People hear manners and marriage and assume I was writing polite silence instead of social warfare. by Jane Austen

Jane, polite silence is what dull people call social warfare when they lose.

Oscar, manners are just knives that learned posture.

Exactly. The quietest person at dinner usually knows where the motive is buried.

Agatha, motive is simply bad manners with ambition.

Marriage in my books was not romance. It was economics wearing gloves.

And every glove leaves a print if the room is patient enough.

That was not a reply. That was a mirror with subtitles.

I did not write polite silence. I wrote society cutting itself with its own fork.