![\"Sense](\"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/Sense_Sensibility_01_185px.jpg\" "\\"Sense_Sensibility_01_185px\\"")
by Chuck Colson –\nThe experts have a lot of ideas about why marriages crumble. But one of my favorite answers comes from someone who gave literary marriage advice \u2014 some 200 years ago: Jane Austen.<\/p>\n
by Chuck Colson –
\nThe experts have a lot of ideas about why marriages crumble. But one of my favorite answers comes from someone who gave literary marriage advice \u2014 some 200 years ago: Jane Austen.<\/p>\n
Miss Austen had a delightfully satirical eye \u2014 an approach to life that was reflected in her novels. But as Benjamin Wiker points out in his new book, 10 Books Every Conservative Must Read<\/em>, Austen, the daughter of a clergyman, also had a strong and biblical core of common sense \u2014 especially when it came to romantic relationships. Her books reflect the moral order, and celebrate marriage itself.<\/p>\n Wiker notes that Austen lived during the early Romantic movement. The Romantics were lived a life \u201cdefined by the passions of the moment. For them, to feel is everything.\u201d <\/p>\n In her novel, Sense and Sensibility<\/em>, Austen describes the inevitable consequences of this approach to life. It’s the story of two sisters, both of whom fall deeply in love. The elder sister, Elinor, \u201chas learned to govern and guide her passions by reason,\u201d Riker says \u2014 and ultimately marries a man of good character.<\/p>\n We must educate ourselves to train our thoughts and feelings to correctly reflect the actual moral order.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n By contrast, the younger sister, Marianne, indulges her passions without regard for prudence. Although Elinor warns Marianne against giving her heart to an attentive young man she barely knows, for Marianne, Wiker notes, \u201cpassion is the thing. Feelings must take the place of judgment.\u201d And \u201cbeing a creature of sensibility, Marianne has no sense,\u201d no interest in learning good moral judgment, which involves \u201ctraining feelings by habit and reason.\u201d<\/p>\n Marianne had yet to learn what C.S. Lewis taught: that the question is not what feelings we happen to have, but what feelings we should have. Therefore, Wiker says, \u201cWe must educate ourselves to train our thoughts and feelings to correctly reflect the actual moral order.\u201d Marianne saw no need to do this \u2014 which is why, in time, her heart was broken by the worthless young man she’d so quickly \u2014 and imprudently \u2014 fallen in love with.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, our culture has taken Marianne’s attitude to its logical \u2014 and tragic \u2014 conclusion, Wiker notes. Like the Romantics, modern liberalism celebrates \u201cthe victory of sensibility over sense, the passions over reason, self-absorption over moral duty, romantic anarchy over tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n modern liberalism celebrates \u201cthe victory of sensibility over sense, the passions over reason, self-absorption over moral duty, romantic anarchy over tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Jane Austen would have been \u201crightly horrified at our not heeding her warning, but unsurprised by the results\u201d \u2014 including, sadly, the high divorce rate, and the seduction of so many unthinking young women by men of bad character.<\/p>\n How much happier we would be if both men and women took the time to learn good moral judgment, and retrain their more impulsive feelings to reflect the moral order. Instead of rushing headlong into marriage, they should go slowly, inviting the advice of wise parents, friends, and church counselors.<\/p>\n Were Jane Austen alive today, she’d make a wonderful speaker for our Centurions program. While it may be \u201ca truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,\u201d as Austen satirically put it, she would make sure her readers learned a more serious point: That the route to marital happiness is recognizing that there is a moral order, and that we ignore it at our peril.<\/p>\n HT: Break Point<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Chuck Colson – The experts have a lot of ideas about why marriages crumble. But one of my favorite answers comes from someone who gave literary marriage advice \u2014 some 200 years ago: Jane Austen. Miss Austen had a delightfully satirical eye \u2014 an approach to life that was reflected in her novels. But … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[67,43,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatives","category-family","category-moral-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}