Can you tell me who I am, Jane?

My dearest Jane,

I have not had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, yet I am intimately familiar with your work and your life. You are a woman of limitless passion and hope.

As I read your stories, and especially as I see the productions of your work on screen, I wonder where I would fit in. Time and again I see the romantic lives of the women you created and wish I were one of them.

Could you tell me, darling Jane, if I could be Elizabeth? I admire her very much and want to be like her in every particular. She is carefree and lovely, sure of herself and her place in the world. Elizabeth succeeds in wedding a man of uncommon character because she stayed true to her own. But I am not like her, at least not in the essential aspects. I care too much of what others think of me and hope beyond all reasonable belief that a man will come to sweep me off to his rather large estate. No, I am no Elizabeth.

Catherine, then? I am mired in a world of my own creating, living in fantasy and faerie when I should be firmly based in reality. Her fairytale became her life, though, when Henry Tilney stepped into it. My life is still all dreams, so I must not be her.

Sadly, I may be more like Fanny than any of the others. Destined to wait for the man I love to realize that I've been there all along. No. I thought I was Fanny once, but my Edmund married his Mary Crawford, much to my devastation. I tried to have Fanny's patience, but even that didn't suffice in the end.

I very well could be Eleanor. Solid and immovable, a support to my family, but ultimately unlucky in love. Except Eleanor finally realized her dearest dreams. She put others first, and time moved ever so slowly, but happiness did come for her in the end.

I am decidedly no Emma. I have not her passion for matchmaking, though I am sure I would have as much skill at it as she. She is young, innocent, and endlessly loving, but still I am not like her.

Who am I then, Jane? I read your novels and love the women who inhabit them. I wish I could be one of them, with my own happy ending waiting for the last chapter of the book. I want my Edward, my Mr. Knightly, Mr. Darcy or Captain Wentworth. I want the man who realizes that I am of inestimable value and can't live another day without making me his own. Will it ever happen? Will it, Jane?

After all the stories you told—of romance, of intrigue, of love—your story ended in solitude. You died a spinster, much like I am now. Am I to be you then, Jane?

I know not how my story will end. Do you know how it will all end for me?

Even though I have not much hope now, I can remember that Eleanor waited without hope for her Edward and sweet Anne waited eight years for her Captain Wentworth. Fanny spent nearly a lifetime pining for her Edmund. Maybe I can wait a while longer to find my own love.

With warmest regards,

Michelle