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Notes -
I will not suffer such Austen slander!
First, Austen was Regency era. A generation before the Victorians, and there are some pretty significant differences (like the freedom with which Austen's heroines go unaccompanied to parties or go on walks with men without escorts and such, something Victorian ladies basically were not allowed to do).
Second, today Austen's novels are mostly considered "chick lit" and generally filmed as romances, but in her time, they were widely read by both sexes and considered comedies of manners with insightful descriptions of human fallibility, not female wish-fulfillment ("chick lit") despite the fact they generally ended in a good-hearted but poor woman marrying up.
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