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Jane Austen has attracted a great deal of critical attention in recent years. Many have spoken out about the strengths and weaknesses of her characters, particularly her heroines. Austen has been cast as both a friend and foe to the rights of ....

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... Austen can not accurately be evaluated as an author (or feminist subversive) without first examining the eighteenth century English society in which she lived and placed her heroines. Watt says that Austen’s characters cannot be seen “clearly until we make allowances for the social order in which they were rooted” (41). Austen lived in a society where women were expected to be “accomplished,” as Darcy states in Pride and Prejudice, but not well educated (“Notes”). Women of the late eighteenth-century could not attend educational institutions like Oxford or Cambridge. It was not considered nec ...