"A girl should be impressed, from the first dawnings of reason, that she lives, not for herself only, but to contribute to the happiness of others," writes Priscilla Wakefield in her book Reflections on the Present Conditions of the Female Sex. This statement embraces all that is true about how a woman in the early 1800's should have behaved from her childhood until her death. A women's life is never completely her own, as she lives too delight others in looks and acts from her parent's house to her husband's, and her happiness should evolve from the satisfaction of pleasing others. The woman should be nurturing yet dependent, educated but without significant knowledge and demure but yet have the power to entertain; and of course she must be beautiful. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Jane Austen's Persuasion, both advocate the ideal woman, in many ways by contrasting how the protagonists in the novels, Jane and Anne, act to how an "ideal woman" should look and behave. The characteristics described of a woman in Wakefield's work are well presented in both our heroines; however, neither of them finds happiness by being "the ideal woman". .
Both Persuasion and Jane Eyre offer various approaches to explain the standards of "the ideal woman". In Persuasion we become introduced to an "excellent" woman in the very beginning, when the late wife to Sir Walters, Lady Elliot, is described. "She had humored, or softened, or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for seventeen years; and though not the very happiest being in the world herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends and her children, to attach her to life" (Austen, 47). As far as an ideal woman can be found this seems to be her. With no aspiration for her own happiness, Lady Elliot dedicates her life to her husband. She seems to possess many of the talents needed of a woman according to Wakefield.
