structural:summarization
20th century

You could not shock her more than she shocks me, Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass. It makes me most uncomfortable to see An English spinster of the middle class Describe the amorous effects of 'brass', Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety The economic basis of society.

W. H. Auden (1937) on Austen

The American scholar Claudia L. Johnson defended the novel from the criticism that it has an unrealistic fairy-tale quality. One critic, Mary Poovey, wrote that the "romantic conclusion" of Pride and Prejudice is an attempt to hedge the conflict between the "individualistic perspective inherent in the bourgeois value system and the authoritarian hierarchy retained from traditional, paternalistic society". Johnson wrote that Austen's view of a power structure capable of reformation was not an "escape" from conflict. Johnson wrote the "outrageous unconventionality" of Elizabeth Bennet was in Austen's own time very daring, especially given the strict censorship that was imposed in Britain by the Prime Minister, William Pitt, in the 1790s when Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice.