How To Tell If You Are In A Jane Austen Novel

Previously in this series: How to tell if you are in a Dickens novel.

Someone disagreeable is trying to persuade you to take a trip to Bath.

Your father is absolutely terrible with money. No one has ever told him this.

All of your dresses look like nightgowns.

Someone disagreeable tries to persuade you to join a game of cards.

A woman who hates you is playing the pianoforte.

A picnic has gone horribly wrong.

A member of the armed forces has revealed himself to be morally deficient.

You once took a walk with a cad.

Everyone in the neighborhood, including your mother, has ranked you and your sisters in order of hotness. You know exactly where you fall on the list.

You say something arch yet generous about another woman both younger and richer than you.

You have one friend; he is thirty years old and does business with your father and you are going to marry him someday.

You attempt to befriend someone slightly above or slightly below your social station and are soundly punished for it.

A girl you have only just met tells you a secret, and you despise her for it.

You have five hundred a year. From who? Five hundred what? No one knows. No one cares. You have it. It’s yours. Every year. All five hundred of it.

There are three men in your life: one true love, one tempting but rakish acquaintance, and a third distant possibility — he is courteous and attentive but only slightly interested in you. He is almost certainly the cousin or good friend of your true love, and nothing will ever happen between you two.

A woman who is not your mother treats you like her own daughter. Your actual mother is dead or ridiculous.

You develop a resentment at a public dance.

Someone you know has fallen ill. Not melodramatically ill, just interestingly so.

A man proposes to you, then to another, lesser woman when you politely spurn him. This delights you to no end.

A charming man attempts to flirt with you. This is terrible.

You have become exceedingly ashamed of what your conduct has been.

A shocking marriage of convenience takes place within your social circle two-thirds of the way in.

A woman in an absurd hat is being an absolute bitch to you; there is nothing you can do about it.

You are in a garden, and you are astonished.