In Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park, an almost imperceptible smile from potential suitor Henry Crawford causes the protagonist Fanny Price to bluish; her embarrassment grows when she suspects that he is aware of it. This moment--in which Fanny not only infers Henry's mental state through his gestures, but also infers that he is drawing inferences about her mental state--illustrates what literary scholar George Butte calls "deep intersubjectivity," a technique for representing interactions between consciousnesses through which Austen's novels derive much of their social and psychological drama.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

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Accepted Answer

It provides a synopsis of an interaction in an Austen novel that illustrates a literary concept discussed in the following sentence.

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It states a claim about Austen's skill at representing psychological complexity that is reinforced by an example presented in the following sentence.

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It advances an interpretation of an Austen protagonist who is contrasted with protagonists from other Austen novels cited in the following sentence.

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It describes a recurring theme in Austen's novels that is the focus of a literary scholar's analysis summarized in the following sentence.