I hope you all don't mind me throwing another idea into the ring - its just occured to me:
Do you think JA did not write about people starving to death etc, because, at the end of the day, its just not romantic. JA's novels are romantic escapism. The social commentary within them is limited to the narrow confines of the class they are about. This is not a whiff of *real* scandal or anything that the contemporary reader would find really shocking.
True or false?