In her 1913 essay, Virginia Woolf writes on the merits and failings of Jane Austen. While Woolf describes Austen as “singularly blessed,” she also critiques Austen’s lack of rebellion of her “artificial” life. For Woolf, Austen someone satirizes middle class life and the fools who inhabit it, but never fully pushes away from it.
Perhaps she feels her Clarissa Dalloway and Elizabeth Bennet should duke it out for claim to most rebellious middle class woman?
