Was Jane Austen Actually the Ultimate Anti-Romantic Novelist?

The popular culture surrounding Jane Austen identifies her romantic happy endings as the key feature of her work, as John Atkinson parodies in figure 4 (below). And yet there has been a schism in the reading of those endings. Often the “Cozy Camp” of Austen reception has little to do with the novels themselves, and more to do with the film adaptations and general cultural enthusiasm for Austen. Most adaptations are, in fact, based on fantasy readings of her endings. But not all readers of Austen are satisfied with Austen’s endings. Some readers and scholars of Austen often complain about the ways Austen complicates, rushes, and destabilizes her endings. So, what are the characteristics of these endings that have caused Austen “letdown” and have long irritated or disappointed some of her readers? Much of it comes down to expectation: Austen spends her novels building to romantic climaxes that she then suddenly undercuts in the last chapters. For one thing, the speed and pacing of her novels increase notably near the ends: Austen’s conclusions feel rushed, especially in Northanger Abbey , Sense and Sensibility , Mansfield Park , and Emma . This again begs the question: If marriage is so central to Austen as novelist, why does she speed through these resolutions? The pace of her endings is not the only issue that garners frustration. Many other factors contribute to the sense of letdown. If marriage is so central to Austen as novelist, why does she speed through these resolutions? Near the end of five of her six major novels, Austen’s narrator remains explicitly and stubbornly silent on the details of the happy unions—using an annoying literary technique called “apophasis,” where the narrator preemptively tells the reader what will not be told . The following passage from the end of Sense and Sensibility represents this effect: “How soon [Edward] had walked himself into the proper resolution, however, how soon an opportunity of exercising it occurred, in what manner he expressed himself, and how he was received, need not be particularly told.” Austen hinders the reader’s luxurious enjoyment of the “proper […]

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