Most feminist scholars view Austen's novels favorably, interpreting her strong female characters as a comment on the plight of women in her time. Yet Austen's novels each conclude with marriage, seemingly ratifying the conventional belief that women were the property of men. Research papers can examine Austen's presentation of courtship and marriage, assessing the views expressed in her works in relation to the social mores of her era.
Austen often appears indifferent to the social and economic realities of colonialism that lent her characters their privilege. Yet in some of her novels, she comes close to acknowledging its role, as when she has Fanny Price raise the subject of slavery in "Mansfield Park." A research project can investigate the economic impact of colonialism on the landed gentry of Austen's time and assess the evidence of her attitudes about class privilege from her novels and letters.
In her work "Desire and Domestic Fiction," Nancy Armstrong argues that Austen's works are intended to be read through the prism of irony, undermining social conventions and bolstering the rights of the individual. This is a response to the views of scholars such as Alistair Duckworth, who argued in "The Improvement of the Estate: a Study of Jane Austen's Novels" that the journey Austen's characters take indicates a path of moral education and rapprochement with social norms. Researchers can examine the tone and style of Austen's narratives and take a position on her use of irony and the spirit in which she intended her novels to be read.
Critical works such as Jo Alyson Parker's "The Author's Inheritance: Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, and the Establishment of the Novel" argue that Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson strongly influenced Austen's work. Both Fielding and Richardson wrote "coming of age" novels about female characters learning to take their place in society. Research can focus on Austen's use of these genre conventions, showing how her novels both adapt and subvert their techniques and narrative devices (such as the epistolary form).