Janet Stuart’s educational reach was not confined to traditional channels. By all accounts, and evidenced in her voluminous correspondence, she was a charismatic and sensitive friend and spiritual director - someone who made a positive impression on others through a gentle, though firm, manner and through a humane interest in the welfare and spiritual development of all those she met.
She was not perfect. History is written by the victors, and the victors in this case are those who loved Janet Stuart and who committed their memories of her to paper in a context where her candidateship for beatification was being considered. There is however an oral tradition, sometimes still recalled, that some individuals found her a little too earnest, a little too inexorable in her anxiety that everyone should fulfil their best self. Some found her leadership at community meetings too demanding, especially in her emphasis on intellectual formation and performance. Her outlook was also inevitably limited on some points by her class and background.
Mostly however, the spirit of her writings, published and unpublished, focuses on a generous openness to individual differences and holistic personal development. She encouraged rather than exhorted, and fostered a spirituality that was focussed on God’s tender care for and acceptance of each one, rather than on the harsher, judgmental spirituality that still characterised a church that was scarred by the Jansenism it had formally denounced.