I was interested in the Introduction, where Vickery is discusses how Englishwomen supposedly descened into "indolence and luxury" once the small-scale manufacture/production of various crafts (textiles, furniture, etc.) left the home and the workplace became a separate place.

She writes how the ladies of the Resortation era were supposed to be distinguished only by their "devotion to idle graces" and lived lives of "frivolousness and futility" and how, by the era this book concerns, "separate spheres" developed, which entirely separated the everyday worlds of men and women.

...privileged women abandoned all enterprise, estate management and productive housekeeping to their servants in order to devote themselves to deocrative display.

My sense is that Vickery is arguing against these points, and saying this was not how things really were for many women of this class---or am I misinterpreting?

Nevertheless, various Austen characters and situations popped into my mind as I read this:

• Harriet Smith--I could hear Mr. Knightley saying (slightly snipped) "(Robert Martin) is not her equal indeed, for he is as much her superior in sense as in situation.... What are Harriet Smith's claims, either of birth, nature or education, to any connection higher than Robert Martin? ... She is known only as parlour-boarder at a common school. She is not a sensible girl, nor a girl of any information. She has been taught nothing useful, and is too young and too simple to have acquired any thing herself. ... She is pretty, and she is good tempered, and that is all. My only scruple in advising the match was on his account, as being beneath his deserts, and a bad connexion for him. I felt, that as to fortune, in all probability he might do much better; and that as to a rational companion or useful helpmate, he could not do worse."

• In S&S, Lady Middleton has not even bothered to exert herself as far as playing the pianoforte since her marriage, and Sir John "who called on (the Dashwoods) every day for the first fortnight, and who was not in the habit of seeing much occupation at home, could not conceal his amazement on finding them always employed.

• Lady Catherine's advice to Mr. Collins in selecting a wife "Chuse properly, chuse a gentlewoman for my sake; and for your own, let her be an active, useful sort of person..."

• And, of course, She Who Personifies Indolence: Lady Bertram.