Quote:
Originally Posted by sun surfer
Well, with Austen's original quote, it's now incorrect because that single man may very well instead be in want of a husband.  |
Also, in that sentence, Austen is making light of the social expectations of her time.
If some banknote message finesser tried to make the language PC, then the reader wouldn't know (i) Austen was undercutting a conventional idea with light irony and (ii) that's how many people thought in Austen's time.
One of Austen's many gifts was the ability to maintain such a light tone that she could make social criticism seem as harmless as innocent humor.
The problem becomes obvious when you take the idea a bit further:
To make the entire book PC would be to lose crucial information about the world in which the characters lived and the specific commentary Austen was making about it. You'd also be changing the words of a great writer (however exhaustively edited in her time) for political reasons.
Political reasons which, however troublesome for the BoE, are not as important as the integrity and point of the sentence being quoted.