Already we have an interesting glimpse into Marianne's own guidelines for "the way things ought to be". Among them:

• If you are grieving, only an agony of grief will do, and you must not let go of it. You must renew it, seek it, and recreate it afresh over and over. You must give yourself up wholly to your sorrow, and dredge up every reflection that could possibly increase your wretchedness. The future must hold no possibilty of consolation.

• Any man of virtue and intelligence will have spirit and fire in his eyes that reveal it, as well as engaging manners and charm.

• Only rapturous delight, expressed on the proper subject, can properly be called taste. It is impossible for anyone with real feeling to hear poetry with impenetrable calmness--or worse, dreadful indifference.

• Nevertheless, blind partiality for the object of one's love is honourable. But it is worse than cold-hearted not to express this in raptures as well.

• However, one must not even be civil to a person who is deficient in general taste.

• For the proper expression of one's feelings on nature, wandering alone and possibly weeping are eminently suitable.

• A cottage ought, properly, to have a sloping roof, green shutters, and to be covered in honeysuckle.

• By an advanced state of life, such as age 35, one has probably outlived all acuteness of feeling and every exquisite power of enjoyment.