Seconded! And *wave* to new members - thanks for being here.

I always think of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, who gets such bad press for basically doing nothing except look shocked and offended for the entirety of the book. For her time, she was probably more a typical female than most of Austen's heroines, but she's definitely not to modern tastes. Perhaps we require characters to be more active because the function of the novel is more about doing than observing these days?

...or maybe it's just very irritating to endure a character who's apparently too thick to breathe and think at the same time.