Images of Autumn

Muse of the Month: Jane Austen

Despite living worlds apart, Jane Austen is as relevant today as she ever was. Her stories are timeless and will continue to be for ages to come. You can't pick up an Austen novel without feeling some connection to the characters, whether it be, jealousy, empathy or sympathy, she enthralls her readers in a way that leaves you considering your own choices and decisions when it comes to life and especially love.

I love her prose style, her humor, her perceptiveness, her memorable characters, and her scintillating dialogue. I admire her ability to create a world that rarely touches upon her contemporary world, but is nonetheless “real”, to produce romantic matches formed at a time when few men and women “can afford to marry without some attention to money,” and to conclude each work with irony, affection and reconciliation. But I especially love Austen as the foremost writer of the novel of manners.

In an era of “snark chic” and the internet’s ever-expanding venues for indulging in it, I continue to be impressed with Jane Austen’s ability to be penetrating, ironic and droll without ever sinking to coarseness of expression. Austen leaves those without manners and morals to each other – Lydia and Wickham, Lucy and Robert, Mrs. Norris and Maria Rushworth – but reserves genuine happiness as a reward of good character for those like Darcy, who, “in a cause of compassion and honor…had been able to get the better of himself.”

So when in doubt of what to do, just think...What would Austen do?