A classic re-read.

A classic *Guess Who Got Away* story.

Ah, girl meets boy, they fall in love, she behaves abominably, boy huffs off, but only later regrets her decision when the boy comes back into town all lordly and powerful and SO much more eligible than when SHE was dating him.

But since this is Jane Austen, it's ALSO all about sticking it to the stuck-up society and showing us all the noble upper-class people behaving abominably. (But, I should mention, our main character is NOT as abominable as the rest). People who rise by military or other services are often rather decent.

*gasp* *shock*

All told, however, this entire novel has all the charm of Austen's other works and while I can't place it above Pride and Prejudice or even above Mansfield Park, I think it is often a delight. A frustrating delight, to be sure, and calling a woman past her prime at 27 is ... AMAZING ... but still. You get my point.

I have taught this novel a dozen times in sophomore literature to my community college students, most of whom are women. From the first paragraph--always a tour-de-force in Austen--the author savages male vanity: here, Sir Walter Elliot's favorite, indeed his only reading, the page in the Baronetage that mentions him. When I began teaching Persuasion in the late seventies, an American version of Sir Walter existed on the Mary Tyler Moore Show in the person of the TV anchor, Ted Knight. Now Ted Knight has "won" our presidency, and appointed a Cabinet of self-conceived Barons.
"Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsone in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women would think more of their personal appearance than he did...He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliott, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest repect and devotion."(10, Worlds Classics 1988)

Forced to rent a townhouse in Camden-Place, Bath, he laments, "The worst of Bath was, the number of its plain women..Once he had stood in a shop in Bond-street, he had observed eighty-seven women go by, without a tolerable face among them. It had been a frosty morning, to besure, a sharp frost, which hardly one woman in a thousand could stand the test of. But still, there were a dreadful multitude of ugly women in Bath"(134).

Sir Walter was forced to Bath by indebting himself. At first he delayed renting out his great house, but finally meets his renter, Admiral Croft. Hilarious, their mutual assessment: Sir Walter concedes the admiral not as weather-beaten as he feared, he went so far as to say that, had his "own man [servant] had the arranging of his hair, he should not be ashamed of being seen with him anywhere." The Admiral, for his part, said, "The baronet will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems no harm in him"(35).
Austen's usual irony here has for its source: "Large allowances, she knew, must be made for the ideas of those who spoke," in this case Sir Walter's stupid preoccupation with his appearance and birth, and the Admiral's self-reliance and skill, by which he has raised his social position and wealth almost as an American would.
Speaking of Americans, Austen's novels could not possibly feature Americans; for instance, Anne goes this entire book wondering if Captain Wentworth has disavowed their early love. An American would simply go up and ask him, but the English boast layers of social defenses and reserve. A few characters share American propensities, like Capt Harville, who "is no reader." "He varnished, he carpentered, he glued"(96).
We readers should remember that Austen is pre-Romantic (though Byron and Wordsworth poems are read by Capt Benville, 98), so the layers of social defense surpass any individual feelings that the Romantics came to emphasize.

Vanity over reason recurs in Austen, but elsewhere with women protagonists: in "Emma" where the central character encourages misalliances because she understands people so poorly, but thinks she knows them well. And even in Pride and Prejudice, in Ch 36 Elizabeth realizes "Vanity, not love, has been my folly."
Sir Walter of course undervalues his thinking daughter Anne Elliot, who in fact undervalues herself, taking the advice of her older, independent mentor. (Her independence is achieved in the usual 19C way, inheritance, here by the husband's death.) The advice is not to marry Wentworth, a mere naval officer. Jane Austen's successful brothers were, incidentally, naval officers.

Austen's most acerbic paragraph in all her novels describes a troublesome son who "had been sent to sea, because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore; that he had been little cared for by his family, though quite as much as he deserved"(52). However, one Musgrove parent recalls him tenderly when they meet the Captain Wentworth who shepherded him until lost. Only a specific glance of the Captain's eye revealed to his former girlfriend Anne how little he wished to recall the troublesome one.

In sum, this is a delicious novel for female readers, and not only for them. It is arguably her best novel, published posthumously. Her acute irony unforgettably phrases common evils, like slander, which she calls "the accustomary intervention of kind friends"(14). Images of male vanity surround modern Americans--on TV, in sports, in film--that arguably, Persuasion resonates more in our society than when it was written. In fact, the US recently "elected" (with almost 3 million fewer votes) a vainglorious male, a non-reader like Sir Walter, except for covers of magazines, like the Baronetage, that features this 70 year old adolescent.

Jane Austen understood that nothing is sexier than standing seven feet away from someone, making brief eye contact, and then going home. You have to love her for that.

Ever had a situationship crash and burn so epically that you both become incels…

I find Persuasion to be a radical novel. There is a simmering defiance in the quiet, kind Anne Elliot’s refusal to bow to bitterness. A rebellion in remaining wholly yourself when social systems and circumstances threaten to lessen your character.

‘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 will not allow books to prove anything.’

The heroine of Austen’s last completed novel (and my personal favourite) is introduced to us as ‘only Anne’. She is dependable, level-headed, and kind. A spinster whose bloom has passed and now is content to find joy in the happiness of others. Or so it may appear from the outside.

Internally, she is in agony. Because gentle Anne is passionately, desperately in love with a man deemed unworthy by her family. The same man she was persuaded to break off her courtship with almost a decade ago.

In a twist of fate, the Elliots must face the repercussions of years of financial mismanagement as the man whose heart Anne broke, Wentworth, returns to town. He has survived the wars and become a captain—and also incredibly rich. He’s just as handsome, bright and humorous, perfectly positioned to take his pick from the many interested young ladies.

However much Anne and Wentworth try to avoid one another, they cannot help but catch the other's eye. The synergy that first drew them together is overwhelming, now suffused with hints of mutual suffering. Is there hope yet?

‘Now they were as strangers; worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.’

This feels like Austen’s most mature work for many reasons. Anne is the oldest of her heroines, and her sense of self is more solidified. At first, she appears a push-over, receiving the rudeness and insults of her family with a smile. But as the novel progresses, it becomes stunningly clear that this placidity is informed by extreme intelligence. She is perfectly aware of what she can—and cannot—control, and the freedom from traditional roles her invisibility allows.

200+ years on, for a woman who has been put down, deprived, disregarded, and lived in the pressure cooker of patriarchy, for her to remain herself? It is defiant. It is so, so moving. It makes Wentworth’s attention, the small ways he acknowledges, sees the ways Anne cares for everyone around her, heart-poundingly romantic.

There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison'

This novel is a melancholic, yearning affair. But the depth of warmth and humour in the relationships pulls it from any melodrama. This perfectly balances out the scathing social criticism, which presents injustice as rarely having anything to do with goodness or integrity. There is a weariness to the comedic pompousness Austen is such a master of. The family silliness is crueler, harder to stomach as Anne forms genuine reciprocal bonds with the ‘low-born’ characters her family look down on.

The Elliot pride is spoken of disparagingly, as a corruptor of her father and sisters. But in such a subtle way Anne is a true Elliot, a deserving Elliot. She should be proud. She reminds me a lot of Jane Eyre, that indelible sense of self coming up against coercive forces.

Because of course, she still struggles with that life-altering decision all those years ago. How to reconcile the years of suffering inflicted upon herself and Wentworth? How not to let guilt and anger eat away at affection? The worst part is that she cannot lie to herself; it is bittersweet but she must admit that it was not necessarily the wrong choice. To listen to a trusted friend, to be open, it is who Anne is. The taking of the advice, she says to Wentworth in a heart-wrenching passage, was not wrong—even if the advice itself was.

Throughout the novel, Anne is surrounded by matches: couples content and discontent, love sudden and gradual. But there are also the widowed, the jilted and cheated, love gained and lost through death and war. Alternate timelines haunt this narrative, all of the years they could have spent together but also the potential for tragedy. Pain is unavoidable, but isn’t it beautiful to have loved so profoundly as to suffer as deeply?

‘We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.’

To me, Persuasion is not about Anne giving in to desire, it is about her giving up control. It is about romance not completing but complimenting. However much she yearns to know what could have been, she cannot. She can only relinquish herself to time, knowing and trusting and loving herself. And isn’t that so terribly wonderful?

One for the control freaks, the nostalgia-ridden overactive imaginers. I love you Anne Elliot.

‘Time will explain.’

During her lifetime, Jane Austen's geographic trajectory was far smaller than mine, but, despite the differences in our travels, we both arrived at the same conclusion: the greatest journeys we take are the ones within our own hearts and minds.

One of the greatest Austen journeys is this one. . . the exploration of Anne Elliot, Persuasion's leading lady. Anne Elliot long ago crawled into my consciousness, and there she has remained. Even when I return to Persuasion to find her trapped in time, right where I left her on those very same pages, I find that, inexplicably, she has changed.

Anne represents a sort of universal suffering. . . despite living within a grand home with servants, she has a self-absorbed, preening peacock for a father, a self-centered shrew for an older sister, and a narcissistic hypochondriac for a younger sibling. She is non-essential; she is invisible. She experiences very few acts of kindness or care for her person.

She is also almost completely alone here, having buried a beloved mother and said goodbye to the only man that she has ever loved. Anne's days are long and empty and she carries her pain with an admirable stoicism that I, an ever-sassy and petulant Elizabeth Bennet-type, can hardly even contemplate.

Anne is a beloved creature, a dear friend, to me. I want to study her, wonder what it must feel like to be her, too. When I watch her character bloom under new travels, new friendships and new love interests, I feel like I, too, have been given a new day to contemplate.

And Captain Wentworth. . . second only to Mr. Darcy, in my opinion.

One of Austen's best leading men. So very flawed, so very resentful, and so very. . . fine.

I wasn't expecting to absolutely adore this book !! Up there with Northanger Abbey for my top spot! Only Mansfield Park left to read x So much richness and maturity of society is portrayed in this novel! I can't wait to watch the Dakota Johnson adaptation x

Updated review after re-reading in November 2019.

*

And thus concludes my month of cozy rereads: with a lovely, but somewhat bittersweet Jane Austen novel. Even more so than last time, I feel the importance of growing, forgiving and knowing your own mind when it comes to choosing a partner, in Anne’s story. It made me wonder what else Miss Austen would have written had she lived a little longer, and a little more.

It had been a few years since the last time I read “Persuasion”, and I had barely finished the first chapter that I felt a pang for Anne: Austen was such an astute observer, because even today, narcissistic parents have a favourite child and an “inconvenient” child, and to see that pattern so well captured on the page makes me want to tip my cap at her. It also made me want to cry. That so-called inconvenient child is often pushed to seek comfort and guidance from another parental figure, usually unrelated to them, and this is exactly what Anne does with Lady Russell. But, again, as perfectly illustrated in this novel, such a child only ever feels strong on their feet when entirely emancipated from the influence of any form of parental figure. It was a great comfort to me to see Anne prevail and overcome her emotionally brittle upbringing.

Society still tries to persuade us that we need certain (often very specific) things in order to be “the right kind” of people. Anne’s resistance to the nonsensical standards of the landed gentry is interesting, because it takes a lot of will to push back against the pressures and expectations of being a woman (then or now!).

Perhaps being now in the slightly older crowd at work, but I also felt deep sympathy for anyone who had to deal with the Miss Musgroves. Young and dumb people are cute, but they can also be insufferable!

It is still my favourite Austen novel, and it doesn’t lose any of its charm and significance with age: if anything, it seems to be getting more nuanced every time I pick it up.


*


Original review:

t“Persuasion” is my favourite Austen novel. I think that I may feel that way because while it has a lot of unhappy moments in it, it feels like it deals with more mature emotions that the rest of her novels. The emphasis of “Persuasion” is forgiveness, second chances and a grown-up sort of love that is just never really present in comedies of wit such as “Pride and Prejudice” or “Sense and Sensibility”.

Anne Elliot is getting old (by Regency England standards anyway…), her family is insufferable “Persuasion” is my favourite Austen novel. I think that I may feel that way because while it has a lot of unhappy moments in it, it feels like it deals with more mature emotions that the rest of her novels. The emphasis of “Persuasions” is forgiveness, second chances and a grown-up sort of love that is just never really present in comedies of wit such as “Pride and Prejudice” or “Sense and Sensibility”.

Anne Elliot is getting old (by Regency England standards anyway…), her family is insufferable and she followed some bad advice years ago and rejected a good man who loved her, simply because he wasn’t rich enough. She has resigned herself to life as a long-suffering spinster, when the dashing Captain Wentworth comes back into her life, now wealthy, decorated and as handsome as ever. Unfortunately, he is still pissed about having been rejected by Anne, and makes quite a show of looking for a young, pretty and hare-brained wife…

Jane Austen was clearly fed up with the classism of the landed gentry, the snippy third-person narrator’s voice makes that crystal clear. The gentle-folks are all so vain, delusional, hypocritical, cold and mean. The naval officers who earned their ranks, on the other hand, are decent men with a sense of purpose. And Anne, being a smart and sensible person, sees the worth of both kinds of men and knows very well which is the one she prefers. Was Austen going socialist in her old age? She sure seems to approve of social mobility through merit and distinction in “Persuasion”, not something we see in her previous works, where women are usually “saved” by marrying gentlemen of great fortunes.

Another stark contrast to the rest of her oeuvre is that while the heroine is at risk of never having a social position because she is not well married, she is a sad, quiet lady as opposed to a witty, sassy teenager. Anne is accomplished, considerate, attractive and constant but regretful – something Elizabeth Bennett and Emma Woodhouse never had the time or occasion to be. She is also very modern, and slams the sexist attitudes of her peers with lovely lines such as these:

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in the calm waters all our lives.”

“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 will not allow books to prove anything.”

She never forgot Frederick Wentworth and when he comes back, she seemingly comes back to life, no longer the shadow her family has reduced her to. There is, of course, a misunderstanding about someone’s intentions and an ultimately happy resolution, but nothing very dramatic happen either (Louisa’s fall doesn’t really count as drama, as far as I am concerned).

The pace is slow, but this is not a bad thing at all. It shows a level of nuance and of introspection on both Wentworth and Anne’s part that makes it the most “grown up” of all Austen books. I think that 10 years ago, this would have bothered me, but now I appreciate the tone in “Persuasion” much more. This is ultimately the story of two people who realize that how they feel about each other is stronger than the pain and resentment that came between them. They are both afraid of getting hurt again, but they also know that if they let pride stand in their way, they will make the same mistake they made in their youth all over again. This story is bittersweet, certainly, but it is about a couple who decide to be real partners, unlike most of the other couples in that era’s literature, where women had to be rescued left right and centre, by dashing rich men. Anne and Wentworth see the world the same way and their love is a meeting of minds much more than the burning passion of, say, idiots like Lydia Bennett and Georges Wickham.

I think that “Persuasion” might be more enjoyable when you have a few fuck-ups and heartbreaks under your belt, and you look back and know exactly which mistakes you will never make again. I find this particular romance much more elegant and realistic than the other ones created by Austen. While I definitely enjoy the rollicking fun of “Pride and Prejudice”, the sweet satire of “Sense and Sensibility” and the borderline absurd fun of “Emma”, I must be getting old and bruised because I find this story more touching than all the other ones put together. It was Jane Austen’s swan song, as she died a year after completing it. It takes place in autumn, which fits not only the mood, but the context in which it was written as well. Austen was battling an illness she knew would probably take her life as she was writing Anne’s story. I feel like she went out after completing her best book…

Highly recommended to anyone looking for a mature story about love lost and found again.

My last book of 2018! When you can't find a new book you feel like reading, why not pick up a book that's just over 200 years old? I can't tell you how many books I have read the blurb of in contemporary romances where it's a "second chance" romance where the guy or girl returns to the "home town" where they are unexpectedly reunited with the one person who broke their heart years before and then by the end of the book there is a HEA. And 200 years ago when this book was written, long before all those contemporary romance author's great grandmother's were even born, this book also followed that same basic romance path. However, the emotional tension found in these pages are a hard thing to find in books written in this century, where the stirring of feelings are replaced with a stirrings of the loins and secondary needless drama to fill out the book. Reading this novel I truly could put myself into the shoes of Anne who finds herself exasperated by her family and friends, wanting more, and not knowing if her romantic feelings are in any way returned. And then that letter! *swoon* Can we go back to a time where men wrote romantic letters instead of short texts with emoticons? I would still like to keep the modern amenities of hygiene, healthcare, and travel, for the record.

What can I possibly tell you about Jane Austen? I really enjoyed this. I really like that by the end you get to move a bit out of the head of the main character, away from her self-deprecations and almost masochistic lacerations and get to see what Captain Wentworth actually did think of her – rather than her-less-than-self-congratulatory version.

Okay, it is all very romantic – but what I found most interesting in this book was how I felt compelled to consider how much of the world we learn by having it reported to us. There is the life we live and know first hand, well, more or less, and then there is the world that we know from ‘trusted sources’. And all of this adds to make up the whole of our perspective of ‘reality’, whatever that might be.

There is always a layer of reality below which we can only ever guess at – and that is what is really going on in the minds of others. Sometimes we do discover something of this – and that might either bring joy or pain – but otherwise we construct and reconstruct the world on the best narrative we can make from the frowns or smiles of those around us, glimpsed however imperfectly in the twinkling of a moment.

A while ago I took a very dear friend of mine to the local art gallery and showed her a couple of little statue things they have there of two old women. The artist has created these two miniature people – two homunculi who are engrossed in the conversation they whisper between themselves. If you view them from the front they look to be talking away quite contentedly – almost conspiratorially - but as you move around to view them from the back you see that one of them looks very anxious, perhaps almost about to cry, perhaps oddly frightened. This fear isn’t something you notice at all from the front. But in life we don’t get to have this 360 degree perspective on the people we meet and talk to – and so only one of these views is open to us. The guesses we make on the motivations and desires of others are always partial, always mixed up with our own motivations and desires and misattributions.

So it is that Anne Elliot spends much of the novel – perhaps a woman a little too good for this world. She can even watch on with quiet resignation as the man she loves seems to be choosing someone else to marry.

There are many interesting themes in this book – class distinctions and their worth in judging the value of someone, when to take the advice of someone and when not to, how jealousy has much to recommend it in regaining the love of your ex. But one of the things I was most interested in was the theme of ‘love and property’ which Marx and Engels talk about in the Manifesto. It is a knee jerk reaction now to say we should marry for love – but in the immortal words of an Irish folk song:

“Love is pleasing
And love is teasing
And love is a pleasure when first it’s new
But as it grows older
Sure the love grows colder
‘Til it fades away like the morning dew.”

This is a romance, so we don’t get to see this happen to our protagonists, but the relationships of those around them would hardly make one seek to rush into the married state. From the bizarre and almost incestuous relationship between Anne’s father and her older sister, to the marriage of her younger sister, Mary – and the marriage of Benwick to Louisa is surely destined to crash and burn.

Everyone in Anne’s family is unspeakably awful – when Austen wants to create a character that is a pain in the bum she does so with unerring perception. Mary and her father are masterworks in the description of the obnoxious in human form – the botched soul.

Ms Austen also obviously had a bit of a thing for the ‘strong, silent types’ (think Mr Darcy without the fairytale quest bit in the middle) – but there is also something of the Enlightenment about this book. The idea that real feeling, the hope of a truly happy marriage, can only be based on the common rationality of the couple at hand. Love is a mingling of minds, rather than bodies. And this isn’t some sort of nineteenth century prudishness, or at least, not only, but more a hypothesis that is played out in the marriages of the major characters.

Love, then, is a version of that highest type of friendship that our old mate Aristotle was so fond of – and that life cruelly teaches us is so incredibly rare for us with people of either sex. To have both sexual attraction and mental attraction with one single ‘other person’ is perhaps really asking too much and just being greedy.

Still, I guess all would be well if not for those damn hormones. And of everyone in the book poor old Benwick probably cops the worst press - for not being constant enough to the memory of his recently departed ex-wife. The discussion at this point reminded me a bit of Hamlet whinging about his mum and uncle. But this does all end up with that most wonderful of quotes – where Anne says that women may not love deeper, but that they do love longer, even after all hope is gone. If you are going to get a slap in a piece of classic fiction, it is probably best that it happen in a way that results in such a line. The fact she is almost moved to tears after saying this line and that it is basically the turning point of the entire book really is a lovely thing.

If only in life it could be that saying the utterly perfect thing would reap such rich rewards… But then, I guess that does rather put the onus on finding the utterly perfect thing to say.

One of the major sources of contention and strife in my marriage is the disagreement between my wife and me over what is the best Jane Austen novel (yes, we are both more than a bit geekish in our love of words and literature--our second biggest ongoing quarrel is about the merits of the serial comma).

For my money, there are three of Austen's six finished novels that one can make a good argument for being her "best":

"Pride and Prejudice" (the popular choice, and my wife's)
"Emma" (the educated choice--most lit profs go with this one)
"Persuasion" (the truly refined choice)

Harrold Bloom in "The Western Canon" calls it perhaps a "perfect novel," and while I disagree with some of his interpretations of the characters (yes, blasphemy, I know), I wholeheartedly concur with his overal assessment.

While all of Austen's novels are generally comic, "Persuasion" is the most nuanced. It's been described as "autumnal" and that word suits it. There's a bittersweetness to it that you just don't get in Austen's other work.

The novel it comes closest to in terms of character and plot is probably one of her earliest novels "Sense and Sensibility." Like Eleanor in that novel, Anne is older and more mature than the typical Austen heroine. In fact, she's dangerously close to being "over the hill" at the age of 27(!). Love has passed her by, apparently.

But unlike Eleanor, who one always feels will muddle through even if she ends up disappointed in affairs of the heart, there's something more dramatically at stake with Anne. She is in great danger of ceasing to exist, not physically, but socially. When we meet her, she's barely there at all. Although a woman of strong feelings, she is ignored and literally overlooked by most of the other characters. In the universe of Austen's novels, the individual doesn't truly exist unless connected with the social world, and while Anne has a stoic strength, we understand that she is in some senses doomed if things don't change for her.

This is where we see what the mature Austen can do with a character type that she couldn't when she was younger.

This edition also has the original ending of the novel included as an appendix, which gives us a rare and fascinating look in to Austen as a technical artist.

I read this novel as an undergraduate, and have reread it several times since. I even took the novel with me to Bath on a trip to England, and spent a wonderful summer evening reading it while sitting in Sidney Gardens, across the street from one of the homes Austen lived in during her time in Bath, listening to Mozart's Piano Concerto #27. It's one of my favorite memories.

More than any other of her novels, "Persuasion" shows how Austen dealt with profound existential questions within the confines of her deceptively limited setting and cast of characters. Those who think Austen is simply a highbrow precursor to contemporary romance novels or social comedies are missing the colossal depth of thought that is beneath the surface of any of her novels, this one most of all.

Austen is nearly unique in the history of the novel for the consistency of her excellence. While most novelists have a clear masterpiece that stands out among their work, and usually a fairly sizable number of works that are adequate but not enduring, all of Austen's novels stand up to repeated readings and deserve a wide audience among today's readers.

Having said that, "Persuasion" is simply the best of the best.

n  n    “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.”n  n

Persuasion, by Jane Austen was unfortunately a disappointment. I think the best way to 'review' this would be to make a list of what I liked and disliked, as I do not know how to express my emotions otherwise. I am sorry for not writing a detailed review.

What I loved-
◙ The writing. Austen's writing never disappoints me.
◙ The number of beautiful quotes!
◙ The audiobook narration

What I liked-
◙ The main character Anne Elliot. I liked the fact that she was older and more mature.
◙ I liked the lack of drama, I love drama, but here it would have been over the top.
◙ I liked that the focus was on the naval officers and their circles.

What I did not like-
◙ I did not like the plot. I found most of it confusing, and I seriously did not get what was going on in the book.

I know the dislike list is very short, but that is what made me very upset with the book. I am defiantly going to reread it, as I feel there is something about this that I have missed.

Buddy Read with Murdercon and Elsie.

While ploughing through Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport recently, the frequent references to Jane Austen's Persuasion prompted me to take this neat book down from its place on a high shelf alongside its five sisters and keep it within view as a kind of incentive to finish Ellmann's 1000 page tome.

As it turned out, I didn't need an incentive to finish Ducks because it self-propelled in the second half, but even so, I still offered myself the pleasure of re-reading Persuasion once I'd finished it. There's nothing I like better than when one book leads naturally to another without me having to scratch my head and wonder what might make a good follow-on to what I've been immersed in.

The narrator of Ducks is well versed in all of Jane Austen's novels. She ponders on the dilemma of Marianne and Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility when confronted with an issue between her temperamental daughter and a good-for-nothing boyfriend. She mentions Emma Woodhouse a few times, and several characters from Pride and Prejudice too—indeed Mrs Bennett's famous line, "You have no compassion for my poor nerves" becomes a kind of unspoken mantra in Ellmann's book.

But the Austen character who is most often referenced is Anne Elliot, the main character of Persuasion. Ellmann's narrator identifies strongly with Anne. They both spent their childhoods in beautiful houses which their families no longer have access to. They are both very attached to the memory of their mothers whom they lost in their early teens, and the loss of the mother continues to influence their lives in different ways.

Of course the two books are very different in other respects, Ellmann's being a wide-ranging commentary on contemporary world issues, and including vast numbers of references to film, literature and poetry, while Austen's is a very contained account of a little slice of English life in the early 1800s, with very few literary references. The two such references I found are brief and easily glossed over—if I noticed them in previous reads, I moved on from them just as quickly. But I'm a different reader now and I love to find hints of other works in the literature I read. The first reference I spotted was to 18th century poet, Mathew Prior's Henry and Emma which tells of a test of loyalty which a lover imposes on his loved one: Emma must overcome a series of challenges in order to prove her constancy to Henry. Austen inserts the reference to Prior's poem just when Anne Elliot is being asked by the man she has loved for years to nurse back to health the girl he now seems to be in love with, so the story of Henry setting trials for Emma seems very apt indeed. And as we read on through Anne Elliot's story, we see the parallel more and more as Anne's constancy is further tested.

The second literary reference I came across is less significant to the plot and more connected to Austen's people-watching skills, the aspect of her writing I admire the most. How perceptive of people's foibles she must have been to be able to transfer to the page brief character sketches which manage to contain a host of subtle information especially relating to the more ludicrous traits of the personalities of her characters. In her other novels, there are portraits of ridiculous figures aplenty: Mrs Bennet, Mr Collins, Miss Bates, Mr Woodhouse, and several others I could mention, but surely none are so comically outrageous as super-conceited Sir Walter Eliot and his equally puffed-up daughters Elizabeth and Mary. The very modest Anne Eliot is sorely tried, as if she needed the extra challenge, in having them for family!

However, there is one occasion when Anne makes an effort to put herself forward in the pushy manner of her family, but she is immediately self-aware enough to laugh at herself for the attempt : She could not do so, without comparing herself with Miss Larolles, the inimitable Miss Larolles.
As there is no character called Miss Larolles in this book, and Jane Austen doesn't elaborate further, I guessed the inimitable Miss Larolles must be a literary figure who would be familiar to Austen's readers. And so she is, as I found when I looked her up. She is a very ridiculous character from Fanny Burney's Cecilia, which was written about thirty five years before Austen wrote Persuasion. As I've never read anything by Fanny Burney, I decided there and then to begin Cecilia as soon as I finished Persuasion which I did all too quickly.

Burney's is a long book, quite as long as Ducks, Newburyport, but I'm happily reading it at the moment, finding other parallels with Austen's books, and relieved once again that one book has led me directly to another.