Catherine Morland’s induction into the fashionable world of Bath attests to the coeval significance of a woman’s stylish agency and her cachet as an eligible wife. With regard to society’s matrimonial valuing of women, Jane Austen deftly calls attention to the heroine’s social inertia in Northanger Abbey, illustrating the unsuitability of her home in Fullerton, where “[s]he had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility; without having inspired one real passion…” (18). Accordingly, Catherine is invited to Bath to accompany the modish and affluent Mrs. Allen, who is “probably aware that if adventures will not befal a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad,” where Mr. Allen has been fortuitously ordered to assuage his gouty constitution (18). Furthermore, the literature written by Austen’s contemporaries, regarding chic trends and “feminine pursuits,” substantiate the inducive relationship between fashionable appearances and diversions and the marriage market. Bourdier de Villemert, for example, whose conduct book, The Friend of Woman,¹ instructs the young debutante on various essentials, such as dress, love and gallantry, and marriage, asserts: “The aim of women, when they deck themselves with so much care, is, more assuredly, to please; and even to please us, according to our ideas…We may then give them some advice, and pronounce upon the form in which we wish they would regulate” (63 emphasis mine). To this end, Austen’s portraiture of Catherine as an emergent heroine, who endeavors to stylize herself according to the current vogue, accedes with the social expectations that disseminate a woman’s passage into womanhood and marriage. With Villemert’s writings as a paradigm, Austen illuminates Catherine’s narrative by unifying her emblematic manifestation of a genuine debutante with the societal conventions, which encourage a woman’s sentient propensity toward aesthetic refinement and cultural decorum.

           With regard to these manifest considerations, Villemert encourages a delicacy of style that he believes some woman violate: “Dress, employed with management, puts beauty in its meridian; but, it appears to me, they have sometimes abused its assistance” (64). In view of this, the articles concerning female dress, accessories, and hairstyles in “The Ladies’ Toilet: Fashions Represented in Engravings,” acquaint fashionable ladies with the niceties and the plenitude of gowns, designed for the public promenade and evening attire, for example. Noting the styles that have succeeded and those that remain unpopular, the author also specifies the accoutrements and fabrics, which compliment specific public amusements: “Long silk scarves also prevail much in out-door costume…Flowers in the hair are much worn by young ladies in evening dress parties…During the intense warmth of the weather, about the middle of June, white muslin dresses were seen to prevail much…” (58, 61). The proliferation of details in this magazine to which society prescribed verifies Mrs. Allen’s fastidious attention to Catherine’s manner of dress:

Dress was her passion…our heroine’s entrée into life could not take

place till after three or four days had been spent in learning what was

the newest fashion…Her hair was cut and dressed by the best hand, her

clothes put on with care. (21)

Though Mrs. Allen’s stylish pursuits and sensibilities engross the entirety of her interests— “There goes a strange-looking woman! What an odd gown she has got on!—How old fashioned it is! Look at the back” (23)— her ardor for fashion is evocative of Austen’s fashion-conscious public. Her mindfulness towards Catherine’s attire also facilitates social opportunities for Austen’s heroine since her personal charm inevitably disseminates her initial reception into Bath’s culture of fashion and courtship.

           To this end, Catherine’s tutelage under Mrs. Allen, while mostly didactic through commentary, corresponds with the elegance of style expected of prospective brides, as indicated by Villemert: “Ornaments ought only to assist the graces, not stifle them…If women understood welltheir interests and our’s, they would place no account on misplaced richness, which defeats the effect of their charms, and the pleasure we have in finding them handsome” (65). Thus, with the purpose of preparing her for the marriage market, Catherine must epitomize the sophistication of the haute couture. Like the popular magazines and conduct books suggest, a genteel appearance, alone, enables the young debutante to be favorably judged and received by prospective suitors and their families—an ideology perpetuated by the ubiquitous readership of fashion magazines as well. For example, in Gallery of Fashion 1790-1822 from Plates by Heideloff and Ackerman, Sacheverell Sitwell, a twentieth-century critic, estimates that six to eight hundred people subscribed to N. W. von Heideloff’s Gallery of Fashion, an approximation that he contends would generate an income sufficient to support the magazine (3).²The copiousness of fashion magazines and their subscribers affirm the popularity and importance of women’s attire, thus rendering the implication that fashion imposed a social obligation. Catherine’s agency as a marriageable woman, therefore, is revealed through her panache for clothing and culture.