A modern young woman

One of the interesting things this book tells us about Austen is what a modern young woman she was.

When she regained rights to the text of Susan later known as Northanger Abbey, Austen set about revising it, fixing it up. She gave up on this. I was reading someone who said that we know that one of her concerns was that the book was out of date. Bath was no longer a fashionable place and muslin was no longer the latest thing for gowns.

We think of Austen as timeless, or some of us do. Others think of her as producing period literature. Austen herself was concerned with being right up to date. Once it is pointed out to you, or at least once it was pointed out to me, I can see this all through her writing; she praises houses for being modern, condemns them for being old fashioned. She had much more in common with chick lot than many critics would like to admit. If she were alive today, she'd be writing it.