Jane Austen Ruined My Life

"Professor Emma Grant has always had faith in the happily-ever-after depicted by her favorite author, Jane Austen. But where's Emma's happy ending when she discovers that, instead of a Darcy, she's married a Wickham who both breaks her heart and destroys her career? Emma sets off for England on a quest to reestablish her academic credibility by tracking down the lost letters of Jane Austen and finds a romantic adventure of her own." --Library Journal


The title of this book is a bit silly, but it was actually very entertaining. I was a little disappointed with how corny it got…still; it made several good points about Jane Austen’s writings. Many of us devotees are absorbed with the romance depicted in these novels; the language, the culture, even the clothes. And like the character Emma Grant in Jane Austen Ruined My Life, Austen fans are disappointed when they don’t end up in a happily-ever-after relationship.

I can never watch a romantic movie without either of my parents commenting how “men don’t really talk that way!” It’s true that in order to get a man like Mr. Darcy or Knightly, you have to make him up. Girls my age fanaticize over these characters. After watching the movies and reading the books, I admit I dreamed about romantic proposals and fervent courtships. But setting the standards high in hopes of getting a man like Mr. Darcy, is perhaps a bit unrealistic. I can’t honestly expect a guy from the 21st century to speak, act, and think like an Austen man.

Jane Austen’s characters are timeless and there is wisdom in her writings. She believed in marrying for love. But if you expect romance to be exactly like something out of a novel, then you are sure to be disappointed. Whether or not a man behaves romantically is not the issue, Jane Austen urges her readers to look past charm and wit and focus on good character. But I won’t analyze her novels too much… after all “the person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”~Jane Austen