WORDS OF AUSTEN

Jane Austin a forward thinking modernist woman within austere regency times

Bravely aged eighteen wrote about given social protocols and dedications

When women like children were expected to be seen and little heard

Yet she was an observer of patriarchy's prevailing unfair expectations

In order to suppress women and keep them forever undermined

Jane was irrepressibly clever full of anarchic ideas never trite

Describing values of female power admonitions on the conduct

Of young women whether wrong or right

She wrote prolifically gathering readers into her literary throng unduped

Provoking and evoking within them a right to progress to shine in life

Never to suppress who and what they believed in

Or to make themselves fit into society's restraining blight

She prevailed her pursuit of justice raising awareness never thinned

For females whether mother daughters sisters aunts or wives with might

In their social status be it lowly high or wrongly pinned

Bringing to yield a wrath from the menfolk they silently scythed

Many of whom either openly or covertly would rather have Jane silenced

Than raised up from her station whilst outranking society's place trounced

By being published read then so handsomely paid to write

Books so clever poignant and superbly sublime

Though not allowed to use her birth name as if a shame

Only read beyond a veil of a non de plume as if a heinous crime ensued

I believe if Jane were alive today

Women and men's battle with each other

She would not find much changed however prayed

Indeed it would be fresh fodder for new books to discover

Where women would be championed not restrained

How delectable that would be to once again read

Her observant point of view whilst centuries have passed

Yet human nature never waivers its differences or how little it evolves

Indeed Jane Austin was a forward thinker beyond her allotted time

Yet her thoughts and ideas still thread on

To new readers in a circle of a different era and world

Her voice is heard silently yet her words still echo loudly

Perpetuating her messages continuing their purposes served

Natasha Anne Kelleher May 2025

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