The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After

Book excerpt: Have you stopped believing in happily ever after? Women today are settling for less than we want when it comes to men, relationships, sex, and marriage. But we don’t have to, argues Elizabeth Kantor. Jane Austen can show us how to find the love we really want. In The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After, Kantor reveals how the examples of Jane Austen heroines such as Elizabeth Bennett, Elinor Dashwood, and Anne Elliot can help us navigate the modern-day minefields of dating, love, relationships, and sex. By following in their footsteps—and steering clear of the sad endings suffered by characters such as Maria Bertram and Charlotte Lucas—modern women can discover the path to lifelong love and true happiness. Charged with honesty and humor, Kantor's book includes testimonies from modern women, pop culture parallels, the author's personal experiences and, of course, a thorough examination of Austen's beloved novels. Featuring characters and situations from all of Jane Austen’s books (including unfinished novels, and stories not published in her lifetime), The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After tackles the dating and relationship dilemmas that we face today, and equips modern women to approach our love lives with fresh insights distilled from the novels: Don’t be a tragic heroine Pursue Elizabeth Bennet’s “rational happiness” —learn what it is, and how you can find it Don’t let cynicism steal your happy ending Why it’s a mistake to look for your “soul mate” Jane Austen’s skeleton keys to a man’s potential How you should deal with men who are “afraid of commitment” (from Jane Austen’s eight case studies) Learn how to arrange your own marriage—by falling in love the Jane Austen way