As with many influential people, Jane Austen has been the subject of many biographies and interpretations on her novels and writings. One, Jane Austen and the Fiction of her Time, by Mary Waldron is a notable work which explores Austen’s use of feminism and an in-depth look at her earlier works. She specifically focuses on, The Watsons and Sense and Sensibilities . She specifically touches on the people’s interpretation of the heroine of each story. “This time the solution probably does lie with the conception of the heroine…Without being in the least like Gregory’s ideal girl, she was becoming too much in danger of becoming one of those ‘pictures of perfection’, which Austen later told Fanny Knight made her ‘sick and wicked’. A heroine who constantly got things right would not do for the mature Austen” (Jane Austen and the Fiction of her Time, Mary Waldron, pg 26). This shows that Austen wouldn’t write characters that weren’t flawed because that wouldn’t be realistic. Austen knew that no one would be able to relate to a woman who wasn’t real, because if they weren’t real how were they supposed to see themselves reflected in the characters. There are exceptions when people, women especially see extravagant characters and hope to be like them but there is no deeper connection to their characters.
There are few stories that can truly be translated through generations and hundreds of years, but somehow Austen managed to achieve this. This speaks to the accessibility of the characters and the plots of the her novels, especially to women. This is a testament to how the strong-willed women in her novels become important to those who read them. Not to say everyone will relate to them but so many people do because in her novels she opens up doors for women who seem to have none open to them at all. Say Lizzie Bennett, she is said to be nothing extrodinary and yet her character earns the respect of some of the most wealthy people in England and marries one of the richest. And all this happens because she was stubborn and spoke her mind which leads people to see that sometimes being the strong-willed, hard-headed man, woman or child you are is what gets you to where you need to be.