Jane Austen's Novel Persuasion
The Writer’s Life and Illness Led to a Work of Regret and Beauty
Jul 1, 2009
Anne Eliot, the heroine of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, was set to marry Frederick Wentworth. But other people interfered in the match, with careless whispers and unflattering claims with no basis, and the two eventually went their separate ways, with broken hearts.
Whereas, in Jane Austen’s earlier novels, her characters maintained their spirits despite disappointments, such as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, the characters in Persuasion are painted with a more complex situation and reaction to their own choices. There is sadness and regret, and an expectation of an empty life.
Eventually, Jane Austen allows for the redemption that she did not see in her own life, with Persuasion being published posthumously, but the characters of Anne Eliot and Frederick Wentworth had to endure the gauntlet of heartbreak and long, empty years before they came together again, due to near tragic events that happened to others.
The Love Affair With Frederick Wentworth
A young, carefree Anne Eliot fell in love with a handsome young man named Frederick Wentworth. But Lady Russell, a dear friend of the family and especially of Anne, chiefly persuaded Anne not to go through with the match. The Eliot family itself could care less what Anne did, as she was not loved by either her father or her sister, and her dear mother had died.
- “All the privilege I claim for my own sex … is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.” Anne Elliot’s words ring through the years to touch readers to this day. With these words, heard by Frederick Wentworth, Anne declared her undying love for him, through the eight years of separation they endured.
- “When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other’s comfort.” With these words, Jane Austen disparages marriage, but allows for Anne Eliot and Frederick Wentworth to be the exception to this somewhat jaded statement.
- “We certainly do not forget you as soon as you forget us.” These words, uttered by Anne Eliot in the presence of Frederick Wentworth, speak to his brief love affair with Miss Louisa Musgrove and supposed engagement to her. They cut Frederick Wentworth to the core of his being, and drove him to write a note that spoke to Anne of his undying love for her.
But for these sad, regretful words, the two might not ever have come together again.
The Accident at Lyme
Miss Louisa Musgrove, in a party of young people that included her sister, Anne Eliot, and Frederick Wentworth, with whom she was growing attached, blindly threw herself toward Wentworth’s arms off of a walkway, and her head was seriously injured.
- Whilst Marianne Dashwood grows ill and faces death in Sense and Sensibility, it is not often that readers see truly tragic events happen in Jane Austen’s novels.
- In Persuasion, a person brought about tragedy due to carelessness and her own actions.
- This accident is a parallel to the situation with Anne Eliot and Frederick Wentworth, who brought about their romantic tragedy with their own actions and decisions.
Allowing Oneself to be Persuaded
Here, perhaps, lies the true tragedy of life, Jane Austen suggests. When people listen to others, they often suffer for it. Jane Austen, who said that everyone was their own best guide, in her later years did not look favourably upon taking the advice of others when it went against one’s instincts.
- “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.” In these words of Anne Eliot, Jane Austen speaks of her own belief that novels are worthy and women have been deprived of proper respect and opportunity.
- This lack of opportunity could lead to easy persuasion and, in the words of the day, for people to be “worked upon” by others. Anne Eliot, perhaps as Jane Austen did, had to learn this by sad experience.
- Jane Austen explains everything when she says: “(Anne Eliot) had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older; the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.”
“It was a struggle between propriety and vanity; but vanity got the better.” With these words from Persuasion, Jane Austen lays out what she perhaps sees as one of the greatest weaknesses in human nature.
The pure beauty in Persuasion lies in that Anne Eliot and Frederick Wentworth got a second chance, as so often does not happen in real life.
The message is that life should be lived to the fullest, and experienced and felt, so that the whisperings of others have less control than one’s own instincts.
Sources:
Persuasion, by Jane Austen, Oxford University Press, 1990.
The Wicked Wit of Jane Austen, compiled by Dominique Enright, Michael O’Mara Book Limited, 2002, 2007.
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