3.5 I love the story, Austen's wit is unparalleled and her vivid characters are eternal. However, I was surprised to find that I enjoyed the film and tv adaptions of the story more than the original novel as Austen's writing style is much too internal without being overly psychologically interesting for my taste. She almost utterly lacks a description of anything other than the thoughts of her characters, or even more blandly, the general listing of opinions of such and such by general people. While her satire and understanding of human nature are pointed and profound, I find her and/or her era's confusion of morals with manners and rank to be utterly annoying. The beginning was largely humorous, the end warm and happy, but the middle like too many a novel felt muddled and dry. I'm curious if any critics have traced her development as a writer and which novels reflect different period of her writing.