] I'm not sure that the people of the twenty-first century really do want to think of Jane as "all good", Lief. ....But it really does seem that he whitewashing of her reputation did begin with the next generation, and that her family took great pains to show her only in a positive light.

...

”I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed. She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow; I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part of myself. ”

Can it be that the sentiments expressed by Cassandra at the time of her sister’s death contributed to make people inclined to think of Jane Austen only in very positive terms?
But of course there is no reason to think Cassandra loved her so well because she was all goodness. Rather that she loved her sister because she was a wonderful, entirely human companion for better and for worse. How much of life they shared from that time when Jane insisted to go with her elder sister to school! I like to think they had a good deal of private understanding and sometimes rather malicious fun between them that nobody else will ever know about and which probably greatly enrichened their existence.

...JA's generation was, in many ways, a social and economic downpoint in the family history.
That's a sad and interesting thought.