When I was first asked if I would like to participate in the Austen Project – one of six modern writers updating each of Austen’s six novels – I didn’t set out to explore the question of Austen’s feminism or lack thereof, let alone write a feminist novel, although I’m fairly sure that’s what I ended up doing.

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Yes, Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published in 1792, almost 20 years before Austen’s first novel, but when we discuss feminism today we are referring to something much more modern, so the question of Austen’s feminism sounds a bit ridiculous. Yet as I began writing my version of Pride and Prejudice, set in 2013, which I eventually titled Eligible, it began to feel inevitable and important that the women would have more agency, and for that matter, more fun.

In Pride and Prejudice the pressure to marry is a given. You might even say it is a truth universally acknowledged. Though Austen’s famous first sentence describes a man, clearly that pressure was stronger for women. After all, for most 19th-century women financial wellbeing – which was closely linked to, if not synonymous with, their overall wellbeing – relied on marrying well. That Austen herself never married (despite a proposal she accepted before turning it down a day later) is treated as such a noteworthy fact that it seems to be the exception that proves the rule.

As I wrote I reflected on what had and hadn’t changed since Pride and Prejudice’s 1813 publication. The social pressure to marry continues to exist. At least it does among the American middle classes: if you get to my age, 40, and you’re not paired off, people wonder why, and some possess the impudence to ask. (I married at 32, though I dated unsuccessfully enough that I can easily imagine a parallel universe in which I would never have met the right person.) And marriage still confers financial benefits when it comes to taxes, healthcare and real estate. Nevertheless, in 2016 marriage feels optional, not mandatory – surely we all know singletons whose fabulous lives are more likely to inspire envy than pity.

As a novelist, I wanted to illustrate that there is no longer just one version of “happily ever after”. A woman can marry a man and have children with him. She can also marry a woman, or no one – and she can eschew or embrace motherhood regardless of her romantic status.

Austen’s Jane and Lizzie Bennet are in their early 20s; I aged them to their late 30s. Though both of my Bennet sisters once assumed that they would marry, they are less eager than they were when they were younger: Jane is looking into having a baby on her own, while Liz is in a relationship she knows is unlikely to lead any time soon to the altar. Austen purists might be relieved to know that my Mrs Bennet remains just as obsessed with matrimony.

Another change I made that felt both feminist and organic was for Liz to initiate the physical aspect of her relationship with Darcy. And of course it has a physical aspect – do you know of any modern couples, outside of strict religions or arranged marriages, who get engaged without consummating first? When they run into each other while out jogging, Liz is the one who suggests the “hate sex”, which isn’t as provocative as it sounds out of context. Without spoiling anything by getting too specific, I also made the decision not to allow all the marriage proposals in the novel to come from the men.

In Pride and Prejudice Darcy’s wealthy aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, tries to thwart the romance between Lizzy and Darcy, partly because she hopes Darcy will marry her own daughter and partly because she sees Lizzy as unworthy of her nephew. My “Kathy” de Bourgh isn’t a relative of Darcy’s, nor is she an impediment to Darcy and “Liz’s” relationship; rather, she is a feminist icon, an 80-year-old whom Liz, a journalist, interviews for a magazine. It is her warm advice about love and marriage that helps clarify Liz’s view towards the man who has just, to her surprise, declared his affection.

The fact that feminism is now trendy is one of the great surprises – and delights – of my life. At the age of 15 I founded a feminist group at my school, and it was a bit of a disaster, as, frankly, was I at the time. The idea of the group was to bring attention to and discuss issues of gender imparity in the wider world and at my school, which had previously been all-male – think of an institution as Eton-like as anything in America gets. Ironically, my own leadership skills were so lacking that I’m pretty sure I damaged the cause. I worried about alienating people, especially boys, which didn’t preclude me from being antagonistic in conversations, even as shyness made it hard for me to stand in front of the school to announce upcoming meetings or events.

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But I wasn’t born to be an activist. In fact, a testament to my allegiance to the craft of fiction over activism is that when I write, I always choose to do what I believe to be in the service of the story – what will make it more real and alive, more funny or heartbreaking or juicy – over what will make a political point. To use plots and characters as vehicles for one’s own beliefs would be to write propaganda. Inventing a story that’s real, alive, funny, heartbreaking and juicy means depicting people and the situations they find themselves in as complicated and ambiguous; it’s rare that their behaviour is obviously right or wrong.

In two different novels I’ve portrayed abortions in ways that have made me wonder if readers would guess me to be anti-choice (in fact, I’m pro-choice). And repeatedly I’ve written about characters who are deeply flawed and pretty much the opposite of role models.

I believe Austen did the same, which is one of the reasons we love her books. And it’s a sign of the richness and elasticity of her work that it inspires so many derivations so varied in tone. Where I saw the opportunity to explore gender, others have explored zombies or, as in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, vloggers.

A question even sillier and more speculative than whether Austen was a feminist is what she would think of any of these derivations. The beauty of Austen’s novels lies partly in their clever opacity and complex irreducibility. I personally might wish to picture Austen exchanging her empire waist dress and bonnet for a “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt. But in the end, we must let her novels speak for themselves.