Novels, especially English novels, tend to be anti-heroic.
One way to make an anti-heroic novel is to have an anti-hero in it. That is to have a guy who looks and acts like a hero but does not follow certain heroic ideals. This is the most common approach in recent novels.
Another approach would be to have a hero who is a perfect hero in every way in order to demonstrate that there is something wrong with the very idea of heroism. That is what I think Austen does in Sense and Sensibility. John Willoughby is a hero. At no point does he let down on being a hero. Because he never does, the lesson we learn is that there is something wrong with heroes, that they have no place in our lives.
The point of today's Austen posts will be to provide some hint of just how good a hero he is.
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