Abstract
[...]Fanny greatly looks forward to her visit to her first home, where she imagines that she will be able to be “in the centre of such a circle, loved by so many, . . . to feel affection without fear or restraint, to feel herself the equal of those who surrounded her” (370). The felt intensity of the desire for home, then, varies both across and within the main characters, but the desire plays an important role for all of them, for they recognize that happiness is bound up with home. [...]the novels’ “happy endings” consist in descriptions of the heroines’ new homes. The relationship among the three elements, then, is one of mutual support; the crowning feature is the happiness of a good home, “as secure as earthly happiness can be.” [...]we can expand MacIntyre’s thesis about how the telos is portrayed in Austen’s novels—that it is the finding of one’s place in a good home, comprising “a particular kind of marriage and a particular kind of household of which that marriage will be the focal point”—to include security, comfort, and character. Anne herself comes close to doing so, becoming for a time a valued member of the circle on the basis of her kindness and warmth and the strength of character she shows during the crisis precipitated by Louisa’s injury.