This chapter examines the myth whether Jane Austen's depict the traditional world of the aristocracy. There are not many nobs with hereditary titles in Austen's novels, and these rare aristocrats often have a sting in their tail. Of all the characters in Austen's completed fictions, it is the Dashwood women in Sense and Sensibility whose unremarkable social condition comes closest to her own: they embody the everyday social indignities of women on the margins of good society. Austen's world, though not aristocratic, was nevertheless supported by servants. In Emma, the servants are a vital part of the household, forming an alliance against the gypsies, separated from them behind the iron gates that keep the gypsies out. Austen's contemporary Sir Walter Scott uses the general term “the middling classes of society” to refer to Austen's social milieu.