Persuasion by Jane Austen

Classic. Romance. Realistic Fiction. 

English 45B

Rating: 4/5

Pages: 304

Started: 5 April 2024

Finished:  9 April 2024

Summary:

    Twelve years ago, Anne Eliot allowed herself to be persuaded to reject the marriage proposal of Mr. Wentworth, a handsome and charming sailor with no social class or fortune to speak of. Now, at 29, Anne remains unmarried. When her family's need to domestically downsize, a result of her vain father's overspending, puts her in close proximity with not one but two potential suitors--her previously deplorable but now seemingly desirable cousin Mr. Eliot, and the same Mr. Wentworth she rejected so long ago, now with a fortune of his own--Anne must come to terms with the effects of others' persuasion on her past, and on her future. 

Thoughts: 

    I adore Austen. I have to laugh at my poor seventh-grade self who thought that her writing was boring; now that I'm able to understand the satire, recognize the irony, and follow the subtleties of the free indirect discourse, I am a raging Austen fan. She's witty, and makes use of FID beautifully: as my professor was pointing out in class, it's clear she (unlike writers like Defoe or Swift) is thinking about specific characters and their psyches, and how those impact the book itself. 

    I maintain that one of the keys to understanding characters in Austen novels is understanding who is a foil to whom.  In Persuasion, Mary as a foil to Anne clarifies a lot of things about the generosity and temperance of her character, and also perhaps provides proof for how being married does not fix anything, thus reinforcing Anne's conclusion that being persuaded in the way she was, was not necessarily a mistake. Similarly, Wentworth and Mr. Eliot are both charming men with considerable fortunes, but the subtle differences between them highlights Wentworth's goodness and Mr Eliot's selfish disingenuousness. 

    The political and social commentary in the novel is also really interesting, with Aristocracy-obsessed characters either vilified (Mr. Eliot) or ridiculed (Anne's father), while characters who make their own fortunes via sailing (Wentworth) are valorized. I still do not entirely understand the last line of this book; the tone is so different from the rest of the work--it feels direct and preachy, more like an idea than a description of a character with an idea behind it--but the political commentary is very interesting nevertheless. I'm very glad to have read this book, and will definitely be adding more Austen to the TBR.