This is one of those books...you know, one of those that sits on your shelf, looking pretty and making you feel a bit less of the uncultured swine that you really are. At least, it eased my guilt a little bit just to look at my bookshelves and see it nestled in with all of my other unread classics.

What's funny is that this was considered to be silly old romance back in the day of Austen. The fact that a woman wrote it was nearly a guarantee that it was rubbish. And then there's me....when I started reading, the first forty pages were really hard for me to get into. I read very slowly, and had to re-read quite a few phrases for me to understand them. Here's one that made me giggle, and I'm still not sure what it means:

They must retrench; that did not admit of a doubt.

What!? I suppose in the context it was given, it meant that they needed to rethink their strategy, or consider something from a different angle. But that's a little idea of what to expect. For this reader of almost exclusively modern popular fiction, the introduction and set up of Anne's life was hard won.

However, once the story takes off and I began to get sucked in to this extraordinary woman's life, I was completely captivated. This novel could just as equally been called Pride and Prejudice. Anne's family is hard to swallow. Her father is pompous, vain, and completely self absorbed. Her sister Elizabeth (haha) is basically the same. Her other sister Mary is a loud, complaining, selfish hypochondriac who's favorite pastime is telling Anne how much better she is than anyone else. They think so much of themselves and so little of Anne. I wanted to jump inside my reader and knock them down a peg, force them to see the wonderful person that they are so dismissive of! And they are so dismissive of Anne's kindness and good will. One of the things that struck me, over and over again, is how gracious Anne is, how much she takes from her family, and yet what really affects Anne's happiness is not her undeserving family, but Frederick Wentworth and their broken engagement.

Eight years ago, Anne and Captain Wentworth fell in love and got engaged to be married. But Anne was persuaded to break off the engagement by a close friend. At that time, Wentworth was not titled (and never does receive one), but is also not rich and well known. Well, we all know how important social standing was back then. And though Anne cares not a bit, her immaturity shows when she accedes to the wishes of other people and tells Wentworth that she can no longer marry him. It is to be her biggest regret and just the thing that lowers her spirits.

Now, circumstances arise that force Anne and Wentworth to be in close proximity to each other. Not once or twice, but for weeks on end. But "the bloom of youth" has now left the twenty seven year old Anne, and she has come to terms with forever being in the background, watching her love from afar, forever pining and lonely.

Their families and friends seem to flutter around them, causing their own kind of crazy. But all I could see was Anne and Wentworth, in their own kind of dance. At first cautious and reticent, and OH! It just broke my heart. Jane Austen is a master story teller, using such subtleties to suck the reader in to her world. Somehow, she makes it easy to take the sides of both Anne and Wentworth and my heart broke for each of them. Anne's affections are more apparent than Wentworth's, but the man was in love with her!

"They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing!....Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted It was a perpetual estrangement."

Jane Austen must have had an amazing insight into the human psyche, an uncanny ability to judge someone's character very well. And then she put it down into WORDS that I feel so privileged to read. Body language and the force of character of acquaintances suddenly becomes apparent...things that I never would have thought, let alone voiced! But when I read how Austen put things, it all suddenly makes sense!

"Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped..."

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me... Seems as if Austen never had that problem.

"She had been used before to feel that he could not be always quite sincere, but now she saw insincerity in everything..."

Oh, my Mr. Darcy may have a contender in Captain Wentworth for my affections! He is, in my mind, a kind man, but also stern and somewhat vengeful. He still wants Anne but his pride and hers prevents them from simply talking to each other. Instead of feeling Anne out and trying again to make his feelings known, he tries to make Anne jealous by flirting and seeming to court some of Anne's friends! Urg...bad move there, buddy!

But he does redeem himself. Swoooooooon! I thought that Darcy's "I love you...most ardently..." speech was one of my favorite lines ever. But oh, OH! Wentworth! (slightly spoiler-ish quote if you're NOT expecting this to end happily)

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half in agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine.

And if that doesn't speak to the romantic soul, then you just don't have one. My heart was so full, my eyes teared up, and my inner romantic was completely sated.

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(I edited this pic in, because it needed a visual ;)


If you're waiting to read this, just make sure you do, eventually. This really is a must read for any Austen fans, for any romance lovers, for anyone who enjoys a beautifully worded story, one that makes you think and makes your heart go pitter pat. I put this down with a sigh and a smile on my face...and immediately went out to get the movie ;) It's a story I will never get enough of!

I’m a firm believer in reading a book before the movie comes out. In this case, I revisited Persuasion, by the incomparable Jane Austen before the 2022 movie. Say what you will, but I think you can get something new out of a Jane Austen novel every time you return to it. Persuasion is a good reminder that true love is worth fighting for and no one can tell you who or what is worth your time, but you.

I forgot to write a review for this one but we have heard my thoughts. Next port of call: Emma.

Captain Harville: "But let me observe that all histories are against
you, all stories, prose and verse... Songs and proverbs, all talk of
woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by
men."
Anne Elliot: "Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in
books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story.
Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in
their hands."

I would venture to guess that of all Jane Austen’s novels, Persuasion is second in popularity only to Pride and Prejudice. I love it, but then I love them all. Who could not adore Captain Wentworth of the dashing career and the satiric eye? Who could not love Anne, unvalued by her absurd family, but turned to by everyone else for sympathy and advice?

Is it a perfect novel? Some maintain it is. I think it is fair to say that I love it as if it were perfect, but the truth is, it isn’t. First off, it’s got a huge plot hole, though it in no way diminishes my enjoyment. If anything, it underscores how tightly plotted Austen’s novels are. It has to be remembered that Austen was failing health wise when she wrote this, and she penned two endings, and had not time to go through and get everything knit together as she usually did.

A bigger issue is the problematical heroine, who, ironically, seems to get a free pass for the sort of snobbery and judgment that are laid at Fanny Price’s door—which Fanny does not actually practice.

Getting rid of the plot hole first: given how much Sir Walter complains about Anne’s preference for visiting poor widowed Mrs. Smith, “somewhere between thirty and forty,” in Westgate-buildings, it seems impossible that Mr. Elliott, who is popping in and out all the time in order to keep an eye on his future inheritance (and to court Anne) would not have known whom Anne was visiting. Especially as Nurse Rooke, the biggest gossip in Bath, is waiting on Mrs. Smith as well as Mrs. Wallis—and selling Mrs. Smith’s sewing projects to the wealthy Mrs. Wallis. If Sir Walter didn’t complain to Mr. Elliott, Mrs. Wallis certainly would have gossiped, as we’re told that the Wallises talked extensively with Elliott about Anne as the future Mrs. Elliott, and Nurse Rooke also gossiped with Mrs. Wallis.

If Mr. Elliott had known (and he should have) he certainly would have taken steps to do something about that connection, and he definitely would not have dangled the “I used to talk about you extensively with someone” bait in front of Anne.

I suspect Austen would have fixed that if she hadn't been so sick. She finished this novel the year before she died—and had been ill off and on while writing it. But like I say, this is easy to overlook because the rest is so bewitching.

More problematical, I find, is the bad press Fanny gets, when Anne gets away with worse as far as modern readers are concerned, and the conclusion that seems inescapable.

Let’s begin with the most frequent accusation, that Fanny is holier-than-thou, largely because of her position on the Lovers' Vows play. She never actually condemns the play. She’s never read it. She expresses no opinion of the play, except for wondering at Maria’s indelicacy at acting the first scene over and over with Henry, in spite of her being betrothed to another man. (And everyone else notices this as well, some cynically, and Edmund chooses to overlook it because he's too busy chasing Mary Crawford.)

What Fanny condemns as wrong—and the others all know better—is doing the acting while Sir Thomas is away. Think about it in modern terms. You have to make a long, dangerous business trip, one that wears you out. You come home to discover that your room has been torn up, all your furniture shoved around without your permission, and people are carrying on as if you didn’t exist. Wouldn’t you be annoyed?

In Austen’s day, this was considered disrespectful, and everyone with a brain (leaving out Lady Bertram) knew it. So in fact, Fanny is the only one who wasn’t a hypocrite, paying lip service to honor and politeness but actually doing what they wanted. So why is Fanny accused of hypocrisy?

Let’s go on to attitude toward others. Fanny observes, she hurts for everyone in pain, though no one cares about her opinion, except if it serves them. She judges no one except Henry, who deliberately sets out to flirt with Maria--who is understood to be engaged--careless of her reputation or emotions.

Anne serves as sympathetic listening post and adviser to the Musgroves, to whom she gently but inescapably feels superior. (Look again at Anne’s observations about how Uppercross house is conducted, and the old fashioned, good-natured but vulgar parents and their large size.) She wouldn’t marry among them, and though she likes them, and helps them, she regards herself a degree their superior.

The real hypocrisy is with Mrs. Clay.

The narrator expects us to despise Mrs. Clay, as Anne does, because she’s low born, and “selfish,” “innoxious”, “clumsy wrist and projecting tooth and freckles.”

Mrs. Clay’s manners are actually far better than Elizabeth’s or Sir Walter’s, her intention, as a poor widow, to get married if she can. Sir Walter and Elizabeth have only two things going for them: birth and looks. They are stupid, venal, hypocritical, servile to superiors, and so bad at management they have nearly bankrupted the estate. They certainly don’t give a whiz for the many dependents on that same estate. But they are family, so Anne tries not to judge them.

But Anne won’t cut Mrs. Clay, who does her no harm whatsoever, any slack at all—she won’t even walk down the street with her. Why? Because she’s not well born. Mrs. Clay’s one act of indelicacy (before the end, when she decamps with Mr. Elliott) is to go to Bath in place of Anne, but that’s because she’s invited by Sir Walter and Elizabeth, who commit the same act of indelicacy. Yet all through the book we hear about how low she is.

This is underscored by Mrs. Smith’s and Anne’s gossiping about Mr. Elliott’s first wife, who was handsome, rich, and well educated, but the two condemn the dead woman for having a grazier for a father and a butcher for a grandfather. And yet, here’s Mrs. Smith, hypocritically praising Mr. Elliott until she understands that Anne won’t marry him. When Anne calls her on it, she explains that she needed to get Anne to ask him to act for her, which Anne forgives immediately. But it’s just as manipulative as Mrs. Clay’s smiling servitude toward the obnoxious Elizabeth in order to gain a husband. I guess we’re supposed to forgive Mrs. Smith because she’s bed-ridden (and better born), but as far as desperation is concerned, there’s not much difference between her and Mrs. Clay, who was left penniless with kids to support.

Fanny is nineteen, Anne twenty-eight, they both demonstrate clear-sightedness and sympathy, but only Anne gets credit for it. Fanny is accused of being humorless, when in fact, she laughs a whole lot more than Anne does. Fanny is a stick, she’s a hypocrite, she’s unforgivable, and Anne is admirable because why?

It seems to me that the inescapable answer is because Fanny turns down the fascinating Henry Crawford in favor of boring Edmund, but Anne accepts the fascinating Captain Wentworth. In other words, they are judged by the guys they marry.

It doesn't help that the endings of the two novels vary radically in effectiveness.

The ending of Persuasion is a whole lot more upbeat for modern readers than that of Mansfield Park—especially as Austen compounded the error of pulling back the narrator at the end of MP and telling us that Edmund and Fanny (cousins, euw!) fell in love after the “right amount of time” without actually showing it happen. That is far less satisfactory than Anne’s and Wentworth’s lovely, superlatively effective reconciliation.

In fact, I think that the last three chapters of Persuasion are game-changers. This is the more interesting for the fact that we actually have two endings. We can see Austen’s genius at work.

The original chapters ten and eleven of Part Two rely on overheard conversations and misunderstanding before the reconciliation. Very eighteenth century, perfectly acceptable tropes at that time. But Austen ripped out those chapters and instead give us the brilliant conversation between Anne and Harville at the window of the White Hart, about men, women, history and literature, which (I think) had tremendous influence on the entire course of the nineteenth century novel.

This conversation, and the complementary conversation at the beginning of Northanger Abbey in which Catherine and the Tilneys talk about novels and history, were published together in the same book in 1817. Unfortunately Austen did not live to see the effect, but I think we can see it Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Gaskell, and George Elliott, to name three influential female writers, thereafter: for the first time, the female view was put on equal terms with the male.

Why did no one tell me mama Austen was the founder of second chance romance and yearning

Persuasion is a novel of memories and regrets, a novel of second chances. The feeling is autumnal; and then, there is an unexpected Indian summer. While reading, I wondered – how many books about second chances for women have been written in the 19th century? There are the Brontes, of course, but I can’t think of anything else. This makes me love Jane Austen and Persuasion all the more.

“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.”

Ah, the layers of classics :)

According to GR, this was the fourth time I have read this novel, but I have a strong suspicion it’s closer to the tenth. When I open the book, the author takes my hand, gently but firmly, and drops me right in the middle of Kellynch Hall – and it’s as though I never left.

Jane Austen is merciless towards her characters, especially Sir Walter and Elizabeth, there are sentences that drip with delicious word poison. The satire is toned down here, though, compared to earlier novels. Persuasion is less exuberant, more mature.

Anne is an introvert in a family of extroverts who do not have wisdom enough and love enough to appreciate someone who is different from them. I just realized that Jane Austen was writing about found family long before the expression was invented. The Crofts! The Harvilles! They went right into my heart on this reread, and I loved them together with Anne.

There is so much more to enjoy: Anne keeping her cool in a crisis and everyone looking to her for guidance; everyone taking her into their confidence and complaining about each other – exhausting and hilarious; Anne talking poetry with Captain Benwick and recommending a larger dose of prose, for emotional health reasons – priceless, really. “...like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.” Ha. Mrs Smith’s info dumps are probably too long and way too convenient. But I do like a mental image of her as a lady spider (she is knitting in bed!) in her web, waiting for the juicy, juicy gossip to come to her.

Show me a person who doesn’t love Anne and Captain Wentworth! Every conversation they have after the events in Lyme is fantastic, there is so much emotional turmoil and delight.
Theirs is the love that has stood the test of time, it has matured, it has grown stronger. This is a romance for grown-ups. This is why Mr Eliot has neither the charisma of the likes of Wickham, Willoughby or Frank Churchill nor the dangerous potential to charm the heroine. Anne is not fooled by glamour and glitter; Wentworth can stop, think, and ask.

“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” (This sentence is genius, in its truth, its sarcasm, and its structure.)

I have yet to find a more amazing love letter than Captain Wentworth’s…

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago.”

A perfect conclusion of a perfectly crafted novel.

Although I adore all of Austen's books, this is one of my favorites. I always imagine Jane, herself, meeting up with her lost love and finally marrying him. So romantic...except, well, there are all those lost years of loneliness. And, in the case of Anne Eliot, there's the years of slowly drifting into the woodwork. When the one love-of-her- life comes back, he chases after two younger prettier girls right in front of her. And he's the good guy! Huh? Of course, the infinite Jane lets the reader see more sides of every character. The LOHLife doesn't know how she feels, because Anne dumped him cold. We are led to believe that it was because she was 'persuaded' with bad advice. But, in the end we understand that it actually wasn't bad advice...they were both very young and practically broke. A liitle maturity (on her part) and a little fortune (on his part) brings them to their happy ending. Something I found interesting in this novel is the way Austen introduces the (kinda) villain of the piece. She said he was not handsome. Usually the jerks are handsome and the nice guys are plain. Hmm. Maybe it was to point out how superficial her father is with his love of beauty?


Reread...again 2/2016

October 2017

Another year, another reread of Jane.

to persuade (verb)

“to make someone do or believe something by giving them a good reason to do it or by talking to that person and making them believe it”

Jane Austen delivers a PERSUASIVE analysis of the concept of PERSUASION, slowly PERSUADING the reader that being of a PERSUADABLE temper, commonly regarded as a virtue in young women of her time, is a weakness and a barrier to personal happiness.

Why?

The answer is quite simple, and still as valid as two centuries ago: more often than not, the kind, caring and sensitive characters tend to be PERSUADABLE, whereas the egotistical, narcissistic, and stubborn bullies tend to be PERSUASIVE.

Anne Elliot, the classical Cinderella in a vain, ambitious and superficial family, sacrifices her love to accommodate the pride and prejudice of those who call themselves her friends and allies. Eight years pass during which she PERSUADES herself that her role is that of a supporting member of the family, patiently attending to the tantrums of her sisters and accepting the disregard of her conceited father.

When her former love unexpectedly enters the stage again, they both remain PERSUADED that the other one is lost forever, and play a PERSUASIVE game of dissimulation before finally reaching the PERSUASION that love conquers all - even society’s coercive directives.

The lesson learned from this social study is that there is hardly a case in which PERSUASION is unbiased and truly beneficial. The moment a person needs to be convinced to do something against his or her natural inclination, all kinds of complications, sacrifices and frustrations are likely to follow.

Listen to yourself before you listen to PERSUASIVE bullies, is my PERSUASION, after reading Jane Austen.

I was thus a PERSUADABLE reader.

4.5 ☆