Final thoughts

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Garamond; panose-1:2 2 4 4 3 3 1 1 8 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Georgia; panose-1:2 4 5 2 5 4 5 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; mso-layout-grid-align:none; punctuation-wrap:simple; text-autospace:none; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} span.textexposedshow {mso-style-name:text_exposed_show;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">…And, that’s it. That’s the canon</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">.</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">When I undertook this project, back in 2009, my aim was to rescue Jane Austen’s reputation from those who misunderstood her—whether through ignorance, or nostalgia, or some other, more fetishistic impulse. I reread all six of her novels, in the order in which they were published, and tried to chronicle her growth as a satirist—as a writer of caustic comedies on the freakishness and hypocrisy of human society.</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">But since I was publishing as I was reading—essentially live-blogging the Austen oeuvre—there was always the risk that I’d find myself, partway through, changing my mind…confronting a different Jane Austen than the one whose credentials I’d sought to celebrate.</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">And in fact, I did; and this should have come as no surprise. Having immersed myself in her works for nearly five years—to the point at which her fictions functioned almost as a subtext to my own life—I should have expected that something new would be revealed to me, that some aspect of her genius which had previously proved elusive, should become apparent, and alter my view of her.</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">In her final three novels, we see Austen evolve. From the broad, sweeping strokes of her early novels, she cultivates an increasingly refined hand—a more deftly calibrated technique. Her characters—especially her antagonists and her grotesques—gradually become more finely sketched, with more complexity and ambiguity. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Persuasion</i>, her last novel, is altogether richer in shading, texture, and tonal variety than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sense and Sensibility</i>, her first; it offers greater range, deeper insight, and more opportunity for interpretation.</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">So in one sense, I was right: Austen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did</i> grow—not as a satirist, per se, but as an artist. And if you consider also her wild, anarchic juvenile works, you can drawn an arc for her creative life. She began as a rollicking farceuse; developed into a relentlessly funny social satirist; and matured into a brilliant ironist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">There’s no telling where she might have gone from there, had she not died so terribly, almost criminally young. But one thing seems certain: she would never have become a sentimentalist…never a romantic…never a safe little scribbler of mawkish, soft-core valentines. And if there is a literary heaven? Those writers are the souls who flee the fastest when she enters a room.</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">A true Austen fan will always suffer some degree of anxiety—an uncomfortable sense that he or she isn’t nearly smart enough for her, or sharp enough, or possessed of an adequately nimble wit. A true Austen fan will always wonder: If it were possible to go back in time, and meet her—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would I even dare approach her</i>?</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">This is a woman who insisted on living on her own terms, to the limited extent her constrictive society permitted. She was unflinching and unyielding. She looked at the world arrayed around her, and she was not deceived by its splendid trappings; she saw the savageness of its inequalities, and the ruthlessness of its ambitions. She enjoyed no personal victory over it; in many ways, the world defeated her soundly. But her judgment of it—uncompromising, unforgiving, and riddled through with mocking laughter—rings down the centuries to our own. She had the last word.</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">And she always will have.</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span>