Illustration of a woman in Regency dress looking over a garden toward a distant town, with the title “3 Misconceptions about Jane Austen”

The biggest problem with Jane Austen is that her writing seems too easy. For serious thinkers, her writing is almost dismissed before it is considered. Even non-Austen fans think they have her neatly categorized. She is a little too cloyingly domestic. Safe. Familiar. Chick flicks.

But familiarity is a camouflage. Because the surface is easily digestible, the deeper content is lost on many of us.

A girl in a bonnet must be in want of a boyfriend.

It is true that every one of her stories is a love story. And yet it is not a love story. The wedding at the end is not merely wrapping up a rom-com. For Jane Austen, the characters have to earn the wedding, and the wedding symbolically points to something much greater.

In that way, her novels are like poems: everything symbolically points to something else, if we can but learn how to read it.

I am launching a Jane Austen blog and podcast called Austen and Eden. So you can consider this an introduction to both the Austen and Eden podcast and the Austen and Eden blog.

Why Austen and Eden?

Lasting stories follow the same patterns. From classic fairy tales down to C. S. Lewis, Harry Potter, and of course Jane Austen, the great stories carry timeless motifs.

These patterns are the hidden reasons we love a good story without knowing why. They slip past our defenses, speak to the soul, and shape who we become.

This blog is for you if you love Jane Austen but do not want to stop there. Austen is our open door into deeper storytelling. Into the kinds of stories that go all the way back to a garden.

Meaning any good story, even right down to today’s Hollywood movies and Netflix shows: if they are good, they contain at least something of Edenic storytelling.

Or to put it another way, the Eden narrative stands as an archetypal narrative for all stories. It is like a husk or a seed in which all other stories are contained. More on that as we explore literature.

Jane Austen’s stories include many motifs from the garden: the dragon in disguise, the fall, temptation, the deceitfulness of sin, and many more themes.

But first I want to clear up three common misconceptions about Jane Austen.

read more…