By
Jayne Bamber, author of the Friends &
Relations Series
In all the facets of Jane Austen’s genius, perhaps the most
delightful is the reality she imbues in all her characters. No one is quite
perfect, making them all the more relatable. We can easily imagine ourselves as
one or other of her heroines, not because they are as perfect as we might wish
to be, but because they, like us, are not. Elizabeth Bennet, the paragon every
Janeites wishes to be, is prejudiced and faulty in her judgement. Anne Eliot is
too easily persuaded, and Fanny Price rather a bore and a prude. Each of the
Dashwood sisters lacks one of the titular traits, while experiencing rather too
much of the other, and Catherine Morland literally accuses her future
father-in-law of murder (yikes.)
