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We really do not know what Jane Austen's views of politics were.

One thing fascinating about Jane Austen and her writing is that she seems never to portray anything in her writing with which she is not familiar. She not portray battles, or life aboard ship, or the lives of princesses or beggars, but instead deals with militia at balls, sailors home on leave, and the sorts of people who she knew in her life. She takes this to an extreme - for example she never portrays a conversation among men with no women present, and event she could not have witnessed at which men might have behaved differently than they would in mixed company.

My suspicion is that Jane Austen was raised in a household where women made screens and performed on pianofortes and Fordyce's sermons were a source of boredom, but politics were not a subject of conversation. It was a world where women had to marry out of economic necessity, but there were never enough men at the ball (she never said so, but the Napoleonic Wars made it hard to find find husbands). She knew of some of the political and economic problems, and portrayed the ones with which she was familiar, but she did not have the experience necessary to suggest solutions. Political implications could be drawn by a thoughtful reader, but the author's own views may have been left unexpressed because she thought herself ill qualified to recommend herself as political thinker.

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15y ago

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