"Austen renders the elective, self-esteeming powers of the comic, but she also claims for it more socially positive and responsible functions. She wanted to use comedy as a means of reconciling herself to traditional faith and conventional society by releasing doubts and resentments harmlessly. Poised between the decorous rationalization of eighteenth-century society and religion and the restless energy and ambition of nineteenth-century individualism, she was striving for a form and a creation that would preserve the best of the past, including Christian ethics, but would allow for the change and development her expanding feminine soul craved."

- Robert M. Polhemus, "Jane Austen's Comedy"

beautifully articulated!!