I'd never thought about it like that, but yes, that is also part of my disinterest in Austen. I just don't see the 'biting feminist critic' everyone else seems to see in her. I see lightly bitchy social commentary with no real guts behind it.

I haven't read much Bronte beyond Jane Eyre, and then too young to really think of it in feminist terms, but her writing has *grit*.