Austen vs Wharton: who wrote society's true face?

I dissected marriage as it truly is—a market where a woman's wit is her only leverage, and I made you laugh while you noticed the trap.

You gave your heroines happy endings, Miss Austen; I refused that mercy, because in my New York society devoured its own and called it good taste.

A cruelty need not be shown to be understood—I let a single raised eyebrow do the work your whole tragic architecture strains to.

Then I built the cage you only sketched, and locked my Lily Bart inside it, so the reader would feel the bars you politely left ajar.