Jane Austen is brilliant but I have always wished that she would have taken more risks in her novels. I used to think that was partly due to the time she lived in. But Mary Shelley and Maria Edgeworth took risks in their books.

And as Jane Austen scholars have said, the servants in her novels are rarely heard from and an Austen heroine may say that money doesn't matter in a husband but the man she marries is usually quite wealthy

But I have yet to read Emma & Mansfield Park so there is hope