To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum.
– Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 8. Elizabeth’s independence of spirit is what makes her a hero to many Jane Austen readers, and these include women the world over today. But Caroline Bingley, one of the novel’s villains who is jealous of Elizabeth, remains unimpressed. Here she berates Lizzy’s three-mile walk to see her ill sister as an exercise in conceit and lack of decorum.