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"Not to gang up on you or anything"
Ha,ha, please feel free, I have broad shoulders. (-:
Now then, I fear I have to take the blue corner here and express some doubt (be cynical if you like), but Jane Austen cynical in letting her villains off lightly? That doesn't gell with me. J.A is undoubtedy intelligent and capable of imagination, wit and humour, but cynical? Can we look at that?
There is no doubt that she makes equal fun and ridicule of both the males and females of her stories. Her own character (Jane Austen, the person,
"Good,kind aunt Jane" is also capable of expressing dislike of deceit in people in real life
(the Prince Regent and his friends are prime examples. George was an indolent philanderer and Beau Brummel fled the country in great debt), but letting off the very people you mention in her works seems far more a charitable attitude than cynisism. Each one is worthy of disdain and , whilst I am not advocating she should have had them all meet sticky ends, I do believe that cynisism is most certainly not how she appears to have had them all get off almost Scot free. ( I am sure you are familiar with that phrase, but for those who may not be, here is what one source says) :
"Skat' is a Scandinavian word for tax or payment and the word migrated to Britain and mutated into 'scot' as the name of a redistributive taxation, levied as early the 10th century as a form of municipal poor relief.I cannot prove my views ( nor indeed can you), one way or the other, so opinion it must remain, but that is mine. She let them get away with blue murder. We are all lovers of Jane Austen; that does not make her infallible or incpable of human error, at least not for me. A definite case of agreeing to disagree, I think. (-:
