. Mansfield Park. Ed. Kathryn Sutherland. London: Penguin 

Books, 1996. 

Northanqer Abbey, "Lady Susan," "The Watsons," and 

"Sanditon." Ed. John Davie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 

1980. 

. Persuasion. Ed. D.W.Harding. London: Penguin Books, 1965. 

. Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Tony Tanner. London: Penguin 

Books, 1972. 

. Sense and Sensibility. Ed. James Kinsley. Intro. Margaret 

Anne Doody. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. 

Adams, Timothy Dow. "To Know the Dancer From the Dance: Dance as a 

Metaphor of Marriage in Four Novels of Jane Austen." Studies 

in the Novel 14 (1982): 55-65. 

Armstrong, Isobel. Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility. London: 

Penguin Books, 1994. 

Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History 

of the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. 

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting 

Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972. 

Bronte, Charlotte. Villette. London: Penguin Books, 1979. 

Bryson, Norman. "Cultural Studies and Dance History." Desmond, 

Meaning in Motion 55-77. 

Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Oxford: Oxford 



83 

University Press, 1975. 

Castle, Terry. Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in 

Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction. Stanford: 

Stanford University Press, 1986. 

Copeland, Roger. "Dance, Feminism, and the Critique of the Visual." 

Thomas, Dance, Gender and Culture 13 9-150. 

Copeland, Roger, and Marshall Cohen, eds. What is Dance?: Readings 

in Theory and Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 

1983. 

Desmond, Jane C. "Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and 

Cultural Studies." Desmond, Meaning in Motion 29-54. 

Desmond, Jane C , ed. Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of 

Dance. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. 

Elsbree, Langdon. The Breaking Chain: A Study of the Dance in the 

Novels of Jane Austen, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and 

D.H.Lawrence. Diss. The Claremont Graduate School, 1963. Ann 

Arbor: UMI, 1980. 

, "Jane Austen and the Dance of Fidelity and Complaisance." 

Nineteenth-Century Fiction 15 (1960-61): 113-136. 

_ "The Purest and Most Perfect Form of Play: Some 

Novelists and the Dance." Criticism: A Quarterly for 

Literature and the Arts 14 (1972): 361-372. 

Fergus, Jan. Jane Austen: A Literary Life. London: Macmillan 

Academic and Professional Ltd., 1991. 

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 

Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. 

Card, Roger. Emma and Persuasion. London: Penguin Books, 1985. 

. Jane Austen's Novels: The Art of Clarity. New Haven: 



84 

Yale University Press, 1992. 

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the 

Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary 

Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. 

Grigsby, Joan. "Dancing, Balls, and Assemblies." The Jane Austen 

Handbook. 

Hertz, Alan. "Dancing, Romeo and Juliet, and Pride and Prejudice." 

Notes and Queries 227 (1982): 206-208. 

The Jane Austen Handbook. Eds. J. David Grey, A. Walton Litz and 

Brian Southam. New York: Macmillan, 1986. 

The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. Ed. Frances 

Beer. London: Penguin Books, 1986. 

Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. 

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988. 

Katz, Ruth. "The Egalitarian Waltz." Copeland, What is Dance?: 

Readings in Theory and Criticism. 

Kelly, Dorothy. Telling Glances: Voyeurism in the French Novel. New 

Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992. 

Kirkham, Margaret. Jane Austen, Feminism, and Fiction. Brighton: 

The Harvester Press, 1983. 

Lane, Maggie. Jane Austen's World: The Life and Times of England's 

Most Popular Author. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1996. 

Lange, Roderyk. The Nature of Dance: An Anthropological 

Perspective. London: Macdonald & Evans Ltd., 1975. 

McRobbie, Angela. "Dance Narratives and Fantasies of Achievement." 

Desmond, Meaning in Motion 207-231. 

Mackrell, Judith. Reading Dance. London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1997. 

Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana 



85 

University Press, 1989. 

Nardin, Jane. Those Elegant Decorums: The Concept of Propriety in 

Jane Austen's Novels. Albany: State University of New York 

Press, 1973. 

Neill, Edward. The Politics of Jane Austen. London: Macmillan Press 

Ltd., 1999. 

Peel, Barbara. Dancing and Social Assemblies in York in the 

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Guildford, Surrey: 

National Resource Centre for Dance, 1986. 

Perkins, Moreland. Reshaping the Sexes in Sense and Sensibility. 

Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1998. 

Polhemus, Ted. "Dance, Gender and Culture." Thomas, Dance, Gender 

and Culture 3-15. 

Polhemus, Robert M. Erotic Faith: Being in Love from Jane Austen to 

D.H. Lawrence. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990. 

Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline. "'Entering the World' of Regency Society: 

The Ballroom Scenes in Northanger Abbey, 'The Watsons,' and 

Mansfield Park." Persuasions 13-16 (1991-94): 115-124. 

Rust, Francis. Dance in Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 

1969. 

Rutter, D.R. Looking and Seeing: The Role of Visual Communication 

in Social Interaction. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 

1984. 

Sachs, Curt. World History of the Dance. Trans. Bessie Schonberg. 

New York: W.W.Norton & Company Inc., 1963. 

Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 

1993. 

Sayers, Lesley-Anne. "'She might pirouette on a daisy and it would 



not bend': Images of Femininity and Dance Appreciation." 

Thomas, Dance, Gender and Culture 164-183. 

Sheets, Maxine. The Phenomenology of Dance. Madison and Milwaukee: 

The University of Wisconsin Press, 1966. 

Spearing, A.C. The Medieval Poet as Voyeur: Looking and Listening 

in Medieval Love-Narratives. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 1993. 

Sulloway, Alison. Jane Austen and the Province of Womanhood. 

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. 

Tanner, Tony. Jane Austen. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University 

Press, 1986. 

Thomas, Helen. "An-Other Voice: Young Women Dancing and Talking." 

Thomas, Dance, Gender and Culture. 

, ed. Dance, Gender and Culture. London: The Macmillan 

Press Ltd., 1993. 

. Dance, Modernity and Culture. London: Routledge, 1995. 

Thompson, Allison, comp. Dancing Through Time: Western Social Dance 

in Literature, 1400-1918: selections. Jefferson, N.C.: 

McFarland, 1998. 

Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. London: Penguin Books, 1997. 

Wallace, Robert K. Jane Austen and Mozart: Classical Equilibrium in 

Fiction and Music. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia 

Press, 1983. 

Ward, Andrew. "Dancing in the Dark: Rationalism and the Neglect of 

Social Dance." Dance, Gender and Culture 16-33. 

Wiltshire, John. Jane Austen and the Body: "The picture of health". 

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. 

Wolff, Janet. "Reinstating Corporeality: Feminism and Body 



87 

Politics." Desmond, Meaning in Motion 81-99. 

Wood, Melusine. Advanced Historical Dances. London: C.W.Beaumont, 

1960. 

Wood, Melusine. Some Historical Dances. London: C.W.Beaumont, 1952.