Everything I Needed to Know About Relationships I Learned from Jane Austen:

In the midst of truths universally acknowledged, platitudes on decorum and elegance, and the importance of a woman's complexion in securing a worthy mate, I find much to amuse and delight as well as to provoke reflection on the fact that not a lot has changed.

In Austen's day you mated and married on your level, period, and no one would be so boorish or uncivilized as to presume that he or she had the right to let his or her affections meander across class lines. And where they occasionally did, to be sure, some beauty or excellence in the woman made the match allowable. Oh, and the gentleman was probably already supremely rich and not looking for a woman's inheritance to support him for the rest of his life.

It's a charming world where the words amiable and affable are the highest praise, and calling on visitors to the neighborhood in a timely fashion is of utmost importance.

I interrupted my reading of Emma to accomodate McEwan's Atonement (for bookclub) and was delighted to see that he is much inspired by Ms. Austen. Her impact is more considerable that I'd realized. In any case, I am back with our well-meaning, but obtuse heroine (Emma Woodhouse), and was delighted on my morning commute by her latest assertion:

"...it is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best.."