If Northanger Abbey foregrounds the emergence of a sense of self, the formation of a thinking moral agent whose questioning of dominant culture reshapes morality, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice wrestle with the question of otherness. These two novels deal less with hierarchical relationships than Northanger Abbey or Lady Susan; here the pivotal issue revolves around intersubjective understanding between more or less equal subjects rather than despotism. The question then is how relationships can be enacted and sustained when participants disagree on points they think crucial to their understanding of each other. Indeed, if we agree with Hobbes that manners go beyond the ‘small morals’ of decent behaviour and comprise the ‘qualities of mankind, that concern their living together in peace and unity’, then the present chapter is about manners.

The desire for ‘peace and unity’ and the claim for social agreement was becoming increasingly important in a society that steered towards normative claims such as freedom, equality and reciprocity, these being notions elaborated by Rousseau in The Social Contract (1762). For Rousseau, the conditions of freedom, equality and reciprocity ensured the legitimacy of the social bond. He saw them as essential ingredients required for the crystallization of a general will that pursued the common good.