Was Jane Austen a Feminist?

Jane Austen is a woman who has been respected and admired by different kinds of people for almost 200 years. She was a writer  who was before her time. In a period where women were constricted and repressed to roles of wife and nothing more, she created characters who broke the bounds of what society asked of a woman. Her characters were written to be stubborn and so different from an ideal woman of the time. These characters would find love but only on their own terms, and only with who they saw as an equal rather than master of any sort. So this begs the question, was Jane Austen herself a feminist before many knew what such a word meant? The answer to this question would have to be yes as shown in letters written to both of her niece about love, in letters to her niece written about a book that her niece is writing and how to address her female characters, and in many different articles written about Austen and interpretations of her characters and what kind of women they are. They say a writer should write what you know, and Jane Austen wrote strong, capable, extraordinary woman, show why not say that she is what people now call feminists. It was a long time before female writers were respected, Jane Austen being one of the few. She started with writing some of the greatest love stories, but it wasn’t just about falling in love with someone else, it was also about the heroine loving herself.