this is why movies skew things so badly. jane austen is not a romance. she's not the nora roberts of the victorian era. in fact, mansfield park has the only real romantic lead that she has done (err, so some scholars aqrgue anyway). when she tried to write a conventional romantic heroine, she didn't do as well as with the witty elizabeth bennet.

i loved emma. the ending broke my heart, but it was expected. i felt it fit the series perfectly and the minute eleanor said that last thing to will, i knew.

i was thinking of doing a ficlet, just a one-shot, an epilogue in the syle of George Eliot. i think i might when i'm finished reading middlemarch. but sorry, i nearly screamed when i saw you say that austen's work was romance. not at all, not in the way we think of romance. the movies are, but it's quite different on paper. she also doesn't focus on social divisions as much as she ridicules the whole aspect of courting and all that surrounds those silly rituals.

give victorian novels a chance. they won't let you down. :)