Likes & Likenesses: This newly-found and unfinished Austen novel features Catherine "Kitty" Bennet sulking and whining about not being popular, and grumbling constantly after her sisters are all married off to monied and landed husbands. She endlessly questions her family and friends (what few can still be called that) about her looks, her personality, and what other people think of her. Ms. Austen stopped writing at the point where Kitty tries to ingratiate herself to a younger group of girls who see her as a mere nuisance and largely ignore her. The manuscript is notable for showing how Ms. Austen's writing style had evolved to greater sophistication and clarity; but it is generally feared that even the talented Ms. Austen could not bring the story to a happy and peaceful resolution.
NOTES
• All of the foregoing is fiction.
• During the course of Pride and Prejudice (P&P), Kitty was confirmed to be a source of embarrassment for the Bennet family. Though she is two years older than Lydia, she was completely under her youngest sister's guidance, and was considered weak-spirited and irritable.
• Kitty was described in P&P as being "ignorant, idle, and vain". Her oldest sisters, Jane and Elizabeth, had tried to advise her, but she was always mortified by their advice, and never listened. Fortunately, after her oldest sisters' marriages, Kitty's personality improved drastically -- no longer under Lydia's influence, and with her father's restrictions, as well as the proper attention and management of her oldest sisters, Kitty was said to become "less irritable, less ignorant, and less insipid".
• According to James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, Kitty later married a clergyman who lived near Pemberley; but this was never mentioned in any of Ms. Austen's works.
Last edited by Fnord on 03 Aug 2022, 3:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.