Poor Parenting Harms Future Generations

Jane Austen Shows the Impact in Persuasion

Dec 31, 2008 Michelle Ward

In her novel, Persuasion, Jane Austen demonstrates the negative impacts parents can have on future generations as a result of poor parenting techniques such as favoritism

In her novel, Persuasion, Jane Austen explores many concepts, including those of love, status, and parenting. She uses her character, Sir Walter Elliot, as an example of an inferior father who shows unchecked favoritism toward his daughter Elizabeth and completely ignores his other daughters, Anne and Mary. His actions cause great problems for all three girls as they grow up and try to live life apart from him.

The family’s friend and confident, Lady Russell tries to combat many of the problems caused by Sir Walter, but the girls can only really heal from the wounds inflicted by their neglecting father after they have left home. Mary never fully recovers from his influence and remains a silly, conceited wife with low-self esteem.

Children Follow Their Parents’ Example

She follows her father’s example with her two sons and pays little attention to them, except to complain about their constant misbehavior. Mary makes the classic mistake of expecting her children to “bring themselves up.” With no example to follow, Mary fails in her role as a mother. She views her children as something to show off and to yell at when misbehaving. Her actions are an example of the consequences a poor father can have on his grandchildren. Parenting mistakes compound when a good example does not exist.

In the novel, Anne does not marry until the end and so has no children. A reader cannot directly see the impact her father’s parenting will have on her children, but it can be inferred. Anne becomes an increasingly stronger character throughout the novel and tends to remain uninfluenced by her father. A certain amount of insecurities still exist though as a result of her father’s parenting and these insecurities may cause difficulties when she has her own children to raise. Her husband, Captain Wentworth, seems to have been raised in a good environment, however, and the positive parenting experiences of the husband can often combat the negative parenting experiences of the wife.

Favoritism Can Lead to Loneliness

Mary and Anne are not the only daughters affected by Sir Walter’s poor parenting, however. Elizabeth endures private pain as well. Due to the attitudes installed in her from a young age, Elizabeth is someone few people enjoy being around. She has few friends and even fewer suitors. As the spoiled middle-age daughter of a debt-ridden gentleman, she is generally disliked. Though she maintains her prideful air, Austen allows the reader to occasionally glimpse the pain that loneliness causes.

Elizabeth’s illogical friendship with the lowly Ms. Clay is evidence of her desperate desire for companionship. Despite her pain, she refuses to turn to her sisters and maintains an air of superior happiness when she is forced to be around them. She stresses over her sisters’ opinion of her and endeavors to show off her wealth, but receives little satisfaction from the gesture.

The Faults of the Father Are Apparent in the Children

Due to the attitude instilled in her by her father, Austen hints that Elizabeth will likely remain single for the remainder of her life. In this way, Sir Walter Elliot’s negative parenting techniques affected the next generation by causing it not to exist. Though it can be assumed that Elizabeth would likely display parenting techniques similar to those of her father, despite the suffering they caused her, she will likely never be given the opportunity to have children.

As stated before, Mary already displayed poor parenting skills with her children and seems to have no desire to right those parenting skills. She inherited her father’s method of silly parenting and is incapable of focusing on the needs of her children when they in any way conflict with her own perceived needs. Anne may be the only child capable of escaping the long-term harms of Sir Walter Elliot’s parenting, but the novel ends before the reader can see if this will occur. The danger still exists for her, however, to either fall into her father’s faults or to fail trying to be his opposite.

Austen does not allow the reader to know the long-term effects Anne and Elizabeth will experience as a result of their father’s poor parenting, but she does allow the reader to witness the effect it had on Mary. Sir Walter’s poor example is visited on his grandchildren through Mary’s lack of parenting knowledge and if the novel had continued, his inadequate parenting may also have been visited on the children of Anne and Elizabeth, if she was able to find a husband.

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