We celebrate Jane Austen as the mother of the English realist novel, but
have you ever wondered why she insists on giving her mature heroines the
'perfect happiness' that can only be realized in the romance? Romancing
Jane Austen asks the reader to consider Austen's happy endings as a
'prophetic' rather than merely 'illusory' answer to the contradiction
that feminine subjectivity represents for history. A happy ending for
the feminine subject? But that would be against all the empirical
odds...