Jane Austen's Darkness - Julia Yost

"Three or four families in a country village," wrote Jane Austen to a niece, "is the very thing to work on." This message from "Aunt Jane" is often understood as defining the breadth and depth of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and the rest of her work. The appearance of narrowness and shallowness in her novels is prized by many readers, who find escapist charm in the mannerly courtship intrigues of Austen's rural gentry. Others share Charlotte Brontë's complaint that Austen's women and men are all "ladies and gentlemen," their concerns superficial, their happy endings guaranteed.

But does the sun always shine on a country village? And do those who dwell there cast no shadows? Julia Yost argues for seeing darkness in Austen's novels: the marriages that will not be happy, the heroes who are not heroic, a society that elevates the mediocre at the expense of the meritorious. Austen's wit notwithstanding, the shadow of mortality darkens with every novel until the author's own death at forty-one. She suffered under the same natural and social evils as her heroines, and a righteous hatred troubles her comedies. Yost reads Austen's six major novels and her unfinished last manuscript to show how she turned her protest into art.