All story and no reflection
We are noticing a theme lately that is running through many of our posts (and there is at least one more to come): the different ways that readers perceive and receive Jane Austen’s novels, and the Common Wisdom that they are simple romantic stories with a brooding, smoldering hero and a happy-ever-after ending. How delightful, then, to receive a note from Alert Janeite Jennifer, who found a fun reference to Jane Austen in a lighthearted novel called Summer in the City by Robyn Sisman.
Several people had warned her off so crowded an area of literary study. Betsy knew better. Previous critics had been so captivated by the superficial romanticism of the texts that they had completely missed the profundities. Betsy felt it was her mission to reinstate Jane Austen as a champion of women’s rights and a serious commentator on social equality, particularly after Hollywood’s crass attempt to claim her as the hot new scriptwriter of light romantic comedy. Personally, Betsy found nothing to laugh at in the novels. For three years she had labored to show that they dealt not with the trivialities of who married whom, but with the great iniquities of society; ageism (Persuasion), the exploitation of the Afro-Caribbean community (Mansfield Park), the gender bias of inheritance law (Pride and Prejudice), and anorexia nervosa (Northanger Abbey). This last analysis, drawing heavily on Freudian case studies, Betsy believed to be a genuine coup of original research.
Oh, what we wouldn’t pay to read that.
Now she had reached Emma (fascism), and was in mid-expose of the totalitarian state of Highbury. . . .
Jennifer added:
Tellingly, throughout the story, the Betsy character means well but always entirely misses the point.
Well, there’s a shocker!
While we do occasionally rant righteous when the stubborn refuse to take a closer, deeper look at Jane Austen’s work, there always is danger of going too far in the other direction. We depend upon our Gentle Readers to talk us down off the ledge if that should happen. 
