Jane Austen has managed to be successful over the past 200 hundred years. Her work has touched many people and can be enjoyed by any person of any race, age, and importantly, gender. Austen was someone who’s focus in her stories was the strong, somewhat independent heroine. These characters broke society’s rules and helped open up women’s eyes to what kind of woman you can be. So, before feminism was a common word or even a concept at all, Jane Austen had developed into what would be a feminist of her time. Obviously, there were far more restrictions on women could do back then but Austen had no interest in being a norm in Regency England. She encouraged her nieces to find love, and not settle just for comfort or money but look for something exciting and that even if he cares about you, that you have to feel the same for him for anything to happen and for them to be happy. She also told one of her nieces who was writing a book, that you can’t just focus on one class of people because that isn’t realistic. But that was what made Austen so easy to trnslate over so much time: her characters were real. They were easy to connect to from any time, in any person’s point of view, there is something for each person to see themselves in. So, the question being, was Jane Austen a feminist? She believed that you needed to be strong, you needed to be independent, and you needed to be yourself. Being a feminist isn’t about thinking women are better than men, but rather see them as equals and that was what she wrote.