It's quite remarkable how postmodern Jane Austen's novels already are. See also Northanger Abbey, where she regularly breaks the 4th wall for a meta-discourse on literature and genres, just to involve the reader again and again, as if she had never ripped the veil – which isn't necessarily black, BTW.

(In this context, it may be also notable how Fanny Price’s apparently keen social observations are really a mirror of the rigorous views and forms conveyed in moral books as characterized by Austen and put up as a foil and antipode to the genre of novels in this meta-discourse, and laughed at in other novels, like in the characters of Mr. Collins and Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. If not for other reasons, Fanny Price is an anti-heroine, just for her anti-novel-ness.)

But there's an unexamined assumption in that piece that good characters should be rewarded and bad characters punished by the author. That's exactly the sort of thing that Austen hated. She wanted things to be things like real life, where adultery and cheating and lying and defying the law can bring you hundreds of millions of loyal followers and a second presidency.

Why was Henry not punished like Julia was? Because he owned land and she didn't. That's the beginning and end of it. It's unfair because society is unfair.

And it's not just men who get away with things. Lucy Steele lies and schemes and manipulates her way all the way through Sense and Sensibility, and is rewarded by being not only an heiress of a great fortune, but a favored daughter-in-law. The difference between Lucy and Julia aren't their morals -- Lucy is far less moral than Julia. She's just a lot smarter and more disciplined.

In this sense, where characters are established by just dropping social position and economic status as sort of a blueprint, Jane Austen is a surprisingly materialist author. To paraphrase a well known quote, she turned Radcliffe from the head to the feet. ;-)

I dunno, the pacing I always think was really weird, even though it clearly works. Most of the time, you don't even know who the main characters are until chapter 2 at a minimum. Read the opening lines of Persuasion, all about some arrogant fool of a baronet, and you're like, "Why is this so interesting?"

And then, usually it seems loads of stuff happens in the beginning that sets up the basic tension of the story, then a long middle where almost nothing seems to happen (but for some reason you're not bored), and then suddenly everything resolves at the end.