Naomi Weisman is a Canadian-Australian and mother of three who loves to Ramble with her dog, cook for family and friends, and laugh whenever possible.
I grew up with feminist thought being fed to me by my mother like a nutritious breakfast.
From the time I was small, she wanted me to understand where women stood in society—based on where we had come from and how far we still had to go to achieve anything resembling equity. Conversations about women's rights, opportunities, and limitations were woven into everyday life. Looking back, I realize what a gift that was.
English literature has appealed to me ever since I was introduced to it in high school. Yes, Shakespeare was hard work, but when we were assigned Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, I was hooked. The language, the characters, the social commentary—I discovered that books could be both entertaining and illuminating.
From there, I began my journey with Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and George Eliot. Their novels opened windows into women's lives in ways that felt surprisingly relevant, despite being written centuries ago.
Jane Austen was born in 1775 in rural Hampshire, England, the seventh of eight children. She lived during a time when women had few legal rights, limited educational opportunities, and little economic independence. Marriage was often the only route to financial security. Although Austen never married herself, she keenly observed the social and economic realities facing women and transformed those observations into some of the most enduring novels in English literature.
Between 1811 and 1817, she published six novels, including Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. While often remembered as romances, her books are far more than love stories. They are sharp social comedies that examine class, money, power, family, and the limited choices available to women.
I had the good fortune to take a university course on early feminism in English literature. There, we were introduced to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the foundational texts of feminist thought. Wollstonecraft argued that women were not naturally inferior to men but appeared so only because they lacked education and opportunity. Reading her work felt revolutionary, even two hundred years later.
Although Austen was not a political activist in the way Wollstonecraft was, she was undoubtedly influenced by the intellectual currents of her time. Her novels may not have carried banners or made speeches, but they quietly challenged the assumptions of the society in which she lived.
One criticism frequently levelled at Jane Austen is that her female characters seem too concerned with marriage, too restrained, or too willing to operate within the social expectations of their day. Compared to later literary heroines, they can appear meek, submissive, or overly focused on finding a husband.
I have never read Austen that way.
I believe that Austen was doing something far more subtle. She understood the confines of the world in which women lived. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, women could not vote, rarely controlled property, had limited educational opportunities, and were often financially dependent on fathers, brothers, or husbands. Marriage was not simply a romantic aspiration; for many women, it was a matter of economic survival.
Within those constraints, Austen created women who think for themselves. Her heroines question authority, challenge social conventions, reject unsuitable marriages, and insist on being valued for their intelligence and character. Elizabeth Bennet's refusal of Mr. Collins, Anne Elliot's quiet independence, and Elinor Dashwood's emotional discipline are not acts of submission. They are acts of self-possession.
To me, Austen's writing was an act of resistance. Not the loud, revolutionary resistance of political manifestos, but the quieter resistance of exposing hypocrisy, celebrating women's intellect, and insisting that women possess rich inner lives. She worked within the boundaries of her era while gently pushing against them, showing readers that women were always more than society allowed them to be.
That is what I find so remarkable about her. Austen created some of the greatest, funniest, and most memorable female protagonists in English literature. Elizabeth Bennet, Anne Elliot, Elinor Dashwood, and Emma Woodhouse are intelligent, observant women who navigate societies that consistently underestimate them. Their wit allows them to see through hypocrisy, pretension, and foolishness, often more clearly than the men around them.
What I love most about Jane Austen is that she trusted her readers. Her humour is subtle, her social criticism often delivered with a raised eyebrow rather than a raised voice. She understood that a well-placed observation could be more powerful than a sermon.
When I reread Austen today, I still laugh. I still marvel at her ability to capture human nature with such precision. But I also appreciate her as one of the earliest writers who showed me that women's stories mattered. Not because they were extraordinary, but because they were ordinary. She wrote about drawing rooms instead of battlefields, conversations instead of conquests, and in doing so revealed the complex realities of women's lives.
Perhaps that is why she continues to endure. Her novels remind us how far women have come, while also encouraging us to examine how much of the old world still lingers beneath the surface of the new one.
My mother would have appreciated that.
READ MORE > Nomi's Pics, Rambler Cafe Blog
Leave a comment