The ballrooms of Jane Austen’s Britain have been hailed in literature and period dramas as a marriage market where young men and women could meet and mingle. The ballroom set the scene for Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy’s first encounter at Meryton’s assembly rooms in Pride and Prejudice (1813), and where Catherine Moreland and Henry Tilney bantered in Bath in Northanger Abbey (1817).

Austen herself frequented balls in Basingstoke and Southampton. The ballroom was the place to see and be seen, the focal point for socialising during “the season”. The season took place during the winter months and involved a concentrated period of public entertainments like balls, concerts and card assemblies (in which guests met to play card games).

Ball-goers needed months to prepare for these events. This included ordering gloves and shoes, and buying new gowns or dressing up old ones. Austen deliberately kept her china crepe dress from being seen before the next ball, observing that the ballroom “was a place where you would be judged”.

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Ladies and gentlemen also needed to polish their dance steps. From an early age, they were instructed in how to dance, bow and curtsy, walk and greet people of differing ranks. Mastering these basics of deportment was essential, as they would be scrutinised in the ballroom.

While in Bath in 1740, Elizabeth Robinson (future leader of the 18th-century English women’s intellectual circle the Bluestockings) observed that the education of another woman was lacking, writing: “[as] for her Curtsey where she got that I cannot guess, but I will venture to say, not from the Dancing School”.

This article is part of a series commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Despite having published only six books, she is one of the best-known authors in history. These articles explore the legacy and life of this incredible writer.

In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Moreland’s first ball at the Upper Rooms in Bath is filled with anxiety, as: “The season was full, the room crowded, and the two ladies squeezed in as well as they could. As for Mr Allen, he repaired directly to the card-room, and left them to enjoy a mob by themselves.”

To quell the “mob”, the ballroom was managed by a master of ceremonies, who had the role of facilitating introductions, enforcing the rules and mediating disputes.

Balls opened with the minuet (a French social dance) performed by one couple at a time. A well-danced minuet was a source of pride for genteel society, as some revelled in exhibiting their accomplishments. But it was also a source of anxiety.

When a young woman named Eliza Smith married the Austens’ wealthy neighbour William Chute in 1793, she was so nervous about dancing that her mother wrote: “I am glad for your Sake there are no Minuets at Basingstoke, I know the terror you have in dancing not that you have any occasion for such fears.”

Assessing dance skill was central to the experience of the ballroom, making it even more important for dancers to try to put their best foot forward. Sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Canning (cousin of the prime minister George Canning) wrote to her mother from Bath in December 1792 that: “I was very much entertained with the bad minuet-dancers, especially with a Mr Badcock who was obliged to stand up with seven, or eight Ladies successively, to the great diversion of the Spectators.”

illustration of a man and woman dancing
A couple dance The Devonshire Minuet. Lewis Walpole Library

After the minuets, country dances filled the evening, with a column of men standing opposite their female partners. Relieved the minuets were over, Miss Canning wrote: “At last the Country dances began, there was great humming, & hawing whether or no I should dance … & I declared … that I should like to dance if I could get some mighty smart partner.”

Young ladies recorded triumphant lists of dance partners, and, indeed, Austen recalled dancing with Stephen Terry, T. Chute, James Digweed and Catherine Bigg one evening, observing: “There was a scarcity of men in general, and a still greater scarcity of any that were good for much … There was commonly a couple of ladies standing up together, but not often any so amiable as ourselves.”

For the most part, men were expected to ask women to dance with them. According to dance manuals by Thomas Wilson and G.M.S. Chivers, the ballroom occasionally saw two women or two men dancing together.

While it is assumed that it was the lady’s prerogative to accept or decline invitations to dance, she could not afford to refuse an offer unless she had no intention to dance at all “and consequently may be considered no lady”. In Pride and Prejudice, though Elizabeth Bennet would prefer not to dance with Mr Collins at the Netherfield Ball, refusing him would mean losing the opportunity to dance altogether.

The film Becoming Jane (2007) dramatised Austen’s experiences at balls.

However, Austen herself found a way of skirting around these rules at the Kempshott ball. Writing to her sister Cassandra in 1798 she explained that: “One of my gayest actions was sitting down two dances in preference to having Lord Bolton’s eldest son for my partner, who danced too ill to be endured.” Austen was an excellent dancer herself, proudly proclaiming that she could dance 20 dances in an evening “without any fatigue”.

Balls at the assembly rooms lasted for about five hours until precisely 11 or 12am, when, upon a signal from the master of ceremonies, the dancing concluded, even in the middle of a dance. Grudgingly, the dancers changed their dance pumps for sturdier shoes and donned their cloaks, with sedan chairs and carriages ready to whisk them home to their lodgings by the light of the moon.

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This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Hillary Burlock, University of Liverpool

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Hillary Burlock receives funding from the British Academy as a Postdoctoral Fellow.