To aver that Jane Austen is funny is to risk sounding a little like Mary Bennet, witlessly pronouncing threadbare truisms with an air of philosophic gravity, which is in itself pretty funny. As a satirist, Austen often aims her humor at moral rather than purely intellectual defects. Austen's comedy is most brilliant and most biting when it is aimed at those who place themselves above the possibility of error or embarrassment. The myth of Austen's funniness is dented not so much by its frequent darkness – lots of comedy is dark after all – as by Austen's determination to put the will to funniness itself under examination, as both a corrective and as a quality that needs correction. Austen examines the dangers of wit and laughter more thoroughly in Mansfield Park and Emma.