both ways in depicting Elizabeth as she uses much irony. After Elizabeth rejects Darcy and then realizes she loves him, she comments "no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was" as if she herself is aware that she is a character in a romance novel. Later, she tells Darcy in thanking him for paying off Wickham's debts and ensuring Lydia's marriage that they might be in the wrong, "for what become of the moral, if our comfort springs from a breach of promise, for I ought not to have mentioned the subject?". Brownstein argues that Austen's ironical way of depicting Elizabeth allows her to present her heroine as both a "proto-feminist" and a "fairy-tale heroine". At one point, Elizabeth says: "I am resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any other person wholly unconnected with me". The American scholar Claudia Johnson wrote that this was a surprisingly strong statement for a female character in 1813. Likewise, Elizabeth does not defer to the traditional elite, saying of Lady Catherine's opposition to her marrying Darcy: "Neither duty nor honor nor gratitude have any possible claim on me, in the present instance. No principle of either, would be violated by my marriage with Mr Darcy". In the same, Elizabeth defends her love of laughter as somewhat life-improving by saying: "I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good". Elizabeth regards herself as competent to judge what is "wise and good", and refuses to let others dictate to her what she may or may not laugh at, making her one of the most individualistic of Austen heroines. However, Johnson noted that Austen hedged her bets here, reflecting the strict censorship imposed in Britain during the wars with France; Elizabeth reaffirms her wish to be part of the elite by marrying Darcy, instead of challenging it, as she says: "He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal." In the same way Austen avoids the issue of filial obedience – questioning of which would have marked her out as a "radical" – by having Mrs Bennet tell her daughter she must marry Collins where her father says she must not. However, the way in which both Elizabeth's parents are portrayed as, if not bad parents, then at least