changed feelings about Darcy until he has actually proposed again, and shehas accepted). Similarly, in a letter of November 30th 1814 to her niece Fanny Knight, discussing whether Fanny shouldengage herself to one Mr. Plumtre, Jane Austen wrote: "...you must not let anything depend on my own opinion. Your ownfeelings & none but your own, should determine such an important point".Such moral autonomy on the part of young women would by no means have been universally approved of in Jane Austen's day,as can be seen from Sir Thomas's diatribes in Mansfield Park, when Fanny Price is resisting his advice to marry HenryCrawford. Thus another novel writer, (Fanny Burney) had her heroine Evelina write the following non-Austenian sentiments toher adoptive father: "I know not what to wish: think for me, therefore, my dearest Sir, and suffer my doubting mind, that knowsnot what way to direct its hopes, to be guided by your wisdom and counsel". In her Plan of a Novel, Jane Austen makes funof the novel-heroine who "receives repeated offers of Marriage -- which she refers wholly to her Father, exceedingly angry thathe should not be first applied to".Jane Austen also makes a positive statement by having Elizabeth Bennet insist on being treated as a "rational creature", ratherthan as an "elegant female", when trying to make her "No" be understood as "No" to Mr. Collins.Here's a a brief summary (taken from Women's Life and Work in the Southern Colonies by Julia Cherry Spruill) of an early18th century etiquette book, The Lady's Preceptor, which was not out of the ordinary in conventional advice books forwomen in Jane Austen's period: "It admonished her to abstain from gossip and a spirit of contradiction, which, while disagreeable in everyone, was especially so in the ``fair sex''; to be careful not to be too quick and passionate in conversation, or too inquisitive; and to ``endeavour that Cheerfullness, Sweetness, and Modesty be always blended...
