Stuck in a Room

Nothing happens in chapters ten through twelve. A letter gets written, a book gets read, and Sadie Stein argues that the nothing is the point: Austen shuts two quick people in a drawing room, evening after evening, until small talk becomes a full accounting of character. Stein watches Darcy get drawn in against his will, and names the fantasy that has kept readers loyal for two centuries, the dream of being too interesting to resist. Why does neither have a single person who will tell them the truth? She ends somewhere unguarded: herself at fourteen, rereading, and a father who told her exactly what she hoped was true.