woman

Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday Year & What Teaching Her Taught Me About Life & Writing

/ Rebecca J. Whitman

December 16th, 2025 is Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday. This semiquincentennial celebration has been celebrated all over the world already with special festivals, readings, reenactments, and more. I am pleased to hear she is important enough to even be on a bank note in London now. In Bath, you can visit her museum and book tickets for festivals and experiences. In America, you can learn all about her in the Jane Austen Collaborative including Summer Programs for Teachers and a whole bunch of research and interactive materials. I can only imagine how big the celebration will actually be on December 16th.

Jane Austen is loved in many ways in America. For those of us Janeites who are English teachers, we teach her books in our classes. Pride and Prejudice has been my go to for years in my English 4 class because it my favorite of all of them, but this year I was challenged to find a new book to give some love. I read Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and Sense and Sensibility all at roughly the same time. It was crazy to me how much Austen’s voice and purpose changed in each book. The cadence and flow, the storytelling mastery that I loved in P&P were washed out or gone completely in some of them. The memorable lines of P&P from that opening line to Darcy’s confession of love were just missing entirely in Sense & Sensibility. As a movie, it is close, but as a book, I found myself constantly stopping and restarting to figure out what was happening. Jane Austen shouldn’t be that hard to follow. She was well ahead of her time for engaging her readers.

Jane Austen as sketched by her sister, Cassandra, to whom she wrote many letters. 2025 © Copyright National Portrait Gallery

What surprised me as I read the other books was how much of an activist Jane Austen really was. In Emma, she was well into her career and chose to take on a character she knew she would love more than her readers. Emma is fiesty, independent, and does not need a man. If she falls in love and marries, it is by choice not society’s force. She goes against the customs of her day and embraces her own dreams for her life. From the first page, I found her character very intriguing and modern. It made me love Jane Austen as a writer more because she was taking risks and being a voice for change.

In Persuasion, there was a similar activist purpose. In this book, the main character is dealing with a lot of society pressure to do things and live to certain standards. It cost her a marriage to the man she really loved and overspending made her family have to downsize to become more fiscally responsible. These were big ideas to take on in an Austen novel. Usually social commentary is something you would expect more in Dickens or Bronte, but Austen was finding her way to do it too. It may have taken her getting into a groove and becoming popular enough to afford being able to take a risk, but she still did it.

Northanger Abbey was a surprise of a different kind. In this little book, Austen talks directly to the reader several times about writing! Not only does she reveal some historical shade on reading novels, but she gives her own opinion on the issue in general. She talks about writing and the importance of reading all while showing a character who took her love of reading too far. Northanger Abbey was a coming of age novel. It was a little slow to get into and very dated in the details, but the story did catch our attention. Anything this old that can capture a teenager’s attention deserves recognition.

What Austen Taught Me As a Woman

I have always admired Austen for being a woman who took care of herself and provided a living for herself while she was single and living with family. Austen never married, and that has always made me sad. How could someone write about love and relationships with so much clarity and focus, yet not be able to secure it for herself? Maybe someday I will do a deeper dive into her letters and personal correspondence to get to know Austen better, but for now it is just a dull question in the back of my mind…why?

If anything, I think the answer is in Persuasion. Supposedly Austen had a man pursue her and she wanted to say yes to him, but her family did not approve. Persuasion is a similar story, but with a much better ending. Sometimes I wonder if Austen’s writing wasn’t just trying to make her own happy endings and life choices over again. Why didn’t she show the activism on her pages within her own four walls? Maybe she did and we just don’t know it.

Still, regardless of her love life, Austen was a fierce woman for her time and someone to admire even today. She has left a mark and told us women that we are capable of so much more than our culture may dictate. If I could interview her today, I think Austen’s advice to young women would be “if you have a dream, pursue it; don’t let anything hold you down.”

What Austen Taught Me As a Writer

Reading so many Austen books at once gave me the chance to focus on the common threads between them. I would listen to how the character development progressed and later novels were stronger than early work (with the exception of P&P). I also listened for a familiar structure, cadence, or form. I realized that we writers do develop a style that is pretty hard to get away from no matter what the topic may be. Austen’s style is conversational, approachable prose with a lot of dialogue to show the story more than tell it. l found the books that were good were the ones that did this. The rest were just hard to get into.

I also came to the realization that the really great writers in the world are those that use their platform for good.

Dickens used his writing to encourage reform in society (for example child labor and poverty). Bronte also spoke about education reform and other society issues. Austen entertained us with romance but made us question our society norms at the same time. Women were held back in her time, and her honesty with this repression on the page changed things for women in the future. I believe the great writers like Dickens, Bronte, and Austen were great and unforgettable not just because they were good story-tellers but because they used their skills to make a difference in the world around them. After all, what other purpose can be there be for an artist than to hold a mirror to their world and ask them to make it better?

Warrior Woman Part 2: The Loving Warrior

/ Rebecca J. Whitman / 2 Comments

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away. –Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Whenever I go out with a crowd, I am usually the slowest one in the bunch. I could say it is because I am shorter or heavier than most of my friends, but that is not the truth of it. It’s because, like Wordsworth, I often wander lonely and aimlessly like a cloud. I am too busy enjoying the world around me to keep up with busy steps and schedules. This truth about me was especially annoying to my siblings as we toured Europe; I was forever holding them back from seeing more because I didn’t walk fast enough. They were anxious to skim across the surface, but I wanted to “live deep and suck out all the marrow” of it like Thoreau.

What I have learned over time is that we are all different, and not all types of people get along well together. My type of person drives the fast-stepping-tightly-scheduled person crazy. Nevertheless, we both have valuable approaches to life; we are both a reflection of God’s uniquely vast character (Genesis 1:27).

Recently, I went downtown and relaxed into a sturdy cedar rocker with a cool glass of freshly made lemonade. As I rocked, I watched a diverse group of people pass by me.

There was a young quinceanera princess in a long pink ruffled gown surrounded by gold party maidens and young tuxedoed princes. I admired as two of the princes held the princess’s long train as she walked. These young men were likely brothers or cousins, but they were showing her honor. The entire party filled the city center with happiness and laughter as drones hovered taking pictures.

Near me sat a beautiful African goddess. She wore a bright yellow two-piece jumpsuit that draped and swayed in the wind like the cape of a superhero. Her hair bounced in short black curls and the sun glistened off her Hollywood sunglasses. She smiled with warm affection and waved people in as they passed. She stood for strength, femininity, confidence, and pride. People were drawn to her.

From the corner behind me darted a tiny Asian woman. She was carrying a bag of takeout food from the Thai restaurant two doors down, and she was hurriedly talking on her cell phone. Her voice was calm and low, but it commanded attention. Her steps were quick and intentional. She had all the control and responsibility of a mother in the body of a worn and tired little girl. She smelled of ginger and jasmine and freshly fried rice.

Each of these women, though vastly different, reflected a piece of the beauty of God to me. Few, if any, of them knew that though. Christ was shining through their beauty and seeing purpose in our messy humanness.

 

If you read Ezer-Kenegdo Part 1, you already know part of my story and part of the power of this word describing women. If you have not read it, you may want to pause here and do so. In this part of the story, I want to talk about the loving heart of the woman we are meant to be.

As I watched the many men and women pass me, I wondered how many of them struggle with feeling less lovable than the people around them.

How many of them felt seen and heard?

How many of them felt valued?

How many of them felt needed?

These are all things that Christ came to show us, and they are things God designed us to long for. God designed us to want Him.

I may not get along with every type of person in the world, but I am supposed to love them. In so doing, I help point people back to the God they truly long for (Galatians 6:1). The kind of love I am talking about is kindness. We Christians are called to show kindness to those who are not living at God’s best in order to inspire them towards pursuit of it (Galatians 5:13-26).

Our loving kindness is Christ’s attitude adjustment shining through. It doesn’t always come easy. In fact, there are some people I would rather punch in the face than show love to. Nevertheless, I am learning that the people who rub like sandpaper across the surface of my life are opportunities for me to grow. People in the south have a saying for this; they say “bless their heart” for such as these with all the veiled venom of a rattler. I don’t have that skill…but I sometimes really wish I did.

In what ways do people challenge you?

How can you overcome those challenges to still show them grace and kindness?