Three literary precedents are suggested by John Scott Ripon, a character in the novel whom Monica meets at Neuadd Goch, the Welsh home of Giles Revelstoke's mother. Ripon asks Monica whether she thinks they are in "a Jane Austen situation, or a Trollope situation." Later, Ripon tells her after she has been embarrassed by Giles for bragging about her Canadian ancestry that they have "been living in a kind of Henry James climate for the past few days." The names of Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, and Henry James are all pertinent as literary precedents for A Mixture of Frailties.

A recurring subject in Austen's fiction is the moral growth of the heroine.

A typical Austen heroine, whether it be the naive, impressionable Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey (1818) or the strong-willed title character of Emma (1815), sees things differently at the end of the novel from the beginning...