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Austen herself observed that Pride and Prejudice might be too “light, bright, and sparkling” and thus her readers might ignore her analysis of bad marriages, poor parenting, and social snobbery. In her two final novels, Mansfield Park and Persuasion, the gloves are off. Austen’s satire takes on a darker cast and admirable upper class characters like Darcy and Knightley have been replaced with villains. Her heroines are powerless and at risk, as the upper class wields privilege and power. Austen analyzes the moral decay, selfishness, and extravagances of those with title and inherited wealth — her new heroes actually work for a living!

Instructor John Ward went to Amherst for his A.B. and the University of Virginia for his Ph.D. and taught English literature at liberal arts colleges in Ohio (Kenyon) and Kentucky (Centre) for 40 years. After retiring, for the last dozen years he has been teaching in Coastal Senior College. In a sense, he has hardly “retired” but instead is exploring new as well as familiar literary topics with his contemporaries. While his college courses were principally in the areas of 18th- and 19th-century British literature, more recently he has concentrated on major poets, from Yeats, Frost, Lowell, and Heaney.