sentences:  Strictly speaking, there is neither a host nor a guest in Austen's country-house poem until the very end.Hesitant in her ownership of Highbury, the ambitious widow marshals the traditional topoi of the country-house genre so that her desire for elite status and her assertion of an authoritative voice—both complicated by her awareness of her gender as a potential liability in advancing her socioeconomic desires given her widowed state—become intertwined and mutually reinforcing.Austen the poet reinforces the value of the estate, which is soon to augment her status, by inscribing it within the country-house tradition alongside other celebrated, monumentalized sites; the worthiness of the estate, which will reflect upon Austen as owner, legitimates the authority and propriety of her verse.