SOURCE: "The Novel of Crisis," in Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel, University of Chicago Press, 1988, pp. 1-27.

In the following excerpt, Johnson suggests that Opie endorsed the politically conservative status quo through her main plot but used parallel plots to question established social values and to promote reform for attitudes about women and marriage.

[Not] all the villains or anti-heroes in conservative fiction are gross charlatans happy to employ "reason" in order to justify their mean actions. Some are earnest seekers after truth, and it is precisely their penchant for reflection that gets them into trouble. Woe to the indulgent parents who let their daughters read without the strict supervision Austen mocks in Mrs. Percival's tirade. Otherwise, the philosophy daughters are likely to come across in their reading will convince them that their opinions about questions relative to themselves matter, and it will urge them to...