Jane Austen vs Georgette Heyer

Sherwood Smith has a really interesting post up at Book View Café, wherein she contrasts Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, arguing that Heyer was writing romances but that Austen really wasn’t.

I, like Sherwood Smith’s friends, would have been like, Well, but, weren’t they basically writing in the same mode? And now I see that they weren’t, really.

Austen’s stories end with marriage because that was pretty much the only choice open to women of her social stratum, and she writes from a woman’s perspective, giving women’s points-of-views first place at the table. But her context is social criticism.

Well, when you put it like that.

Also, now I know what a hapax legomenon is. I fear the term might prove difficult to work into casual conversation, but you never know, you never know. Maybe I will be chatting with one of the English faculty on Monday and a chance will arise.