Pride and Prejudice (1813) has been the most popular of Austen's six novels. Like Emma, it is a comedy of manners, full of satire and irony, wit and sophisticated drawing room exchanges. Blending humor with stunning insight into the domestic scene, human nature, courtship, and the limits and attraction of authority, Austen paints a vivid portrayal of life in the English countryside at the end of the eighteenth century. Like Emma, the protagonists Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett undergo a moral education, teaching one another through mishap and intention that charm, intelligence, independent-thinking, and vibrancy must ultimately be leavened with humility.

Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) the first notable feminist essay on gender equality. It takes as its premise that reason, virtue, and knowledge separate humans from beasts. Women, Wollstonecraft argues, should therefore "endeavour to acquire strength...