Does Austen address the theme of gender injustice in her treatment of love and marriage?

The Jane Austen reader can definitely feel a sarcastic
undertone within the lines of most of her writings when it comes to the themes of gender
injustice, love, marriage, and
relationships.

Pride and Prejudice is
particularly strong in the topic of gender injustice because the novel shows how women
cannot get within society unless they get married. This situation was illustrated with
the case of the Bennet entailment which would have left Mr. Collins, a distant cousin,
as the only heir to the Bennet estate just because he was a man. Hence, the Bennet women
would have had to marry in order to move to their future husbands' households
instead.

A similar situation can be seen in Sense
and Sensibility when the Dashwood women had to vacate their home in favor of
their half brother, who also became sole heir to his father's inheritance just because
the law stated that men were the only ones to
inherit.

Therefore, Austen followed a similar axiom to
present the topic of gender injustice in both Pride and Prejudice
and Sense and Sensibility. Namely, that women were
literally ruled by men in society, that marriage was the only way that they could come
into society as worthy individuals and that, as wives, they were one of the many
possessions of the husband.

This shows that Austen was not
only aware but clearly against these accepted notions and used sarcasm to expose the
ridiculousness of these social rules.