Take, for instance, Fanny’s relationship with her real brother William. As narrator, Austen explains that in terms of ideal relationships “even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal… …Fraternal love, sometimes almost everything, is at others worse than nothing. But with William and Fanny Price it was still a sentiment in all its prime and freshness, wounded by no opposition of interest, cooled by no separate attachment, and feeling the influence of time and absence only in its increase.” There is no hint of sexuality here, and it was a time and place where single siblings would live together without undue and obscene suspicion, but it is easy to see that Austen believed love – even romantic love – was best found within the family.