In the 1995 adaptation of Persuasion, Anne plays the same tune that Wentworth playfully played in an earlier part of the film. This little detail suggests that Wentworth learned it from Anne, who plays piano regularly, years ago.
An answer to an AskHistorians question about first names in Jane Austen! From the question text: At home, Elizabeth is called ‘Lizzie’ by her family. Her friends and acquaintances (same gender) sometimes call her Miss Elizabeth Bennett, sometimes Miss Eliza Bennett, and in Charlotte’s case, just plain Eliza. Mr Darcy never calls her Elizabeth until he proposes the second time (Dearest, loveliest Elizabeth). I figured that was to do with permissible familiarity. But Elizabeth’s parents never refer to each other by first name. Is that because they’re in the presence of their children, or is it an indication of the (lack of) warmth in their relationship? That’s without even getting into 'Emma’, and the affront around Knightley and Mr E.
I just want to make a bit of a correction - Elizabeth’s family calls her “Lizzy”, and “Eliza”/“Miss Eliza Bennet” are used specifically by the Lucas family, and Caroline Bingley. Mr Darcy’s second proposal, in the original text, is simply:
You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.
First names were highly familiar, and not to be used lightly. To use someone else’s first name was to show that you were extremely close - which didn’t necessarily mean there was a long acquaintance. By the second chapter of Isabella Thorpe’s appearance in Northanger Abbey,
… they passed so rapidly through every gradation of increasing tenderness that there was shortly no fresh proof of it to be given to their friends or themselves. They called each other by their Christian name, were always arm in arm when they walked, pinned up each other’s train for the dance, and were not to be divided in the set; and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of dirt and wet, and shut themselves up, to read novels together.
On the other hand, in Pride and Prejudice the Lucases are the Bennets’ closest and long-time associates in the immediate neighborhood, so it makes sense that the families are on close enough footing for the Lucases as a whole to refer to the Bennet daughters by their first names.
However, it was certainly possible to be over-familiar - and many travelogues by English people who’d gone abroad contain a shocked description of how people in America, Spain, Germany, etc. jump so quickly to a first name basis. From this perspective, Caroline Bingley’s use of “Eliza” can be seen as having been likely intended to be presumptuous, highlighting the unpleasantness of her character: she is neither a long acquaintance like Charlotte and Maria Lucas, nor is she abruptly becoming Elizabeth’s best friend.
The rules were slightly different for men. While family members would use their first names (as the Dashwood sisters do for their brother-in-law Edward Ferrars), the “friendship name”, generally just used between two men, was instead the last name - as in Emma, with Mrs. Elton calling Mr Knightley just “Knightley”. Just like Caroline Bingley, she is written as doing this so we can see her presumption - although while Caroline’s presumption is condescending (“see, I can be over-familiar and you can’t do anything about it”), Mrs. Elton is, on the contrary, trying to put herself up on Mr Knightley’s level and show everyone else that she’s on such terms with the preeminent landowner of the area.
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet” is a special case. In a family with multiple sons or daughters, the first would be “Miss Bennet” or “Mr Bennet”, and the younger ones would be “Miss Elizabeth Bennet” or “Mr Charles Bennet”. In direct address, however, a simple “Miss Bennet” or “Mr Bennet” would still be appropriate for a younger daughter or son. The main point of all of this was just for the purpose of clarity - if Jane were to have gotten married early on in the book, for instance, there would have been no need for anyone to refer to Elizabeth’s first name in this kind of title, as she would obviously be the “Miss Bennet”.
As far as married couples go, both first names and Mr/Mrs seem to have been somewhat normalized - neither was actually notable or strange in the period, but yes, would reflect the level of formality/intimacy between the couple, as well as where they are. In Sense and Sensibility, John Dashwood calls his wife “Fanny”, and in Persuasion, Mary calls her husband “Charles”; but as you noted, the Bennets call each other Mr/Mrs, and so do the Palmers in Sense and Sensibility. However, we only really see first-naming between husbands and wives in fairly private settings - in a domestic group, or just between each other. In public, it was not seen as appropriate to be too informal. As a result, the general public wouldn’t know if a couple were not on the closest footing because they would never have been witness to a married couple using their first names.
Transgressions would likely not be punished in a real sense, but would result in negative consequences of the “two red minus signs above the sim’s head” sense. When Caroline calls Elizabeth “Eliza”, it makes Elizabeth dislike her. When Mrs. Elton calls Mr Knightley “Knightley”, she makes the people around her think less of her.
You’ll find more of this kind of Regency etiquette nitpickery in Dandies & Dandyzettes!
It’s easy to believe you’re doing good by staying in a conversation when you’re very uncomfortable being there. Or when you know your anger is starting to alter your judgement.
And there’s a little truth to that. It’s super powerful to be willing to spend time talking to people who you disagree with, whose views upset you. It’s the counterweight to groupthink. It opens up lines of communication so you can challenge your own assumptions, and everyone else’s. Being persistent in voicing your opinion is a powerful way to spread it. The more people hear an idea, the more seriously they tend to consider it.
But saying something in the wrong way or in the wrong context makes your point sound less believable, not more.
You can have this effect even if others are arguing with you just as angrily. People can link your views with the antagonism of the conversation, and become biased against them.
…Which makes it that much harder for other people with your beliefs to make themselves heard down the line.
Now, it’s not always fair or logical for people to build these associations. And it doesn’t mean you were overreacting in losing your temper.
It’s just that disengaging from an angry conversation is a super useful skill to have on hand, if you really want other people to take on your beliefs. If you can walk away promptly when you or others start to get upset, you leave room for someone else to build on that conversation another day.
You also leave room for the other person to consider the ideas you’ve presented on their own terms, in their own time.
When you’re changing someone’s mind over the internet, you almost never get to see that you’re doing so. People rarely overturn an opinion they care about in the span of a single conversation. It’s something that happens in the privacy of someone else’s mind, as they gradually sift through what you’ve said, and how it lines up with their past experiences and beliefs.
You walking away can be one of the first steps in the process of changing someone else’s mind – because it’s the someone else in that situation who does the central work of changing their own beliefs.
How and when you walk away can make a big difference in how likely they are to succeed.
They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another…there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.
Something happened. You got pissed. Now two bad things have happened. That’s just a fact.
Because getting angry rarely makes things better—even if it helps you get what you thought you wanted. It taxes your heart. It causes you to be mean to other people. To “win” you had to lose your self-control.
This is not to say you should merely accept everything in life. The Stoics were not passive weaklings. It’s that they preferred persuasion, patience, and persistence to yelling. They focused on addressing root causes, not catharsis.
How much worse getting mad is than the things that caused it, Seneca said. “Anger always outlasts hurt,” he advised. “Best to take the opposite course. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog?”
So if you want to win—at life, at philosophy, at accomplishing what you have set out to accomplish—you’ll need to rein in your temper. You’ll need to figure out the opposite course, develop more than one kind of response to things you don’t like. It’s easy to get angry, but it’s more effective to remain calm and come up with solutions.
Tame your temper. Don’t make problems worse by getting angry.
i can listen no longer in silence. i must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. you pierce my soul. i am half agony, half hope. tell me not that i am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. i offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. i have loved none but you. persuasion by jane austen.
