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What Jane Austen Taught Me About Love and Romance
Debra White Smith, bestselling author of the Jane Austen Series (more than 89,000 copies sold) explores the lessons about love and romance revealed through Austen’s beloved stories—Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, and others.
Alongside wisdom from 1 Corinthians, Debra reveals love truths reflected in the lives of couples and characters from Austen’s created worlds.
George and Emma (Emma)—Love is patient
Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth (Pride and Prejudice)—Love is not proud
Colonel Brandon and Marianne (Sense and Sensibility)—Love always hopes
This beautiful presentation of lessons of the heart is a perfect gift for the Austen lover and fans of Debra White Smith’s contemporary fiction.
Alongside wisdom from 1 Corinthians, Debra reveals love truths reflected in the lives of couples and characters from Austen’s created worlds.
George and Emma (Emma)—Love is patient
Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth (Pride and Prejudice)—Love is not proud
Colonel Brandon and Marianne (Sense and Sensibility)—Love always hopes
This beautiful presentation of lessons of the heart is a perfect gift for the Austen lover and fans of Debra White Smith’s contemporary fiction.
- GenresNonfictionRomance
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
1 person is currently reading
90 people want to read
About the author
Debra White Smith
67 books106 followersDebra White Smith is a seasoned Christian author, speaker, and media personality who has been regularly publishing books for over a decade. In the last twelve years, she has accumulated more than 55 books sales to her credit with more than 1 million books in print. Her titles include such life-changing books as Romancing Your Husband, Romancing Your Wife, The Divine Romance: Developing Intimacy with God, the The Lonestar Intrigue fiction series, and The Jane Austen fiction series.
As a woman of God, Debra is committed to the highest standards of integrity and to spending hours a week being still before the Father, staying in tune with Him, and listening for His voice of direction in all she does. This commitment to romancing the Lord, coupled with her lifestyle of devouring, analyzing, and dissecting the Word of God has allowed God to bring about a miracle of deliverance and healing in Debra's spirit, mind, and soul. Debra holds a double Ph.D. from the toughest schools in the world. The first Ph.D. from the "School of Hard Knocks" and the second, from the "School of Very Hard Knocks." Aside from that, she holds an M.A. in English from the University of Texas.
Along with Debra's being voted a fiction-reader favorite several times, her book Romancing Your Husband was a finalist in the 2003 Gold Medallion Awards. And her Austen Series novel First Impressions was a finalist in the 2005 Retailer's Choice Awards. Debra has been a popular media guest across the nation, including Fox TV, The 700 Club, ABC Radio, USA Radio Network, and Moody Broadcasting. Her favorite hobbies include fishing, bargain-hunting, and swimming with her family. Debra also vows she would walk 50 miles for a scoop of German chocolate ice cream.
As a woman of God, Debra is committed to the highest standards of integrity and to spending hours a week being still before the Father, staying in tune with Him, and listening for His voice of direction in all she does. This commitment to romancing the Lord, coupled with her lifestyle of devouring, analyzing, and dissecting the Word of God has allowed God to bring about a miracle of deliverance and healing in Debra's spirit, mind, and soul. Debra holds a double Ph.D. from the toughest schools in the world. The first Ph.D. from the "School of Hard Knocks" and the second, from the "School of Very Hard Knocks." Aside from that, she holds an M.A. in English from the University of Texas.
Along with Debra's being voted a fiction-reader favorite several times, her book Romancing Your Husband was a finalist in the 2003 Gold Medallion Awards. And her Austen Series novel First Impressions was a finalist in the 2005 Retailer's Choice Awards. Debra has been a popular media guest across the nation, including Fox TV, The 700 Club, ABC Radio, USA Radio Network, and Moody Broadcasting. Her favorite hobbies include fishing, bargain-hunting, and swimming with her family. Debra also vows she would walk 50 miles for a scoop of German chocolate ice cream.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 27, 2009
Even though she remained single and never married, Jane Austen understood a lot about what makes a relationship successful. Her stories teach us what not to do, what to do, and are great examples of the many different forms and facets of love. Author, Debra White Smith (who has written many Christian Romance novels and a Christian series on the novels of Jane Austen), takes one of the most famous verses in the Bible on love and marriage (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) and makes comparisons with the characters of Jane Austen's novels with it.
"Love is patient, love is kind . . ." These words from 1 Corinthians show us how to properly love one another, they remind us what we know we should be doing but sometimes forget. Jane Austen must have understood this passage from the Bible and believed it to be the recipe for a good and successful relationship because a lot of her characters are the perfect examples.
Debra White Smith takes each phrase like "Love is patient" and attributes it to a couple like that fits it like Emma and Knightley. She explains how and why Emma and Knightley's story teach us about patience. She ties it in with the Christian faith and personal stories of her own experience.
Sometimes she includes awards for characters like Emma Woodhouse - "Queen of Sass," Maria and Julia Bertram - "The Slime Sisters," Mr. Darcy - "Foot in the Mouth Award."
I enjoyed this book in so many ways. I have read Debra White Smith's books about Jane Austen and I also read a lot of Christian Inspirational novels. I found the book very interesting, inspirational, and learned a lot about how to have a great marriage! As the daughter of a clergyman, it makes very good sense that Jane Austen would believe that the words in the Bible about love and marriage needed to be heeded. I liked the connections and comparisons she made for each and found that the author did her research and made just conclusions. I sometimes liked her personal stories, but I also found some of them to be weak analogies. For example comparing Knightley's love and patience for Emma to her sixth grade crush on a boy.
I recommend this book to people who love Jane Austen and like to read about Christianity. If you like this book I also recommend you try the series by Debra White Smith:
First Impressions (The Austen Series, Book 1)
Reason and Romance (The Austen Series, Book 2)
Central Park (The Austen Series, Book 3)
Northpointe Chalet (The Austen Series, Book 4)
Amanda (The Austen Series, Book 5)
Possibilities (The Austen Series, Book 6)
"Love is patient, love is kind . . ." These words from 1 Corinthians show us how to properly love one another, they remind us what we know we should be doing but sometimes forget. Jane Austen must have understood this passage from the Bible and believed it to be the recipe for a good and successful relationship because a lot of her characters are the perfect examples.
Debra White Smith takes each phrase like "Love is patient" and attributes it to a couple like that fits it like Emma and Knightley. She explains how and why Emma and Knightley's story teach us about patience. She ties it in with the Christian faith and personal stories of her own experience.
Sometimes she includes awards for characters like Emma Woodhouse - "Queen of Sass," Maria and Julia Bertram - "The Slime Sisters," Mr. Darcy - "Foot in the Mouth Award."
I enjoyed this book in so many ways. I have read Debra White Smith's books about Jane Austen and I also read a lot of Christian Inspirational novels. I found the book very interesting, inspirational, and learned a lot about how to have a great marriage! As the daughter of a clergyman, it makes very good sense that Jane Austen would believe that the words in the Bible about love and marriage needed to be heeded. I liked the connections and comparisons she made for each and found that the author did her research and made just conclusions. I sometimes liked her personal stories, but I also found some of them to be weak analogies. For example comparing Knightley's love and patience for Emma to her sixth grade crush on a boy.
I recommend this book to people who love Jane Austen and like to read about Christianity. If you like this book I also recommend you try the series by Debra White Smith:
First Impressions (The Austen Series, Book 1)
Reason and Romance (The Austen Series, Book 2)
Central Park (The Austen Series, Book 3)
Northpointe Chalet (The Austen Series, Book 4)
Amanda (The Austen Series, Book 5)
Possibilities (The Austen Series, Book 6)
January 26, 2011
The prospect of a modern author relating insights she had gleaned from Jane Austen made me unduly excited about this book, but it did not take long to realize that it was merely a pop Christian self-help book churned out to satisfy the demand for quantity of books rather than quality. By combining Austen's heroes and heroines with I Corinthians 13, Mrs. Smith has done a disservice to both. The complex personalities of Elizabeth, Darcy, and all the others are deflated, pinched, and prodded until they fit into insipid categories and can receive "awards" such as the "Most Selfless Award" or the "Foot in Mouth Award." Do Jane Austen's characters really deserve to be forced into some high-school yearbook alternate reality? Furthermore, this book cannot seem to decide whether it is for Austen fans or neophytes; although the topic and tone sometimes point toward the former, Mrs. Smith spends inordinate amounts of time summarizing plots, which Austen fans know backwards and forwards. As for the treatment of Scripture, this most famous of love passages is approached with no depth, but rather seems to serve as a convenient outline for topics otherwise too varied to really stick together. The book does serve some useful purpose, though: It presents numerous (NUMEROUS) previews of Mrs. Smith's own modern rewrites of Jane Austen's six masterpieces, and in so doing has successfully warned me off from ever considering taking up any of them to read. Okay, maybe it has served a second useful purpose, too: It has made me appreciate even more deeply the real skill and insight that Miss Austen possessed and how sorely lacking it is in most modern romance novelists.
January 12, 2011
This book compares several of Austen's novels and storylines with situations common in life today. Perhaps people we've known similar to Mrs. Norris etc it helps a person to think about it all on a personal level and get a different perspective. This adds scriptural thoughts here and there as well. I appreciated the authors look at things.
January 30, 2010
Okay, so I got suckered by the title.
I created the shelf called "waste of time" just so I would have a place to shelve this book.
This book is a poorly written and uninteresting advertisement for the author's series of contemporary versions of Jane Austen's novels. (Isn't there some writerly etiquette regarding self-quoting? Ms. Smith is in serious violation.) She obviously thinks herself quite clever (I can't help seeing her as an "Augusta Elton" herself) but judging from the quality of her numerous self-quotes, the entire series would be right at home on the "waste of time" shelf.
Her shallow writing regarding Austen's characters and plots is complemented by her annoyingly self-aggrandizing personal tales of how fabulous she is, and how wonderful her husband is without actually saying anything. She mixes her metaphors (so, is Wickham a snake or a tornado?) and piles on the cliches. Interestingly, my library copy was riddled with the red ink of a frustrated editor / previous reader.
When I see on the back cover that she has written over 50 books, I am not in the least surprised. She probably churned this one out in a weekend.
I created the shelf called "waste of time" just so I would have a place to shelve this book.
This book is a poorly written and uninteresting advertisement for the author's series of contemporary versions of Jane Austen's novels. (Isn't there some writerly etiquette regarding self-quoting? Ms. Smith is in serious violation.) She obviously thinks herself quite clever (I can't help seeing her as an "Augusta Elton" herself) but judging from the quality of her numerous self-quotes, the entire series would be right at home on the "waste of time" shelf.
Her shallow writing regarding Austen's characters and plots is complemented by her annoyingly self-aggrandizing personal tales of how fabulous she is, and how wonderful her husband is without actually saying anything. She mixes her metaphors (so, is Wickham a snake or a tornado?) and piles on the cliches. Interestingly, my library copy was riddled with the red ink of a frustrated editor / previous reader.
When I see on the back cover that she has written over 50 books, I am not in the least surprised. She probably churned this one out in a weekend.
May 18, 2007
Love this book!!!!
Smith, the bestselling author of the Jane Austen series (contemporary faith fiction novels based on Austen's books) works hard to show how Austen's themes parallel scriptural imperatives about love, particularly 1 Corinthians 13:4–8. The result is a compilation of recapped scenes from Austen novels with Smith drawing strong moral lessons for the reader. "Love is patient" is shown by George Knightley's patience for Emma Woodhouse in Emma; "Love is kind" through Fanny Price's treatment of others in Mansfield Park. Plenty of excerpts from Smith's own series and victorious triumphs from her personal life also help illustrate her points. Smith becomes almost gushy at times ("I adore the movie rendition of this scene") and the writing tends to ramble, including a three-page anecdote about her family's trip to Mt. Rushmore. Some of the comparisons are forced: "Fanny is merciful, just as her heavenly Father is merciful"; "Just as Lynda drew boundaries with Dora, we need to learn that living Christ is a gutsy undertaking."
Smith, the bestselling author of the Jane Austen series (contemporary faith fiction novels based on Austen's books) works hard to show how Austen's themes parallel scriptural imperatives about love, particularly 1 Corinthians 13:4–8. The result is a compilation of recapped scenes from Austen novels with Smith drawing strong moral lessons for the reader. "Love is patient" is shown by George Knightley's patience for Emma Woodhouse in Emma; "Love is kind" through Fanny Price's treatment of others in Mansfield Park. Plenty of excerpts from Smith's own series and victorious triumphs from her personal life also help illustrate her points. Smith becomes almost gushy at times ("I adore the movie rendition of this scene") and the writing tends to ramble, including a three-page anecdote about her family's trip to Mt. Rushmore. Some of the comparisons are forced: "Fanny is merciful, just as her heavenly Father is merciful"; "Just as Lynda drew boundaries with Dora, we need to learn that living Christ is a gutsy undertaking."
April 11, 2008
I don't know exactly what I was expecting when I checked out this book, but . . . not what it was. I enjoyed reading the analysis of Jane Austen's characters, but it almost seemed like some of the Christian parallels were forced. It also had quite a bit of comparison to her own, rewritten modern versions of Jane Austen's novels. I've read them, so it all connected pretty well, but I think if you haven't then some of the connections would be confusing.
Maybe I didn't love this because it's non-fiction. What can I say? Give me a story, don't preach to me!
Maybe I didn't love this because it's non-fiction. What can I say? Give me a story, don't preach to me!
April 13, 2008
I bought this book because 1) the title was interesting and 2) I needed something to read and was away from my library. Apparently I perpetrated that old cliche about judging a book by its cover, and boy am I sorry. I was expecting a character/plot-analysis-mixed-with-relationship/self-help type book. What I got was the author's self-aggrandizing mixture of New Age Christianity and advertising for her own series of Jane Austen modernizations, which she quotes ad nauseam. This book was a waste of time and money.
March 6, 2010
I found this book thoroughly entertaining and a lot of help with an essay I'm currently working on. I loved all the awards Smith gave to Jane's characters, the most memorable in my mind Sir Patience Extraordinaire (Mr. Knightley), Most Kind (Fanny Price), and the Greatest Lovers Award, Anne and Wentworth, and I loved that Smith based this book on 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7. I recommend this book to everyone!
May 28, 2011
Fun, quick read. Smith self-promotes (she's written a series of modern-day versions of Austen's novels) using quotes from her books, but overall I enjoyed the lessons she drew from I Corinthians using Austen characters. This is really only for Austen fans wanting something to read by the pool/beach.
August 1, 2015
This book is easy to read. Each chapter highlights some of Jane Austen's most noteworthy characters and what the author learned about love from these characters. For instance, the first chapter is, "Love is patient; Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Patience Extraordinaire."
It's an enjoyable and insightful book and I recommend it to Jane Austen fans especially.
It's an enjoyable and insightful book and I recommend it to Jane Austen fans especially.
July 27, 2011
Really good book. Compares Jane Austen characters and story lines to the way God loves us and how Christians should try to act. I really enjoyed it!
September 10, 2012
The author uses themes from Jane Austen novels as a way to learn about christian life.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews