Description

A standard social accomplishment in upper middle-class circles throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, playing the piano, as did countless heroines in English literature from Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet to E. M. Forster’s Lucy Honeychurch, was de rigueur. If a woman’s suitor or husband was musical, he likely played a melody instrument such as the flute or violin, the consequence being that when they played duets, she accompanied him, taking his lead, just as she was expected to do in all other aspects of life.