Jane Austen lives on

Midway through Jane Austen's 1814 novel Mansfield Park, a few lines of prose rouse readers into a debate that still rages. The heroine, Fanny Price, known for both her timidity and strong moral backbone, broaches a controversial topic among relatives: the presence of slaves on her uncle's sugar plantations in Antigua, then a British colony. Fanny's inquiry goes unanswered—or as she describes it, a "dead silence!" cuts through the air, as her cousins sit idly by "without speaking a word or seeming at all interested in the subject."

Ironically, it's this lack of a response that generates deep discussion and analysis more than two centuries later, with scholars and readers from all over the world disputing its relevance in academic journals and classrooms, at conferences, and on the subreddit r/janeausten, where endless posts posit impassioned theories on the scene.

In class one day at Johns Hopkins University, students in a course taught by Mary Favret pick up the mantle of sorting through the scene's meanings. "What happens when you say something and get radio silence?" asks Favret, an Austen scholar and English professor at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. "It doesn't feel good," one student says. "It's a form of putting your head in the sand," says another. The conversation continues, with some arguing that Austen all but ignores the tragedy of slavery—and others contending that her use of the phrase "dead silence!" reflects a subtle but powerful appeal to the abolitionist movement in full swing across England as she penned what many consider her darkest and most complex and emotionally charged novel.

In 1807, before Austen started writing Mansfield Park, the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act, abolishing slavery across its territories, except in its Caribbean colonies. There, enslaved laborers toiled day after day in oppressive heat and dehumanizing conditions to cultivate sugar cane and tobacco—two crops that generated vast profits for the United Kingdom and fueled the growth of its empire. The abolitionist movement remained strong in England after the 1807 legislative act, with men and women from all echelons of society campaigning to end slavery there, which happened in 1833.

Evidence doesn't point to Austen playing a direct role, but "she read abolitionist literature and likely created Mansfield Park as an anti-slavery statement of sorts," Favret says. In the novel, the main character, Fanny, recites lines by her favorite poet, William Cowper, an abolitionist whose poems relay the slave trade's horrors.

The book's title also suggests abolitionist sentiments, given its connection to William Murray, the 1st Earl of Mansfield who served as Lord Chief Justice of England from 1756 to 1788—and was known as Lord Mansfield. In 1772, Mansfield ruled on a court case involving James Somerset, enslaved in colonial Virginia and brought to England by his master. After escaping and being recaptured, Somerset faced sale to a Jamaican plantation. A London abolitionist network intervened, and Mansfield ruled that Somerset—chained on a boat in the Thames—be freed.

Cautious and calculating with her words, "Austen knew what she was signaling," Favret says. "The fact that slavery only surfaces at a few key moments in the novel only reinforces her intention."

On the surface, Austen's stories portray women in pursuit of a prince charming to marry and live with forever in fairy-tale bliss. Not to spoil all her books, but that's precisely what happens: "Every one of her heroines gets married," Favret says. But that doesn't make her a writer of romance novels or "chick lit," she adds. Her work transcends pigeon-holing, cutting across genres like historical and literary fiction while exhibiting a razor-sharp wit that hints at truths about power and pretention—and ultimately shines the light on women attempting to find their way in a problematic world.

For those willing to probe, much lies beneath the seemingly trite tea parties and marriage schemes of Austen's novels. And it's why so many still relate to her work, whether in original form or in countless adaptations and spin-offs. Among them: the smash-hit 1940 Pride and Prejudice film with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier; Ang Lee's Oscar-winning Sense and Sensibility from 1995; the cult-classic Clueless (1996), based on Emma; and the 2016 mash-up of genres—romance meets sci-fi meets horror—in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, where heroine Elizabeth Bennet takes on a new role: slayer of the walking dead.

This year alone, Netflix released a new Pride and Prejudice series written by bestselling rom-com author Dolly Alderton; PBS aired Miss Austen, a miniseries about the writer's close relationship with her older sister Cassandra; and director Laura Piani's film Jane Austen Wrecked My Life about a young Parisian writer shows in U.S. theaters now.

With these adaptations and spin-offs comes a slew of Austen fans using social media outlets like TikTok and Instagram to don empire-waist dresses and role-play a favorite character. Some pretend to be the beloved author herself, offering dating advice or critiquing popular shows like Netflix's Bridgerton, set in early-19th-century England, just like Austen's novels but full of intentional historical inaccuracies. Devoney Looser, an English professor at Arizona State University who has published three books about Austen and other British authors with Johns Hopkins University Press, says that "every time Austen makes the leap to a new media outlet, her legacy continues with an entirely new generation of readers and viewers, who connect with and react to her work in different ways."

"That's a testament to her genius," adds Looser, whose book The Making of Jane Austen (Johns Hopkins Press, 2017), explores the author's status as both a literary and pop-culture icon.

The world is enthusiastically celebrating Jane Austen's 250th birthday in 2025 with a number of events, including festivals, exhibitions, and balls, primarily in England (and several in Baltimore). Many will gussy up in muslin gowns, satin gloves, and other Georgian and Regency attire as they descend en masse on Austen's birthplace, her homes in Chawton and Bath, and her final resting place in Winchester Cathedral.

As Austen's popularity continues to surge, the question remains: What makes the author—known as the queen of romance to some and a literary mastermind to others—so popular and relevant more than two centuries later? In honor of Austen's birthday, scholars from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere share what makes her live on.

Born in 1775 in a rural village, Steventon, in England's Hampshire county, "Austen lived during a time of tumultuous change, with constant wars fought abroad, the start of the industrial revolution, and the rise of the mercantile class shaking up the social order," Favret says. The British author wove these aspects into her books, not overtly but with a nuance that might take time for modern readers to tease apart.

She grew up in a boisterous, close-knit family known to play parlor games, script and act out home performances, and, perhaps above all else, value reading and learning. Her father studied at Oxford before becoming a clergyman for a rural parish of the Church of England, while her mother—known for her humor, needlework, and gardening—tended to the house and children. The second youngest of two daughters and six brothers, Austen received only 18 months of formal education herself. But she took advantage of her father's vast home library, becoming a voracious reader of contemporary books and classics, and "developing the sort of intellectual curiosity one might expect from an author of her caliber," Favret says.

For Favret, the author's deft use of narrative structure and language is why she took interest in Austen as a doctoral student at Stanford University in the 1980s. At the time, many scholars considered Austen a "domestic writer who focused on manners, marriages, and morals," Favret says. But she saw at once the error in that interpretation, viewing Austen instead as a masterful wordsmith and storyteller—and an astute critic of the social strictures and class divides that limited women's lives in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Austen started writing at a young age, spinning outlandish, action-driven tales of girls misbehaving by overindulging in food and alcohol—and even stealing each other's fiancés. Some of these stories, known as Austen's juvenilia, still exist, but her sister Cassandra burned the bulk of her letters (likely to protect Jane's privacy) after Austen's untimely death in 1817 at age 41 (historians postulate an adrenal gland disorder or lupus).

Whatever the ailment, Austen understood what it meant to be sick and fatigued—and to suffer from something complex and incurable, says Evelyne Ender, a senior lecturer in Johns Hopkins' Department of Comparative Thought and Literature. "Among other examples, we see this with Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion, when she chooses to visit her sick, widowed friend, rather than attend a fancy social event," Ender says. "Austen saw value in not ostracizing sick people from society and simply sitting with someone who isn't well."

Despite the decadent parlors described in her novels, Austen came from a "pseudo-gentry-class" family, not the gentry class of landowners. And notwithstanding the fanciful attire worn by many of her characters, evidence suggests Austen didn't dress that way. In a letter to her sister Margaret, for instance, Austen's niece Fanny Knight refers to "Aunt Jane" as "not so refined," with the "most complete ignorance of the world & its ways (I mean as to fashion, [etc.])," she writes. Further, she describes Austen's family as "not rich" but in possession of "superior … mental powers and cultivation." And she worries they will fall "very much below par as to good society & its ways" if they don't adopt the customs of high society.

Did Austen's finances put a damper on her fashion sense and interfere with her social game? Or did she believe inner qualities mattered more? Scholars suggest both, with Looser explaining that after Austen's father died suddenly in 1805, the author, her sister, and her mother lost their home and moved from one residence to another. "Money was tight," Looser says. "They were smart women who stretched it as far as they could, but it wasn't easy."

In class on Homewood campus, Favret sits amid a circle of students as though she is one of them. With a gentle, discerning voice, she nudges all to consider the social and historical forces at play during Austen's lifetime—and how they influence the characters and plotlines of her novels. Favret understands this well. Her book on the topic, War at a Distance: Romanticism and the Making of Modern Wartime (Princeton University Press, 2009), explores what it means to experience war far from the battlefield, a reality for Austen herself as well as her female characters.

"England was at war and undergoing major changes for most of Austen's lifetime, and this shows up in her books in subtle but significant ways," Favret says, referring to the French and American revolutions, the Napoleonic wars, and other battles fought as Britain conquered and colonized territories worldwide. "Most readers don't think of Austen as a wartime author," largely because she sets her novels on the home front, rather than on the front lines. "But she was indeed a wartime author."

Austen watched her own brothers—Henry, a militia officer, and Charles and Frank, who rose through the ranks to become admirals in the British Royal Navy—ship off to defend Britain. "Evidence reveals that Austen, just like Anne Elliot in Persuasion, kept attuned to news about the war efforts by reading gazettes and [combing through] the navy list," Favret says, referring to the official list of ships and officers and the missions on which they embarked and returned.

In Persuasion, Anne suffers immensely after her godmother persuades her to break off her engagement with Frederick Wentworth, a young naval lieutenant with good looks, intelligence, and charm—but no land or fortune. She loves Wentworth but heeds her godmother's advice, moving on to spend eight years in near despair, as the dashing lieutenant ships off to help Britain tamp down Napoleon. "When the book opens, Anne is essentially a spinster who takes care of her self-centered family members," Favret says. But Anne is an informed spinster, who reads and strives to learn about the world. "Unlike Anne, most of the other young women in Persuasion come across as ignorant and naïve," Favret says. "This is clearly Austen's intention," a form of social commentary on the widely held conception at the time that only men needed to read the news and stay abreast of current events.

In Mansfield Park, the heroine, Fanny Price, comes from a naval family living in the raucous, impoverished back alleys of the British Royal Navy's primary port, Portsmouth. Her disabled father, released from his naval service, struggles to support his wife and nine children on the half-pay he receives. Thus, Fanny is sent, at age 10, to live with her mother's wealthy sisters on a spacious estate, Mansfield Park, "which couldn't differ more from the dirty, cramped conditions she experiences in Portsmouth," Favret says.

Additionally, Fanny spends much of the novel waiting for her brother William, a naval midshipman, to return from war. "The anxiety Fanny faces from not knowing whether her brother is alive and well—and will return home intact—is tenable," Favret says. As is the push and pull she experiences between her home in Portsmouth and Mansfield Park, seemingly removed from the chaos and terror of war. And yet, the Napoleonic wars (1800 to 1815) linger in every corner of Fanny's new home, infiltrating her thoughts and sometimes swaying her decisions.

Austen's books depict England under the rule of kings George III and IV, a time that ushered in sweeping changes brought not only by war but also the industrial revolution and global trade. Long-standing social rules started to bend and make it possible, for example, for men from the lower rungs of society to gain rank and status through skills and merit, rather than land titles and birthright. In Persuasion, Austen portrays Wentworth as a self-made man who is smarter, kinder, and more dependable than the characters born into wealth. "She uses Wentworth to make a statement," Favret says.

When Austen pulled from what she witnessed to write her six novels, women possessed few rights of their own and were generally considered legal dependents. Educational opportunities focused on areas like music, drawing, and domestic skills deemed appropriate for ladies. Gentry-class women seldom worked, devoting energy instead to securing and cultivating a marriage, ideally to a land-owning man—a situation often arranged by families and influenced by economic circumstances.

Austen never married and remained financially dependent on her family, despite earning a meager but noteworthy wage of £684 for the four novels she published during her lifetime. (Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were published posthumously.) "She was proud of the money she earned, but it wasn't enough to subsist on," Looser says. "Embedded in her stories and letters are her signature irony, social criticism, and comedic elements that make her work so long-lasting."

In a letter from 1798 to her sister Cassandra, Austen exhibits these trademark elements when she writes tongue-in-cheek, "Next week shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend." Here, she pokes fun at the fickle customs of upper-crust British society, which tended to base a woman's worth on external appearances, instead of internal qualities like intelligence and compassion. Lines like this, Looser says, suggest that "Austen certainly realized how much a woman's happiness or, more aptly, her financial security depended on her ability to play the social game, while at the same time, they suggest that she considered many social expectations at least a little absurd."

Yet Austen doesn't buck the social norm altogether. She professes to playing along, much like the polite, prudent protagonist she creates, Elinor Dashwood, in Sense and Sensibility. There, Austen describes the elder Dashwood sister as possessing "a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment … whose feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them." Elinor differs from her younger sister Marianne, who lacks propriety and is prone to emotional outbursts not only in private but also in public, where Elinor "only wished [her sister's sentiments] were less openly shewn," Austen writes.

Here and in other novels, Austen creates characters with opposing weaknesses—one overly restrained, the other recklessly impulsive. Each sister evolves, however, by the end of the novel to take on some of the other sister's traits, with Elinor acknowledging and succumbing to her passion for Edward Ferrars, and Marianne moving beyond the handsome yet unreliable John Willoughby to accept and embrace the kindhearted and stable Colonel Brandon.

But the Dashwood sisters grow not just in matters of love but also as individuals. According to Ender, this self-growth theme shows up in all of Austen's work—and it's perhaps the main reason her work remains appealing today. "Through her female characters, Austen gives us the seemingly real aspirations and desires of women who must create and script better lives for themselves," Ender says. "We recognize, as readers, that we can do the same by adjusting to the realistic conditions of our existence … and asking ourselves what amount of agency we have to change our circumstances." Looser sums up Austen's books in a similar manner, saying "they explore what it means to live a meaningful life in an unfair world."

These assessments push Austen beyond her stereotype as patron saint of marriage plots. As Inger Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey, an English professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, argues in Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness (JHU Press, 2024), the author's rushed and unsatisfying wedding scenes reveal her ambivalence about the convention of marriage. "If marriage is so central to Austen as a novelist, why does she speed through the resolution?" Brodey asks.

Devoid of detail, many of Austen's wedding scenes use "an annoying literary technique called 'apophasis,' where the narrator preemptively tells the reader what will not be told," Brodey writes. This happens in Sense and Sensibility, where the narrator relays that Edward, upon his wedding day, "in what manner he expressed himself, and how he was received, need not be particularly told." Austen, then, glosses over the moment many readers long awaited. Other parts of the story matter more—in particular, the "moral growth" that Austen appears to deem as "essential to attain happiness, whether or not one marries," Brodey suggests.

Brodey's groundbreaking book builds on the work of scholars like Favret and Ender, who view Austen's work as more than a collection of feel-good rom-coms. At the same time, it begs the question to modern readers: What role do society's conventions place on us that hinder our growth and happiness?

For anyone looking for inspiration—in self-growth, in overcoming heartache or finding love, in dealing with challenging family members, or in making the most of difficult circumstances—consider dusting off that old Jane Austen book on your bookshelf. Even if you want to escape with a beach read, you may well find it in the author born 250 years ago, whose sly wit and sharp social commentary, sometimes reduced to bonnets and ballrooms, still resonates.