Rereading Jane Austen’s Persuasion
I feel this is the right time to profess my ongoing obsession with Jane Austen. All of Austen’s works are in a semi-regular rotation in my life, but I have a special soft spot for Persuasion.
I can’t put my finger exactly on why I keep coming back to Persuasion in particular. The plotline is a more mature romance than the youthful Pride and Prejudice, and I suppose there is a specific pleasure in seeing Austen at the height of her powers.
Persuasion shows a shift from the coy witticisms of earlier writings. Perhaps this matches the growing outspokenness that many women experience as they exit their first youth.
The book is mercilessly clear-eyed. Deft portraits are drawn of every character, even supporting ones. Among her more explicit summaries of various characters, Austen lobs the most elegant (and savage) dick joke you’ll ever see at a character we never even meet:
“Poor Richard” (had) been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead.”
The heroine, Anne Elliot, is sympathetic because, unfortunately for her, she shares this authorial and reader insight. And yet, this knowledge does not empower her. Throughout the book, she accommodates herself to circumstance, allowing herself to be “persuaded” by the forces of other, more assertive personalities. Her awareness makes her more pliant, a valuable companion, removing all personal sharp edges so that she can be pleasant and serviceable to any who might call on her.
At the same time, this same self-effacing quality had lost Anne her first great romance, when she bowed to the influence of her maternal figure, Lady Russell, in rejecting the match. Anne’s mellowness also sets her up for disappointment after disappointment as when, for example, due to the machinations of her relatives, “the usual fate of Anne attended her, in having something very opposite from her inclination fixed on. She disliked Bath, and did not think it agreed with her; and Bath was to be her home.”
The saving grace of Persuasion is that Anne becomes aware of her major fault, which, ironically, is a complete lack of hubris. Part of Anne’s growth in self-assertion is learning from the social interactions and confidence of other younger, more light-hearted characters, one of whom unluckily becomes entangled with Anne’s erstwhile beau.
As the novel progresses, Anne becomes increasingly vocal. When a character offhandedly utters some bullshit tropes about the inconstancy of women, Anne absolutely rejects his position in one of the first moments that we see her publicly betray her own feelings. This sets in motion a happy turn of events for her (no spoilers!) Anne comes out a fuller personality, but she was never defective to begin with. All along, she has been a “persuasive” person in her own merits. It was simply high time for her to use her abilities in her own right.
One of the most subversive elements of this text is that Austen appears unabashedly open about the heroine being more interesting than her beloved. One is happy for Anne’s somewhat conventional happy ending, but the book reverses the typical fixation on a brooding or genial romantic hero.
Captain Wentworth (Anne’s romantic interest) is one of the few characters lacking a definite portrait. If anything, there is something of the ephemeral about him — his naval profession certainly adds to the impression that he is constantly fleeting, but so do apparent traits of impulsivity and carelessness. Not all of these traits are presented in a negative light. In fact, the text suggests a particular affection Austen had for navy military characters— typically presented throughout the book as good-natured, outdoorsy, energetic, and un-stilted company, a refreshing change from the vanity, unpleasantness, and uselessness of the degenerate upper classes. Decay and selfishness pervade all the “highborn” characters (Lady Russell is less unpleasant than most, but she is somewhat boring and conventional to a fault). Austen’s distaste for the landed gentry is never so explicit — perhaps never so realized — as in this text.
At the same time, Austen does not at all reckon with the legacy of colonialist Britain, which these more sympathetically drawn military characters would be helping to establish and maintain. Instead, all the narrative attention is placed on Anne’s capacity for romance and love, despite how little there was to nurture it. In reading the book most recently, I found myself left balancing on a razor’s edge between softness and cynicism. Perhaps Austen, more than most authors, would be gratified by this response.
