With
her characteristically happy endings, Jane Austen is a given for an
upbeat fiction list. Any of her six novels is recommended, and Pride & Prejudice
and Emma
are considered two of the greatest novels of all time. But Persuasion has
something more to recommend it: It is Austen's most moving novel and
perhaps the one that cuts closest to her own grain.
Heroine Anne Elliot is 27 as Persuasion
opens — teetering on the brink of old-maid status in the
England
of two centuries ago. In her secret heart she still loves the sailor
whose proposal she turned down at 19 on the advice of her surrogate
mother, who was concerned about the man's uncertain financial future.
But Frederick Wentworth has done well for himself at sea and now is
back on English soil — indeed, in Anne's neck of the woods.
Anne
has to endure the pain of watching him measure other women as
prospective wives. Then, an accident reopens his eyes to Anne's
superiority. He realizes he still loves her, and she realizes it too,
but the matter isn't resolved: She has to figure out a way to let him
know that a second proposal of marriage would be accepted.
No Austen heroine deserves to get her man more than Anne Elliot. Unlike
Elizabeth Bennet (prejudiced), Emma Woodhouse (meddlesome), Fanny Price
(priggish), Elinor Dashwood (too controlled), Marianne Dashwood (too
little controlled), or Catherine Morland (juvenile), Anne behaves
impeccably. But demanding nothing for herself, she is nearly invisible
to her shallow father and sisters, and she endures neglect and ill use.
It is tempting to wonder whether the wistful tone of Persuasion
has something to do with Austen's circumstances when she wrote it. She
was sick with the disease (perhaps cancer) that would kill her at
age 41. She had long since put on her "spinster's cap," but one wonders
whether in Persuasion
she was fantasizing about what might have been.
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