Even though we tend to think the world of Lizzy, she was an “old basket” at the Meryton Assembly. The gentlemen might have been scarce, but they were there and they preferred other women to Elizabeth. “Catherine and Lydia had been fortunate enough to be never without partners, which was all that they had yet learnt to care for at a ball.” (ch 3).

According to her letter to Cassandra, prior to writing P&P, Austen has become unpopular at the balls to the point that gentlemen would avoid asking her to dance unless they were embarrassed into it. I am not suggesting that Austen wrote herself into Lizzy, but I always understood Lizzy as being attractive to few select men who appreciated wit and spirit but not nearly as popular as Kitty and Lydia.