is this for the Study guide? I have this Q. too and im struggling heaps. I don't know if what I managed to come up with is correct in any way, but I hope this helps!
• Aunt Fey goes on describing the hardship faced by the people of Austen’s time, famine/unemployment/child mortality.
• She says that people cannot live by bread itself, but one must have books, although it couldn’t be the remedy for all hence many people were uneducated and illiterate.
• “The gentry, then as now, has to read in order to comprehend both the wretchedness and ire of the multitude. It is not only the ignorance the illiterate we need to combat, it is the insensitivity of the well-to-do.” (bottom of pg 84)
• Aunt Fey says that literature/fiction can “stretch our sensibilities and our understanding” in a way which mere information never could.
• She says that by reading (stressing on reading Austen) one can begin to practice the art of empathy for the less advantaged and learn to stand in other peoples’ shoes with different outlooks on the world.
• Fey shares with Alice the opening paragraph of Emma and explains how the words immediately captivate the reader and pull them into the world of invention.
• She further explains that the writer has to create the House of Imagination to be welcoming place in order for the reader and writer to have a shared experience of the book.
• Alice has difficulty reading Emma, Aunt Fey suggested that this is because she is sharing the same dispatched experience Austen was during her composition of Emma, Fey believes Austen was distracted by the many things in life and restricted from doing the things she would enjoy, therefore these obstacles are reflected in her writings.
