I think we must disagree about the meaning of cynical because, yes, I think it's very cynical.

You are right to say that Austen did not write about the nitty gritty of life in 19th century England, about poverty or war or slavery. Without having Jane herself to ask about that, the simplest explanation is that she didn't want to. She wasn't that kind of a writer. For one thing, she was a lady, at a time when ladies definitely did not write about certain things, at least not in detail. For another, she wrote comedies of manners, social satire aimed at the circle she herself inhabited, with romance and a little morality thrown in. If she had written about the plight of the lower classes, the terrors of war or political struggles, then she would have been another writer.

As part of satirizing the society she lived in, she portrayed common, everyday villains--not murderers or kidnappers, but the sort of people we all meet in life, charming cads and wily schemers who aren't hell bent on destroying people so much as merely serving their own selfish ends. And she gave them the kind of punishments which such people usually get in real life, which is to say not a whole lot, except that they are never able to be contented or really loved. And that's the point. We're supposed to feel that they got off too easily, which in turn should lead to reflections on the society that promotes such injustice. Pity, on her part at least, has nothing to do with it.

And that's my opinion.