Reception history of Jane Austen a responsible land-owner taking care of his family's ancient estate and Emma Woodhouse symbolising wealth cut off from any sort of social role. David Kaufmann in his 1992 essay "Propriety and the Law" argued that Austen was a classical liberal in the mold of Adam Smith, who felt that virtue was best exercised in the private sphere of the family life rather than in the public sphere of politics. Kaufmann rejected the claim that Austen was influenced by Edmund Burke, arguing that for Austen, virtue was not something passed down from time immemorial from a landed elite as Burke would
Styles and themes of Jane Austen such as Duckworth, contend that Austen's heroines "support and maintain an inherited structure of values and behavior", displaying a version of Christian stoicism. He emphasizes that Austen's novels highlight the dangers of individualism; her heroines emerge from isolation and despair to be reinstated into society. In "Mansfield Park", in particular, the morally suspect characters—the Crawfords, Rushworth and the Bertram daughters—represent individualism. The heroine of "Emma" embodies the dangers of individualism as her position of power allows her to affect everyone in Highbury. In "Sense and Sensibility", Austen juxtaposes Elinor, who regulates the expression of her feelings according to social conventions,