The prose isn't too much like Austen (or Shelley, though perhaps closer), so I think it shouldn't be taken in that light, but judged in its own right - a Martini rather than a G&T perhaps.
'Why does he follow you? Does he intend you harm?'
'He has vowed to glut the maw of death with my remaining loved ones unless I make him happy.' He rested his head again in her lap. Mary was touched, scandalised, and in some obscure way aroused. She felt his trembling body, instinct with life. She stroked his hair. He was weeping. She realized that he was a physical being, a living animal, that he would eventually, too soon, die.
You can download the collection which includes the story under a creative commons license. Pride and Prometheus is the final story in the collection. I enjoyed the whole thing actually, so if you can read online, or have access to printing and binding equipment, it's worth checking out. The stories are well written, some are gently surreal, and many are quite strongly in the SF tradition. Many of them are set on a lunar colony where women have the political edge over men, and these seem non-dogmatic and well balanced (the author is male).
You can read a collection of reviews of the story on Torque Control.
I just must mention one coincidence, which was so striking it took me aback this morning. I am about to go to Dudley to see the Silurian fossil beds there, hopefully a trilobite. On the final page of the short story, Mary Bennett is looking at her most treasured possessions:
A Dudley locust made of stone.