I have decided to approach Misty's
questions as a guide for my thoughts as I read and have provided my free-for-all approach to a response
below, but here are the questions anyway, so that everyone can see the
premise from which I meandered:
- What
are your initial impressions of the story? Do you like the set-up for
the world and the conflicts? Did you find any of it hard to understand
or relate to?
- What are your impressions of the characters so far? Especially in
regards to Anne, who is considered quite a bit different from other
Austen heroines (besides being the oldest, she's had love and let it go,
and now has had years to reflect on that).
- Do you think Anne was right to have yielded to the pressure of those
close to her - to have been "persuaded" - not to accept Wentworth's
first proposal?
- What do you make of Anne's family (and extended family, including
Lady Russell), and her place among them? How do the people in Anne's
life treat her, and what was your reaction to that?
- Discuss Anne's first few meetings with Wentworth, or Wentworth's entry into the story in general.
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in
Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any
book but the Baronetage...
I still get chills of excitement every time I read those words. He
doesn't read?! Don't you just hate the man already? I believe the first
few chapters of
Persuasion are the absolute best Austen ever
wrote (I could say much about how I think she is better on beginnings
than ends in general, but that would be far too great of a tangent to
take). Why is it so awesome that the book begins with Sir Walter Elliot
and the Baronetage? One reason is that it allows Austen to reveal a ton
of information about her characters in an amazingly small amount of
time. By the end of the first paragraph we know all the members of the
Elliot family, their social status, that Lady Elliot is long dead, and
that she died without providing an heir to Sir Walter, and that Sir
Walter is a pompous ass. Readers have an immediate sympathy for his
motherless daughters, "an awful charge rather, to confide to the
authority and guidance of a conceited, silly father", and by the end of
the second paragraph, when we learn that only the youngest has yet
married, we feel even more sympathy for the older, remaining Miss
Elliots ("Always to be presented with the date of her own birth and see
no
marriage follow but that of a youngest sister, made the book an evil").
We make such rapid progress in this book, and then Austen casts us into
limbo, forcing us to endure the dreadfully boring Baronetage and
scramble our ways into whatever plot info we can take away from it. Oh
good! there is an heir - a possible hero? Yes, we readily believe vanity
to be the beginning and end of Sir Walter's character. He did not marry
Lady Russell, but we do have a maternal figure. Yet still we do not
know who is our heroine!
Austen toys with us so masterfully in this first chapter,
playing with our expectation like the virtuoso she is, building tension
before defying convention. When first Elizabeth and then Anne Elliot are
finally introduced, it is clear that the authoress favors the latter:
...
but Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which
must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was
nobody with either father or sister: her word had no weight; her
convenience was always to give way; - she was only Anne.
Now we feel our story begins in earnest,
but it is only to learn that Anne is passed her bloom and Elizabeth is
very pretty, though nearly thirty. This proceeds a discourse of
Elizabeth's precise situation, which is intriguing, and we begin to
wonder if we misread previous hints, and Elizabeth isn't our heroine
after all, especially as she appears on the surface quite like Emma
Woodhouse. We end the chapter with news of financial distress, and gain
no real additional information about Anne until the last paragraph of
chapter three, only a steady revelation of her good sense and
intelligence amidst the pompous and ignorant. Then suddenly we end on
her first significant words, "A few months more, and
he, perhaps, may be walking here."
 |
| Ann Firbank playing Anne Elliot in the 1971 mini-series |
Here
the book goes from being about anything but Anne to nothing but Anne,
and her perspective is dominant throughout the rest of the book. Though
we greet the Elliots without the benefit of her good opinion, the
Musgroves are entirely seen through her eyes, giving us extraordinary
insight into this heroine's mind. I think
Persuasion has by far
the most introspective tone of Austen's novels; we have access to Anne
Elliot's thoughts and feelings with an acuteness none of her other
heroines achieve. I believe it was C.S. Lewis who wrote - though I have
no notion where - about the psychoanalytic aspects of this novel. He
made a very good point (wish I could share it), and the awareness of
Anne's ego, long before Freud was even born, makes this a startlingly
modern novel. Here is Austen at the height of her abilities, and she
paints Anne Elliot so realistically that she could step from the pages
and converse on any number of topics, from Shakespeare to the
conveniences of modern plumbing.
If Anne's introduction is long and subtle, slowly
revealing her inner majesty behind the facade of a wallflower, Captain
Wentworth's is dynamic, like him, and comes in the form of a negative: "
He
was not Mr. Wentworth, the former curate of Monkford...". It is a
phenomenal way to commence the chapter that finally delivers the eagerly
awaited love story we knew just had to be coming, and it is
particularly appropriate, for Wentworth will spend such a huge amount of
energy denying his feelings. Austen creates an image of all that is
amiable: confidence, ambition, and finally success combine in one
idealized specimen of manhood. The next several chapters focus on the
build up to the reunion between these fractured lovers. I think Misty
made a a great choice in ending this segment after chapter seven, seeing
us just past Anne and Wentworth's meeting, and making us stop and think
about the painful blow just delivered: "Altered beyond his knowledge!"
This might be the cruelest thing any Austen heroine ever has to confront
in herself, for while character flaws can be addressed and dealt with,
no rational person expects lost looks to be recovered. It is hard not to
resent Wentworth, with his self-satisfied rejection of Anne and
determined acceptance of "something a little inferior", but because he
acts out of deep hurt, and because he is Wentworth, we easily forgive
him.
For we know how he suffered. Every word describing
his anger reflects his desperation to make sense out of his pain,
attribute blame to she whom he had to give up, and vent his spleen:
He
had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill; deserted and
disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a feebleness of character in
doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure. She
had given him up to oblige others. It had been the effect of
over-persuasion. It had been weakness and timidity.
 |
| Rupert Penry-Jones as Wentworth in 2007 film |
The question underlying this novel lies in
this conclusion. Was Anne wrong or right to yield to Lady Russell's
objections to her engagement to Captain Wentworth? At this juncture, all
we can judge by is our firm knowledge that the repercussions of her
decision caused even more pain to Anne than to the Captain, making the
answer appear decidedly "yes". The example of he Crofts, too, who are an
extremely happy couple, despite having married without fortune,
reinforces Wentworth's opinion that Anne acted foolishly. Anne herself
agrees, has been persuaded she was wrong:
She did not blame Lady Russell, she did not blame herself for having
been guided by her; but she felt that were any young person, in similar
circumstances, to apply to her for counsel, they would never receive any
of such certain immediate wretchedness, such uncertain future good.
She was persuaded that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at
home, and every anxiety attending his profession, all their probable
fears, delays, and disappointments, she should yet have been a happier
woman in maintaining the engagement, than she had been in the sacrifice
of it...
But the wonderful thing about the art of
persuasion is that its work is never done. Events and characters
introduced later in the novel will repeatedly remind us how very
precarious a sailor's fortune is, and Lady Russell was quite right about
the likelihood of the then Lieutenant Wentworth attaining rank and
fortune, especially had he been hampered with a family. Furthermore, if
Lady Russell had failed to advise Anne on this matter, would she not
have been a negligent guardian? In recent years, I have become more and
more convinced that Anne acted precisely right in breaking off the
engagement, but I did not always think so. I'm curious to hear other
answers to this question.The biggest one I am left with is why did
Captain Wentworth not return to Anne when his fortune was established?
As she reflects:
Had he wished ever to see her again, he need not have waited till this
time; he would have done what she could not but believe that in his
place she should have done long ago, when events had been early giving
him the independence which alone had been wanting.
Despite
all my feelings against such a conclusion, I have to lay blame for the
continuation of the suffering both hero and heroine endure, regardless
of who initiated, on Captain Wentworth. His childlike indignation is
unproductive, and as if she has not endured enough, when he finally does
return to Kellynch he seems bent on punishing her with indifference.
Were he not so thoroughly charming, I could almost hate him.
