“This Holiday of Spirits”:

Jane Austen, Courtly Love,
and Happy Endings

“And they lived happily ever after.”

Most of us smile and think to ourselves, “That’s fine for children and fairy tales, but no adult believes in happy endings.” Books with happy endings are either childish, delusional, or dangerous sowers of disappointment and misery.

Yet in the first week it was released, the 2020 remake of “Emma,” for example, made $230,000 in just five theaters, the highest number of 2020 to that date. Jane Austen’s novels and remake after remake of movies based on her books continue to be enormously popular.

Is Jane Austen’s work frivolous, overly romantic, and escapist literature that no thinking adult should take seriously or is there something more to it?

Wyoming Catholic College Assistant Professor of Humanities and Trivium, Dr. Tiffany Schubert argues that there is a great deal more to it. Beginning on Thursday, January 14, 2021, she will offer will offer a six-week distant learning course at part of the College’s Distance Learning program: “‘This Holiday of Spirits’: Jane Austen, Courtly Love, and Happy Endings”

In the course, Dr. Schubert, who is currently writing a book about Austen and happy endings, shows how Austen’s heroines and heroes with their courtships, marriages, and happiness tap into something deeply human. Rather than frivolous, escapist literature, Austen orients her readers toward a Christian understanding of the joy and happiness for which we were made.

The course is free, but requires registration.