There is not much known about her early life, but “in 1802 it seem[ed] likely that Jane agreed to marry Harris Bigg-Wither, the 21-year-old heir of a Hampshire family, but the next morning changed her mind” (Augustyn). Her love life, which paralleled that of her sister Cassandra, remained incomplete. Although much of Austen’s writing discusses love and relationships, there is little to know about her personal love life due to “Cassandra, [who] was a jealous guardian of her sister's private life, and after Jane's death censored the surviving letters, destroying many and cutting up others” (Augustyn). Yet her novels provide undeniable evidence illustrating that Austen believed in the idea of love and sympathized, if not empathized, with the concept of love unrequited or
There is not much known about her early life, but “in 1802 it seem[ed] likely that Jane agreed to marry Harris Bigg-Wither, the 21-year-old heir of a Hampshire family, but the next morning changed her mind” (Augustyn). Her love life, which paralleled that of her sister Cassandra, remained incomplete. Although much of Austen’s writing discusses love and relationships, there is little to know about her personal love life due to “Cassandra, [who] was a jealous guardian of her sister's private life, and after Jane's death censored the surviving letters, destroying many and cutting up others” (Augustyn). Yet her novels provide undeniable evidence illustrating that Austen believed in the idea of love and sympathized, if not empathized, with the concept of love unrequited or