Brilliant article — love your discussion of free indirect speech, too! Too few people understand this or use it in their writing. I teach Austen every year in my classes and I always start with the narrator — typically the best character in the book. If you don’t mind, I’d like to offer this essay to my students the next time we read Austen (sadly, I just finished teaching her this December and won’t again until around October). I think this would blow my students away, and make the points I’m trying to make in a much more persuasive manner (and since it’s not coming from me, all the better). So glad you wrote it — and I found it. :)