Great Britain new 10 Pound Sterling polymer note 2017 Jane Austen

Great Britain new 10 Pound Sterling polymer note 2017 Queen Elizabeth II
Great Britain new 10 Pound Sterling polymer note 2017 Jane Austen

Great Britain new 10 Pound Sterling polymer note 2017 Jane Austen
Bank of England

The new £10 Pound note
The new polymer £10 Pound note will be issued on 14 September 2017. The note features Jane Austen and is 132 mm x 69 mm. 2017 marks the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death. She is buried at Winchester Cathedral, which appears on the new £10 Pound note. The current paper £10 Pound note features Charles Darwin and is 142 mm x 75 mm. The paper £10 will be withdrawn from circulation in Spring 2018. Notice will be given 3 months prior to the withdrawal date.
                      Bank of England 10 Pound notes     Polymer Banknotes - Cleaner, safer, stronger


Obverse: Portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at right. On patterned background is a building of Bank of England. Above the building are 4 coat of arms - left to right - England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Seated Britannia as logo of Bank of England at lower left corner. Denominations in numerals are in top corners. In center in words. Many denominations in numerals are in lower right corner. Signature: Victoria Mary Florence Cleland, Chief Cashier of the Bank of England.

  On the front side of the banknote, in gold color (on the reverse in a silver color), next to a portrait of the Queen is Winchester Cathedral west façade, were Jane Austen was buried.
  On the front of the note, above the see-through window, is a silver foil patch containing an image of the coronation crown which appears 3D. When the note is tilted a multi-coloured rainbow effect can be seen.
  On the front of the note, below the see-through window, is a silver foil patch. When the note is tilted the word "Ten" changes to "Pounds" and a multi-coloured rainbow effect can be seen.
  Using a magnifying glass, look closely at the lettering beneath the Queen’s portrait - you will see the value of the note written in small letters and numbers.
Below - the inscription "Ten Pounds" on a metal background. Above is an open book, higher - an ink pen and a pound sign.

Reverse: Portrait of Jane Austen (1775 - 1817) she was an English novelist who, using wit and social observation, provided astute insights into 19th century life, often praising the virtues of reason and intelligence and highlighting some of the barriers that society erected against the progression of women.
  Lower, under the Jane Austen's portrait is a quote: "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!", from the "Pride and Prejudice", written by Jane Austen. However, that the quote wasn’t said by Austen herself, but instead by the “detested” character Caroline Bingley in Pride and Prejudice, who in fact hated reading (chapter XI).
  Portrait of Jane Austen commissioned by James Edward Austen Leigh (Jane Austen’s nephew) in 1870 (finished in 1873), adapted from an original sketch drawn by her sister Cassandra Austen (1773-1845) in 1810. Next to the portrait is an illustration of Miss Elizabeth Bennet, a character from "Pride and Prejudice" undertaking "The examination of all the letters", which Jane Bennet had written to her. Beneath this image is Godmersham Park House, the estate owned by Jane Austen’s brother (Lithography by English lithographer William Watts, (1752-1851) - "Godmersham Park, Kent, the Seat of Thomas Knight Esq." (Jane Austen's uncle and father of her brother - Edward Austen Knight), Published in 1785.). The foil image over the window is Winchester Cathedral, where Jane Austen was buried in 1817, aged just 41. 2017, the year the note is launched, marks the 200th anniversary of her death.
Denominations in numerals are on top, repeated 3 times. In lower left corner in words.
The polymer for the New £10 Polymer Banknote is made by "Innovia Securities", who have a plant in Wigton, Cumbria.

  The see-through window: There is a large see-through window on the note. A clearly defined portrait of the Queen is printed on the window with the words "£10 Bank of England" printed twice around the edge.
  A finely detailed metallic image of Winchester Cathedral is positioned over the window. The foil is gold on the front of the note and silver on the back of the note. When the note is tilted a multi-coloured rainbow effect can be seen.
The foil £ symbol in the window is silver on the front of the note and copper on the back of the note.
  At the side of the window is a coloured quill which changes from purple to orange when the note is tilted. This effect can be seen on the front and back of the note.
The foil patches: On the front of the note, below the see-through window, is a
silver foil patch. When the note is tilted the word ‘Ten’ changes to ‘Pounds’ and a multi-coloured rainbow effect can be seen.
  On the front of the note, above the see-through window, is a silver foil patch containing an image of the coronation crown which appears 3D. When the note is tilted a multi-coloured rainbow effect can be seen.
  On the back of the note, there is a book-shaped copper foil patch which contains the letters JA. It is immediately behind the silver crown on the front.
  The polymer and the raised print: The note is printed on polymer which is a thin and flexible plastic material. By running your finger across the front of the note you
can feel raised print in areas such as the words ‘Bank of England’ and in the bottom right corner, around the number 10.
  The print quality: The printed lines and colours on the note are sharp, clear and free from smudges or blurred edges.
  The microlettering: Using a magnifying glass, look closely at the lettering beneath the Queen’s portrait — you will see the value of the note written in small letters and numbers.
  The ultra-violet feature: If you look at the front of the note under a good quality ultra-violet light, the number 10 appears in bright red and green whilst the background remains dull in contrast.

Polymer Banknotes - Cleaner, safer, stronger
Polymer notes are cleaner, more secure and last longer than paper notes. They will provide enhanced counterfeit resilience, and increase the quality of notes in circulation.
   Cleaner: Polymer notes are resistant to dirt and moisture so stay cleaner far longer than paper notes.
   Safer: Polymer notes use enhanced security features to make them harder to counterfeit.
   Stronger: Though polymer notes are not indestructible, they can withstand more wear and tear than their paper counterparts and are expected to last at least 2.5 times longer.


Great Britain banknotes - Great Britain paper money
Polymer Banknotes

5 Pounds         10 Pounds         20 Pounds





Jane Austen
Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six
Jane Austen
Jane Austen
major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism.
  With the publications of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began another, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. Her novels have rarely been out of print, although they were published anonymously and brought her little fame during her lifetime.
  A significant transition in her posthumous reputation occurred in 1833, when her novels were republished in Richard Bentley's Standard Novels series, illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering, and sold as a set. They gradually gained wider acclaim and popular readership. In 1869, fifty-two years after her death, her nephew's publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced a compelling version of her writing career and supposedly uneventful life to an eager audience.
  Austen has inspired a large number of critical essays and literary anthologies. Her novels have inspired many films, from 1940's Pride and Prejudice to more recent productions like Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Love & Friendship (2016).
  Jane Austen's use of biting irony, along with her realism and social commentary, have earned her great and historical importance to critics and scholars.

Life
Jane Austen was born in the Hampshire village of Steventon, where her father, the Reverend George Austen, was rector. She was the second daughter and seventh child in a family of eight—six boys and two girls. Her closest companion throughout her life was her elder sister, Cassandra; neither Jane nor Cassandra married. Their father was a scholar who encouraged the love of learning in his children. His wife, Cassandra (née Leigh), was a woman of ready wit, famed for her impromptu verses and stories. The great family amusement was acting.
  Jane Austen’s lively and affectionate family circle provided a stimulating context for her writing. Moreover, her experience was carried far beyond Steventon rectory by an extensive network of relationships by blood and friendship. It was this world—of the minor landed gentry and the country clergy, in the village, the neighbourhood, and the country town, with occasional visits to Bath and to London—that she was to use in the settings, characters, and subject matter of her novels.
  Her earliest known writings date from about 1787, and between then and 1793 she wrote a large body of material that has survived in three manuscript notebooks: Volume the First, Volume the Second, and Volume the Third. These contain plays, verses, short novels, and other prose and show Austen engaged in the parody of existing literary forms, notably the genres of the sentimental novel and sentimental comedy. Her passage to a more serious view of life from the exuberant high spirits and extravagances of her earliest writings is evident in Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel written about 1793–94 (and not published until 1871). This portrait of a woman bent on the exercise of her own powerful mind and personality to the point of social self-destruction is, in effect, a study of frustration and of woman’s fate in a society that has no use for her talents.
  In 1802 it seems likely that Jane agreed to marry Harris Bigg-Wither, the 21-year-old heir of a Hampshire family, but the next morning changed her mind. There are also a number of mutually contradictory stories connecting her with someone with whom she fell in love but who died very soon after. Since Austen’s novels are so deeply concerned with love and marriage, there is some point in attempting to establish the facts of these relationships. Unfortunately, the evidence is unsatisfactory and incomplete. Cassandra was a jealous guardian of her sister’s private life, and after Jane’s death she censored the surviving letters, destroying many and cutting up others. But Jane Austen’s own novels provide indisputable evidence that their author understood the experience of love and of love disappointed.
  The earliest of her novels published during her lifetime, Sense and Sensibility, was begun about 1795 as a novel-in-letters called “Elinor and Marianne,” after its heroines. Between October 1796 and August 1797 Austen completed the first version of Pride and Prejudice, then called “First Impressions.” In 1797 her father wrote to offer it to a London publisher for publication, but the offer was declined. Northanger Abbey, the last of the early novels, was written about 1798 or 1799, probably under the title “Susan.” In 1803 the manuscript of “Susan” was sold to the publisher Richard Crosby for £10. He took it for immediate publication, but, although it was advertised, unaccountably it never appeared.
  Up to this time the tenor of life at Steventon rectory had been propitious for Jane Austen’s growth as a novelist. This stable environment ended in 1801, however, when George Austen, then age 70, retired to Bath with his wife and daughters. For eight years Jane had to put up with a succession of temporary lodgings or visits to relatives, in Bath, London, Clifton, Warwickshire, and, finally, Southampton, where the three women lived from 1805 to 1809. In 1804 Jane began The Watsons but soon abandoned it. In 1804 her dearest friend, Mrs. Anne Lefroy, died suddenly, and in January 1805 her father died in Bath.
  Eventually, in 1809, Jane’s brother Edward was able to provide his mother and sisters with a large cottage in the village of Chawton, within his Hampshire estate, not far from Steventon. The prospect of settling at Chawton had already given Jane Austen a renewed sense of purpose, and she began to prepare Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice for publication. She was encouraged by her brother Henry, who acted as go-between with her publishers. She was probably also prompted by her need for money. Two years later Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility, which came out, anonymously, in November 1811. Both of the leading reviews, the Critical Review and the Quarterly Review, welcomed its blend of instruction and amusement.
  Meanwhile, in 1811 Austen had begun Mansfield Park, which was finished in 1813 and published in 1814. By then she was an established (though anonymous) author; Egerton had published Pride and Prejudice in January 1813, and later that year there were second editions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Pride and Prejudice seems to have been the fashionable novel of its season. Between January 1814 and March 1815 she wrote Emma, which appeared in December 1815. In 1816 there was a second edition of Mansfield Park, published, like Emma, by Lord Byron’s publisher, John Murray. Persuasion (written August 1815–August 1816) was published posthumously, with Northanger Abbey, in December 1817.
  The years after 1811 seem to have been the most rewarding of her life. She had the satisfaction of seeing her work in print and well reviewed and of knowing that the novels were widely read. They were so much enjoyed by the prince regent (later George IV) that he had a set in each of his residences, and Emma, at a discreet royal command, was “respectfully dedicated” to him. The reviewers praised the novels for their morality and entertainment, admired the character drawing, and welcomed the domestic realism as a refreshing change from the romantic melodrama then in vogue.
  For the last 18 months of her life, Austen was busy writing. Early in 1816, at the onset of her fatal illness, she set down the burlesque Plan of a Novel, According to Hints from Various Quarters (first published in 1871). Until August 1816 she was occupied with Persuasion, and she looked again at the manuscript of “Susan” (Northanger Abbey).
  In January 1817 she began Sanditon, a robust and self-mocking satire on health resorts and invalidism. This novel remained unfinished because of Austen’s declining health. She supposed that she was suffering from bile, but the symptoms make possible a modern clinical assessment that she was suffering from Addison disease. Her condition fluctuated, but in April she made her will, and in May she was taken to Winchester to be under the care of an expert surgeon. She died on July 18, and six days later she was buried in Winchester Cathedral.
  Her authorship was announced to the world at large by her brother Henry, who supervised the publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. There was no recognition at the time that regency England had lost its keenest observer and sharpest analyst; no understanding that a miniaturist (as she maintained that she was and as she was then seen), a “merely domestic” novelist, could be seriously concerned with the nature of society and the quality of its culture; no grasp of Jane Austen as a historian of the emergence of regency society into the modern world. During her lifetime there had been a solitary response in any way adequate to the nature of her achievement: Sir Walter Scott’s review of Emma in the Quarterly Review for March 1816, where he hailed this “nameless author” as a masterful exponent of “the modern novel” in the new realist tradition. After her death, there was for long only one significant essay, the review of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in the Quarterly for January 1821 by the theologian Richard Whately. Together, Scott’s and Whately’s essays provided the foundation for serious criticism of Jane Austen: their insights were appropriated by critics throughout the 19th century.

Austen’s Novels: An Overview
Jane Austen’s three early novels form a distinct group in which a strong element of literary satire accompanies the comic depiction of character and society.
  Sense and Sensibility tells the story of the impoverished Dashwood sisters. Marianne is the heroine of “sensibility”—i.e., of openness and enthusiasm. She becomes infatuated with the attractive John Willoughby, who seems to be a romantic lover but is in reality an unscrupulous fortune hunter. He deserts her for an heiress, leaving her to learn a dose of “sense” in a wholly unromantic marriage with a staid and settled bachelor, Colonel Brandon, who is 20 years her senior. By contrast, Marianne’s older sister, Elinor, is the guiding light of “sense,” or prudence and discretion, whose constancy toward her lover, Edward Ferrars, is rewarded by her marriage to him after some distressing vicissitudes.
  Pride and Prejudice describes the clash between Elizabeth Bennet, the daughter of a country gentleman, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, a rich and aristocratic landowner. Although Austen shows them intrigued by each other, she reverses the convention of “first impressions”: “pride” of rank and fortune and “prejudice” against the inferiority of the Bennet family hold Darcy aloof, while Elizabeth is equally fired both by the “pride” of self-respect and by “prejudice” against Darcy’s snobbery. Ultimately, they come together in love and self-understanding. The intelligent and high-spirited Elizabeth was Jane Austen’s own favourite among all her heroines and is one of the most engaging in English literature.
  Northanger Abbey combines a satire on conventional novels of polite society with one on Gothic tales of terror. Catherine Morland, the unspoiled daughter of a country parson, is the innocent abroad who gains worldly wisdom, first in the fashionable society of Bath and then at Northanger Abbey itself, where she learns not to interpret the world through her reading of Gothic thrillers. Her mentor and guide is the self-assured and gently ironic Henry Tilney, her husband-to-be.
  In the three novels of Jane Austen’s maturity, the literary satire, though still present, is more subdued and is subordinated to the comedy of character and society.
  In its tone and discussion of religion and religious duty, Mansfield Park is the most serious of Austen’s novels. The heroine, Fanny Price, is a self-effacing and unregarded cousin cared for by the Bertram family in their country house. Fanny emerges as a true heroine whose moral strength eventually wins her complete acceptance in the Bertram family and marriage to Edmund Bertram himself, after that family’s disastrous involvement with the meretricious and loose-living Crawfords.
  Of all Austen’s novels, Emma is the most consistently comic in tone. It centres on Emma Woodhouse, a wealthy, pretty, self-satisfied young woman who indulges herself with meddlesome and unsuccessful attempts at matchmaking among her friends and neighbours. After a series of humiliating errors, a chastened Emma finds her destiny in marriage to the mature and protective George Knightley, a neighbouring squire who had been her mentor and friend.
  Persuasion tells the story of a second chance, the reawakening of love between Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth, whom seven years earlier she had been persuaded not to marry. Now Wentworth returns from the Napoleonic Wars with prize money and the social acceptability of naval rank. He is an eligible suitor acceptable to Anne’s snobbish father and his circle, and Anne discovers the continuing strength of her love for him.

Austen’s Accomplishments And Legacy
Although the birth of the English novel is to be seen in the first half of the 18th century primarily in the work of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding, it is with Jane Austen that the novel takes on its distinctively modern character in the realistic treatment of unremarkable people in the unremarkable situations of everyday life. In her six major novels — Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion — Austen created the comedy of manners of middle-class life in the England of her time, revealing the possibilities of “domestic” literature. Her repeated fable of a young woman’s voyage to self-discovery on the passage through love to marriage focuses upon easily recognizable aspects of life. It is this concentration upon character and personality and upon the tensions between her heroines and their society that relates her novels more closely to the modern world than to the traditions of the 18th century. It is this modernity, together with the wit, realism, and timelessness of her prose style, her shrewd, amused sympathy, and the satisfaction to be found in stories so skillfully told, in novels so beautifully constructed, that helps to explain her continuing appeal for readers of all kinds. Modern critics remain fascinated by the commanding structure and organization of the novels, by the triumphs of technique that enable the writer to lay bare the tragicomedy of existence in stories of which the events and settings are apparently so ordinary and so circumscribed.


Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice is a romance novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story charts the
Pride and Prejudice
emotional development of the protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, who learns the error of making hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between the superficial and the essential. The comedy of the writing lies in the depiction of manners, education, marriage and money in the British Regency.
  Mr. Bennet of the Longbourn estate has five daughters, but his property is entailed, meaning that none of the girls can inherit it. His wife has no fortune, so it is imperative that at least one of the girls marry well in order to support the others on his death. Jane Austen's opening line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" is a sentence filled with irony and playfulness. The novel revolves around the necessity of marrying for love, not simply for monetary reasons, despite the social pressures to make a good [i.e. wealthy] match.
  Pride and Prejudice retains the fascination of modern readers, consistently appearing near the top of lists of "most-loved books" among both literary scholars and the general public. It has become one of the most popular novels in English literature, with over 20 million copies sold, and paved the way for many archetypes that abound in modern literature. Continuing interest in the book has resulted in a number of dramatic adaptations and an abundance of novels and stories imitating Austen's memorable characters or themes. The 2005 film, Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen is the most recent Hollywood adaption of the book.


Miss Elizabeth Bennet
Elizabeth Bennet is the protagonist in the 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. She is often referred to as Eliza or Lizzy by her friends and family. Elizabeth is the second child in a family of five daughters. Though the circumstances of the time and environment push her to seek a marriage of convenience for economic security, Elizabeth wishes to marry for love.
  Elizabeth is regarded as the most admirable and endearing of Austen's heroines. She is considered one of the most beloved characters in British literature because of her complexity. Austen herself described Elizabeth as "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print."

Miss Elizabeth Bennet
Miss Elizabeth Bennet
  Elizabeth is the second eldest of the five Bennet sisters of the Longbourn estate, situated near the fictional market village of Meryton in Hertfordshire, England. She is 20 years old at the beginning of the novel. Elizabeth is described as an intelligent young woman, with "a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in anything ridiculous". She often presents a playful good-natured impertinence that does not offend. Early in the novel she is depicted as being personally proud of her wit and her accuracy in judging the social behaviour and intentions of others.
  Her father is a landowner, but his daughters cannot inherit because the estate is entailed upon the male line (it can only be inherited by male relatives). Upon his death, Longbourn will therefore be inherited by his cousin and nearest male relation, Mr. William Collins, a clergyman for the Rosings Estate in Kent owned by Lady Catherine de Bourgh. This future provides the cause of Mrs. Bennet's eagerness to have her daughters married off to wealthy men.
  Elizabeth is her father's favourite, described by him as having "something more of quickness than her sisters". In contrast, she is the least dear to her mother, especially after Elizabeth refuses a marriage proposal from Mr Collins. Her mother tends to contrast her negatively with her sisters Jane and Lydia, whom she considers superior in beauty and disposition, respectively, and does not understand her father's preference. Elizabeth is often upset and embarrassed by the impropriety and silliness of her mother and three younger sisters.
  Within her neighbourhood Elizabeth is considered a beauty and a charming young woman with "fine eyes", to which Mr. Darcy is first drawn. Darcy is later attracted more particularly to her "light and pleasing" figure, the "easy playfulness" of her manners, her mind and personality, and eventually considers her "one of the handsomest women" in his acquaintance.


Winchester Cathedral
Winchester Cathedral is a Church of England cathedral in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It is one of the largest cathedrals in Europe, with the longest nave and greatest overall length of any Gothic cathedral in Europe.
  Dedicated to the Holy Trinity, Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and before the Reformation, Saint Swithun, it is the seat of the Bishop of Winchester and centre of the Diocese of Winchester. The cathedral is a Grade I listed building.
  Nowadays the cathedral draws many tourists as a result of its association with Jane Austen, who died in Winchester on 18 July 1817. Her funeral was held in the cathedral, and she was buried in the north aisle. The inscription on her tombstone makes no mention of her novels, but a later brass tablet describes her as "known to many by her writings".


Godmersham Park, Kent, the Seat of Thomas Knight Esq.
In the summer of 1798, Jane and her mother, father and Cassandra come to Kent to visit their rich brother
Godmersham Park, Kent, the Seat of Thomas Knight Esq.
"Godmersham Park, Kent, the Seat of Thomas Knight Esq."
Lithography by English lithographer William Watts (1752-1851)
Edward. The Edward family recently purchased the Manmarsh-Park estate, which became one of the prototypes of the ideal estate of Pemberley from Pride and Prejudice. It was an era when a landscape garden style, called all over the world by English and chanting, in harmony with Rousseau's philosophy, everything natural, came to replace the regular. Former parks, created in French or regular style, affecting primarily luxury and pretentiousness - for example, Versailles - began to be considered an example of bad taste, contributed to the anti-French sentiment in the country that is at war with Napoleon. In the description of Pemberley, Jane pays tribute to the ideals of landscape style: "It was a majestic stone building, well located on the slope of a ridge of wooded hills." The flowing stream in the valley, without noticeable artificial structures, turned before the house into a wider stream, the banks of which did not seem excessively strict or excessive Well-groomed. "Elizabeth was delighted."
  Like Mr. Darcy, Edward watched the condition of the lands that were part of his manor-the plot surrounding the estate-for the life and work of the tenants. In one letter, Jane mentions that "yesterday we had a day for Godmarsh: the gentlemen on horseback inspected Edward's farm and returned just in time to take a stroll along Benting with us." The Edward family grew every year: sons and daughters were born. Jane has become friends with the governess of the girls Anne Sharp, from whom she will look forward to the reviews on her novels. And Anne will not disappoint her: all her reviews will be thought out, written in the most benevolent tone, but extremely sincere and, probably, will bring Jane a lot of benefit. Later, Edward's wife will die during her last-eleventh birth.
  Godmersham Park was located in the valley of the wide river Stour, was surrounded by a vast garden with numerous paths for walks and hunting grounds - the root "park" in the name of the estate just pointed out that there was a deer game reserve for hunting. On the south side of the house there was an artificially planted forest called Bunting, and a grove with a gazebo in the form of a Greek temple on a hill. Jane described him as "Temple forest, worthy, I'm not afraid to say, Knight Bayard," and told them that they often walked here after dinner.
  Fashion for walks in the bosom of nature came along with romanticism. Young people embarked on foot or on horseback to admire some picturesque landscape, and at the same time, having a moment, to be alone, away from the noisy company. Many engagements in both novels and life were made during such walks.
  The girls could go for a walk and together: to paint, read a good book and, of course, discreetly.
  The exercise was considered useful not only for arrangement of personal life, but also for health. Doctors recommended that everyone, and especially women, walk and ride as much as possible to be always in good shape. Mary Wollstonecraft in the famous book "In defense of women's rights" complains that girls are not allowed to play outdoor games with boys, girls are not allowed to dance until they fall and thereby turn women into frail and anemic creatures flaunting their weakness. Another English feminist, the heroine of the novel Mary Ann Henweigh, Lady John Darel, the Duchess of Dreadnaught - her husband's name before her surname indicates that she is wearing the title thanks to him, - was indignant that the girls "are imprisoned in a nursery ... they rarely get the chance to use their even if they walk around their prison cell, if the wind blows from the south, it is too strong, if it's too cold from the north ... Their mother lets them out on the street only for a very short time and only in the warmest weather - a few days for the whole year ". Priscilla Wakefield, the author of "Reflections on the Present Situation of Women," believed that physical exercises could help women more successfully fulfill their maternal functions, that women's inactivity "leads to the fact that our offspring grows devoid of the courage and noble energy of patriotism."
  And yet not all walks looked decent. When in Pride and Prejudice two younger sisters Elizabeth go for a mile and a half (about three kilometers) to a small town, it does not bother anyone. But when Elizabeth herself walks three miles (about five kilometers) alone in the fields, hurrying to the aid of a sick sister, it breeds gossip at Netherfield Park. Only Bingley is genuinely happy to see Elizabeth, because he is also concerned about Jane's health, but his sisters behind the guest's gaze are angry about the spots on the hem of her skirt, provincial manners and "the ability to walk unusually long distances on foot in the morning, like some savage." As for Mr. Darcy, "the latter experienced mixed feelings: he admired the lovely blush that blossomed on her face after a long walk, but doubted, whether it was reasonable to make such a long journey alone. "
  Perhaps describing Elizabeth's "Great Walking Walk Through the Fields of Hertfordshire," Jane was inspired by her own "mud campaign" - one day on a rainy night with a lantern in her hands, she was also hurrying to help James's wife, who gave birth to her first daughter Anna in the estate next to Steventon.


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