Books: The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After
Exclusive interview with author Elizabeth Kantor and a review of her relationship advice book based on the novels of Jane Austen
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I thought, maybe Jane Austen is the answer to what’s wrong with modern dating…if you can still call it that,” says The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After author Elizabeth Kantor.
“I was working on an article about some of the problems in modern relationships, especially the phenomenon of a woman prematurely committing to a guy and then being in a position where she feels like she has to persuade him, in painful stages of delicate negotiation, to commit to her.”
About eight years ago, Kantor had read a piece about Jane Austen in the Washington Post. “It was a lovely article in many ways, an appreciation of Jane Austen and a celebration of modern women’s love for her, but it seemed to me to give the wrong answer to the question of why we love Jane Austen today.”
Kantor wrote The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After to help women not settle, but go for the happily-ever-after that we see in Jane Austen’s novels. We all want more in our romantic relationships. Kantor shows how to find the happiness and love we really want. Utilizing Austen’s heroines she explains and gives examples of how to avoid the pitfalls in modern-day romances. Kantor uses her personal experience, comments from modern women and examples from Austen’s novels.
This book uses predicaments and characters from all of Austen’s works, including unfinished stories and books. Readers can use this book to avoid the Willoughbys, Crawfords and Wickhams in our modern day world. There is also advice how to pursue rational happiness, which is different to the “I want to be happy” sentiments that everyone expresses. Kantor doesn’t leave the men out either. She gives advice on what men can do to be happy too.
Kantor says Jane Austen’s insights into relationship dynamics have kept surprising her. “Her world was so different from ours,” says Kantor. “Women lived by different rules, but the problems were essentially the same. Take, for example, the phenomenon of men who are afraid of commitment. There are at least eight guys in Jane Austen novels who exhibit all the signs…for different reasons in each case. And the commit-and-then-negotiate-for-what-you-want-from-him relationship style? It’s in Jane Austen’s novels, too. Think Lydia Bennett, Maria Betram, or Mrs. Clay. Everybody knows Jane Austen was a genius, but she wasn’t just a great literary artist. She was a genius about male and female psychology, too.”
“As I worked on the book, I came to see that Austen was working at precisely the right time…after old-fashioned arranged marriage had given way to the love match, but before Romanticism came along and persuaded everybody that happiness was boring and it was better to have horrible-but-interesting drama than to find happiness in love.”
This is Kantor’s second book. Her first, The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, was actually written after she began work on The Jane Austen Guide. “As a first-time author I knew I had a better chance of getting that book published first because it was for a series by [publisher] Regnery. I thought if it was a success, I’d have a better chance of publishing the Jane Austen advice book later.” Kantor’s editor is Mary Beth Baker.
Kantor is currently working on interviews, articles, and talks about The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After. Kantor is based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee.
The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After by Elizabeth Kantor. Hardcover, 304 pages, Publisher: Regnery Publishing (April 2, 2012), Language: English. ISBN: 9781596987845 $24.95
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