page_title: Georgian society in Jane Austen's novels
section_title: Carriages
hierarchical_section_title: Georgian society in Jane Austen's novels / Country life / Carriages
caption_attribution_description: English: Line art drawing of a barouche.
context_page_description: Georgian society in Jane Austen's novels is the ever-present background of her work, the world in which all her characters are set. Entirely situated during the reign of George III, the novels of Jane Austen describe their everyday lives, their joys, and sorrows, as well as their loves, and provide in the process an irreplaceable insight into the period.
  Jane Austen's novels deal with such varied subjects as the historical context, the social hierarchies of the time, the role and status of the clergy, gender roles, marriage, or the pastimes of well-off families. Without even the reader noticing, many details are broached, whether of daily life, of forgotten legal aspects, or of surprising customs, thus bringing life and authenticity to the English society of this period.
  Nevertheless, the point of view from which Jane Austen describes England is that of a woman of the English gentry, belonging to a reasonably well-off family, well connected and remarkably well educated for the time, and living in a very small village of rural England around the late 1790s or early 19th century.
context_section_description: Average speed for carriages of this time was seven miles an hour. When general Tilney left Bath for Northanger, his 'handsome, highly-fed four horses' performed the journey of thirty miles at a sober pace, broken into two stages with a two hours' rest in between. Even then, roads could be in poor state, as remarked by Mrs Norris, between Mansfield and Sotherton (Mansfield Park), or even snowy. Normally only the privileged who earned seven hundred to a thousand pounds a year could afford a carriage, and driving sporting gigs and curricles was largely the preserve of the fashionable, elite male.
caption: The barouche was the fashionable carriage of the time.
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