Jane Austen’s œuvre was composed at a time when the paradigmatic shift from the concept of “rank” to that of “class” was well under way. Her novels thus subtly dramatise the social transformations inherent in the advent of a new economic and financial order, far from the ancient vertical relations of deference and patronage. The notions of “aurea mediocritas” and of “virtue”, as applied to the “middle classes”, raise several questions of definition and representation in her novels. If, in Emma, the characters’ approach to consumption and to sociability, or their strategies to appropriate some of the prerogatives of the gentry testify to the emergence of the “middling classes of society”, or even of a “middle class”, such changes are more striking in Persuasion: while the concept of rank is clearly invalidated, except among the navy, sailors are depicted as sharing common values and partaking of a new legitimate power in the wake of their decisive victories.