ABSTRACT
The benevolence of Jane Austen's heart, the sweetness of her temper and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her and the warmest love of her intimate connections. Austen's religious environment and her individual religious presumptions were drawn from the orthodox Anglicanism practiced by the Tory gentry to whom she belonged. Austen's religious values are imprinted everywhere in the novels. The ordinary behavior of her characters shows their moral and spiritual status, and their ability as free creatures to change and grow into greater Christian maturity, an ability especially vouchsafed her heroines and heroes. Austen's religious environment and her individual religious presumptions were drawn from the orthodox Anglicanism practiced by the Tory gentry to whom she belonged. Understanding this relationship helps to discern the religious ground of all her fiction. Her church attendance would have been in keeping with that of her gentry and clergy neighbors, and unexceptional.
