The Jane Austen Rules Quotes

“The notion that we ought to dress for men is, then, a foolish notion indeed. And we ought to dispense with the rules for how to do it, rules that would reduce us women to a second childhood, during which we dress in the morning in what was laid out for us on the night before. In fact, we ought to dispense with the rules of 'fashion' more generally, for the are founded on this misguided premise: that women, grown women!, are unable to dress themselves.”
― Sinead Murphy, The Jane Austen Rules: A Classic Guide to Modern Love

“You see, not everything worth knowing is to be found between the covers of books; and not everything worth listening to is to be heard from the mouths of those who read them. On the contrary, there is a kind of knowledge that is to be had only by virtue of the 'chatter' and 'gossip' at which Mrs Bennet and Mrs Jennings are so adept.”
― Sinead Murphy, The Jane Austen Rules: A Classic Guide to Modern Love

“But she is right, at least in this: Looking to promote oneself at the expense of other women, setting oneself up as a creature unlike any other, is paltry device, and one that has kept us women 'in our place' for as much of time as history can recall.”
― Sinead Murphy, The Jane Austen Rules: A Classic Guide to Modern Love

“You see, the Regency conduct book tended to judge a woman by how she conducts herself-that is, by how she acts, by how she seems. The novel, by contrast, was concerned with what women are really like, admitting- perhaps for the very first time- that women too have a fulsome interior life, with thoughts and feelings that are as crucial to get right as the actions that follow from them. In the novel it was much more important that a woman cultivate herself than that she learn how to appear to do so, much more crucial that she be truly worthy than that she learn how to maker herself seem so. In the novel, in other words, women are allowed to be real, and nor merely the cardboard cut-outs to whom the conduct books directed its advice.”
― Sinead Murphy, The Jane Austen Rules: A Classic Guide to Modern Love