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Best Twitter Responses to the Article on Jane Austen’s Marital Status

Carina Pereira

Staff Writer

Carina Pereira, born in ‘87, in Portugal. Moved to Belgium in 2011, and to Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 2019. Avid reader, changing interests as the mods strikes. Whiles away the time by improvising stand-up routines she’ll never get to perform. Books are a life-long affair, audiobooks a life-changing discovery of adulthood. Selling books by day, writer by night. Contact

The Washington Post has published an article this week in regards to Jane Austen’s birthday—16th December—and, somehow, they figured that the most appropriate way to honour the author was to focus on her romantic life in relation to her writings.

The title of the piece, Jane Austen was the master of the marriage plot. But she remained single, was, perhaps, an attempt to come up with a witty title. The only problem is that, well, it isn’t witty. It is nonsensical and sexist.

Jane Austen was clearly a feminist; 200 years after her death, she is surely turning on her grave, thinking: I can’t believe I still have to deal with this sh*t.  Luckily, twitter folks are always on the ready to jump in on narrow-minded articles like this one.

Here are a few of my favourite answers The Washington Post will be sure to remember the next time they try to label Jane Austen anything less than what she truly was: a great author.

Or…they’re just very good at it.

Not yet.

Debatable.

Also debatable.

Very debatable. I actually find this affirmation rather outrageous, and not true. J.K. Rowling IS a wizard, no matter what she tries to make us believe.

I won’t even comment on this one (depends on the point of view, really).

She had to put up with Lord Byron, though, so it was pretty close.

Can’t really deny this one.

And aren’t we lucky.

Touché.