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| Costumes are period accurate for the Regency era, and her gown is based on the fashion plate below. |
She Had Four Minutes to Make a Good Impression. And She Couldn't Say Anything Interesting.
If you've ever read a Regency romance and wondered why the heroine spends so much energy on not saying things, you're asking exactly the right question.
Regency ballroom conversation had rules. Unwritten ones, which somehow made them worse—because everyone was expected to simply know them.
The short version: say as little as possible, make it pleasant, and never reveal anything that might embarrass your family. The weather was safe. The quality of the supper was safe. Admiring someone's gown was safe. Anything beyond that required careful navigation.
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| Fashion plate of a Regency ball gown from Ackerman’s Repository, February 1809. |
What you absolutely could not discuss:
Politics, religion, and money were off the table entirely. War—even as soldiers were dying on the Continent and families waited anxiously for news—was considered too grim and too masculine for a ballroom. A young woman who expressed a strong opinion on parliamentary matters risked being quietly written off as odd, or forward, or both.
Personal matters were equally dangerous, but in a different direction. Gossip, romantic speculation, or anything that smacked of impropriety marked you as vulgar rather than refined.
Jane Austen, who knew this world from the inside, was endlessly fascinated by the gap between what people said and what they actually thought. In Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney parodies the expected ballroom script almost the moment he meets Catherine Morland—he rattles off exactly what they're supposed to say to each other, right down to whether she finds Bath crowded. It's funny because it's true. That really was the script, and most people stuck to it faithfully.
The ones who didn't are the ones we still remember.
In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet's conversations with Darcy stand out precisely because she refuses to perform. She asks real questions. She pushes back. She teases. Darcy, who has spent his entire social life surrounded by people telling him what he wants to hear, genuinely doesn't know how to respond at first. Their verbal sparring is romantic because it's so unusual.
On the other end of the spectrum, Austen gives us Anne Steele in Sense and Sensibility as a cautionary tale in the opposite direction. Anne's problem is that she shares too much. She chatters constantly about which men might be interested in her and speculates openly about her romantic prospects, which was considered embarrassingly forward. In a world where discretion was the highest social virtue, the Steeles were a walking reminder of how not to overshare.
The sweet spot was to be witty but not sharp, warm but not familiar, interested but not too interested—and it was genuinely difficult to hit. Most young women erred on the side of saying very little at all.
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| An AI-generated image of the same dancing dress as above, based on the illustration and the description in Ackermann’s. |
Which brings me to Lissa Gardinier, the heroine of my novella Lissa and the Spy.
Lissa has been given strict instructions by her mother: safe topics only. Weather. Fashion. The food. She understands the rules perfectly. She simply finds them unbearable.
So when she finds herself dancing with Mr. Collingworth for the second time, she quietly rebels. And it works … until it doesn’t:
Lissa was not so obedient to her mother that she would subject herself to the torture of conversation topics such as the weather and the food at the ball, which she’d already discussed at length with her other dancing partners. So she asked a more unusual question. “Mr. Collingworth, shall you miss activities at your country estate while you are in town?”
His slack-jawed face abruptly became animated. “Yes indeed, Miss Gardinier. I breed hunting dogs, you see, and I’ve had particular luck this year with several pups …”
It was not that Lissa was interested in the pedigrees of his hunting dogs, who all seemed to have the most ridiculous names. It was that Mr. Collingworth became more interesting as he waxed eloquent about something that interested him, as opposed to the safe topics to which Lissa’s mother had restricted her daughter.
Her dance with Mr. Collingworth last Season may have been the start of it all. At the beginning of the Season, she’d been overwhelmed by the number of people at each party compared to the small gatherings in her home village, and by the way they all seemed to know each other and converse so easily with each other. She had attempted to join in their conversations, but while every one of her peers knew about the latest fashion plates from France, no one was particularly interested in the latest discussion in the House of Lords, or at the very least, they didn’t admit to doing so. And they visibly shied away from speaking about the war, as though it were a dirty topic that only the uncouth brought up in polite conversation.
She had ended up not saying much at all, which she belatedly realized made her uninteresting and boring compared to other young women. It hadn’t helped that Lissa’s face was rather plain, and her only beauty, her blonde hair, had been ruthlessly styled in a ridiculous—but a la mode—fashion that made her look like an egg had exploded.
But last year during that first dance with Mr. Collingworth, upon seeing him excitedly discuss his dog breeding, she had been encouraged to also speak without restraint. So she had voiced her exact thoughts rather than hiding behind a vapid facade. “Why in the world would you name a dog Lickspittle Furrybottom?”
At Mr. Collingworth’s startled look, Lissa realized that she’d said that out loud now, in this dance with him.
“… Not that it’s not a lovely name,” she added lamely.
Mr. Collingworth didn’t believe her, and his conversation faltered. She regretted that, for she hadn’t intended to be rude to him.
“Er … did I speak of Lickspittle Furrybottom?” he asked.
Lissa did a mental shriek at her mistake. “We spoke briefly about her last year. You were worried about her compatibility with Snout Droolalot.” To alleviate his embarrassment at not remembering her, she said, "I was relieved to hear that Lickspittle Furrybottom and Snout Droolalot had such a healthy litter. What are your plans for their puppies?” Talking about puppies was acceptable dance conversation, wasn’t it?
It pleased Mr. Collingworth to continue discussing puppies for the remainder of the dance.
What I love about this scene (aside from the fun of coming up with those dog names!) is that Lissa's instinct to ask about something real, something that actually matters to the person in front of her is genuinely because she wants to connect, not perform.
That desire, I think, is timeless. The rules of Regency ballrooms are long gone, but the tension between saying what's expected and saying what's true is still very much with us.
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Lissa and the Spy is a Regency romantic suspense novella about a plain-spoken heroine, a spy with secrets, and a London Season that goes sideways in the best possible way. You can receive it free when you join my newsletter.
Lissa and the Spy
A Regency Romantic Suspense Novella
In her quest for a marriage of convenience, plain and unpopular Lissa finds herself entangled with the enigmatic Lord Jeremy Stoude, who has a secret mission for the Crown. As danger stalks them, they must navigate a labyrinth of society’s expectations and their own insecurities to find love.
Click here to get Lissa and the Spy
Reference Footer
This post relates to Camille Elliot’s Lady Wynwood’s Spies, a Christian Regency romantic suspense series set in 1811 London and featuring intrigue, espionage, botanical alchemy, slow-burn romance, and themes of faith and redemption.
• Lady Wynwood’s Spies Series Reference Page
• Reading Order: Lady Wynwood’s Spies Reader Journey Roadmap
This article originally appeared on the Heroes, Heroines, and History blog and is reposted here for my readers.
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