Reception history of Jane Austen their class, instead of their moral failures being presented as a product of the social system. Writing about the work of Johnson, Irvine wrote that for her, Austen was a radical because it is women like Emma Woodhouse, Mrs. Elton and Mrs. Churchill who really run Highbury society, undercutting traditional gender roles, but Irvine questioned whether this really made Austen into radical, noting it was the wealth and status of the gentry women of Highbury that gave them their power. Irvine argued it was just as possible to see "Emma" as a conservative novel that upholds the superiority of the
Styles and themes of Jane Austen [her] nothing that does not either vex or weary [her]. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome". Austen's juvenile parody of Oliver Goldsmith's "History of England" is "authored" by "a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant Historian". In such statements, Austen suggests that history is a masculine fiction and of little importance to women. Feminist critics also focus on the role of the female artist in Austen's fiction. For example, Claudia Johnson views Emma as a powerful heroine, an artist