My Thoughts on Jane Austen

It is perhaps worth emphasizing what may be called the hardness- at least the firmness- of Jane Austen's thought...The great abstract nouns of the classical English moralists are unblushingly and uncompromisingly used: good sense, courage, contentment, fortitude, 'some duty neglected, some failing indulged,' impropriety, indelicacy, generous candor, blamable, distrust, just, humiliation, vanity, folly, ignorance, reason.  These are the concepts by which Jane Austen grasps the world. 
-C. S. Lewis

Principals, such as morality and common sense, are essential to Jane Austen's craft as a writer.  Jane Austen lived a simple and quiet life, seeing four of her six novels published anonymously, and she forever left her mark in the world.  Her descriptive talents and her insight into human character fill readers with unbridled enthusiasm. My favorite part of Jane's books?  Their happy endings. 

To me, happy endings are essential.  I love the phrase found at the end of many childhood tales, 'and they all lived happily ever after.'  I cherish my dreams of heaven, picturing the day when Christ will bring me home to Himself, and I will find perfect peace and rest with  him. 

Psalm 37:4-6
Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, and He will do it. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your judgment as the noonday.  Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. 

I love the redemptive arch that is present in Jane's stories.  For example, with Catherine's story, from Northanger Abbey:

Most bitterly did she cry...then, her mind made up on these several points, and her resolution formed, of always  judging and acting in the future with the greatest good sense, she had nothing to do but forgive herself and be happier than ever.  - Jane Austen

If there were more Janeites today, sporting "What would Jane do?" bumper stickers, the world would be a better place. 

Proverbs 14:8a  The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways.