The last works of Jane Austen and Barbara Pym, written while each was knowingly dying, both continue and transform a discourse of illness and cure traceable through their canon. Illness figures both literally and metaphorically in their narratives; in Austen as failures in wholeness and in Pym as failures in love. After undergoing the metaphorically medical treatments of purging and vivifying in Austen and inoculating in Pym, their female protagonists achieve conditions of health and wholeness by closure of the narrative. In the dying works, individual metaphorical illnesses become a general societal condition of fragmentation, and cure becomes more elusive. The shared use of a village undergoing profound change reflects each writer's own bodily transformation as certain death approaches, and the restoration of health to the village-as-body becomes one of achieving balance or homeostasis. This is effected in the narrative by the hinted-at curative powers of nature in Sanditon and of restored faith in A Few Green Leaves. On a theoretical level, both texts reflect their narratives of dis-ease and cure. Pym's last text remained unpublished before her death and therefore "ill" because not functioning, but second opinions and faith in her reputation confirmed its public health. Austen's Sanditon as a fragment embodies its own discourse of dis-ease, or failure of wholeness, and requires a curative act on the part of the reader to restore it to some sense of ideal wholeness or health.

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Jane Austen wrote stories about women, their matches, and the communities they were part of. Despite being labeled as a romance author, there are additional layers to Austen’s work that distinguish her as a commentator on the British Empire and colonialism. All her work contains some commentary; however, Sanditon and Mansfield Park stand out as the most prominent. Despite the differences in both length and story, both compare and discuss domestic England and the British Empire in its entirety. Furthermore, Austen’s letters to her sister, Cassandra, show evidence of Jane Austen’s investment in the colonial aspects of both texts. This evidence ultimately connects to Mansfield Park and Sanditon and their colonial discourses regarding the West Indies and slave-owning parts of society. The fact that Jane Austen belonged to a society and time that colonized and enslaved individuals does not make it self-evident that she favored brutality. The texts argue a sense of domestic pride and identity, demonstrated in her frequent theme of Englishness. Mansfield Park and Sanditon are texts that demonstrate and suggest a sense of resistance and include nuanced elements of Empire that ultimately prove that Austen consciously interacts with Empire. This text aims to demonstrate and discuss the ways that Austen as an author interacts with elements of resistance in Sanditon and Mansfield Park.