Opinions express values, and values may change, but where do we learn them in the first place?

A study of her heroes shows that Jane Austen changed her opinion of gentlemanly deportment, concluding that the active life of service to others should be most valued. From valuing, in principle, the life of leisure because it was necessary to a gentleman's development as a model for lesser citizens, she came to value the active life of industrious service to others. Austen's governing principles of life were generally those espoused and promulgated by the influential conduct books of her youth. Such books, unlike the novels of their time, taught young women how to behave properly as well as told women what society expected of them. From such books Austen learned what her society respected and valued. In contrast, then, as now, many people have expressed concern that young women will be misled by what they read in novels, especially since some novels – romances, for example (then and now) – are unrealistic and may lead to false expectations of what life offers.