Austenish

And she gives us the peculiarly Austenish pleasure of watching good, intelligent, and articulate people work their way through much painful error to the relief of shared understanding.

The Egoist takes place in an Austenish world of country houses—more than Austenish, indeed, for despite Williams’s depreciating comment that Austen’s ‘country is weather or a place for a walk’, her walks at least strike out across fields and take to public roads.

For instance, Mrs Williams is described in an Austenish vein early in the text as ‘a little insignificant “nobody,” the daughter of a missionary, having neither connections nor money, nothing in the world to her advantage save a singularly pretty face’ (9) – a description that, following the death of her grandmother, describes Anne, too, who suddenly finds herself the daughter of a missionary, with few connections and less money, but still in possession of a pretty face.