Persuasion
Oh man, this is epitome of letter writing and pining! We love that.
Anne is a quiet observer who fell in love with the gallant, independent and loyal Captain Wentworth over seven years ago. She was advised to end their engagement by a family friend due to his lack of social standing and fortune. Anne obliged and broke off the engagement only to suffer years of unhappiness and regret. Then, Captain Wentworth returns in her life and now she is the old age of 27 (?!) and wrestles with rooting for him to be happy even if that is with someone else and harboring hope that they can rekindle where they left off…
There any many ways to analyze Persuasion by Jane Austen. But the biggest takeaway for me is the power of persuasion and influence and how people pleasing doesn't actually do anything for us. At the end of the day, the only one who has to live with our choices is us. And those who give unsolicited advice are giving it from their perspective, and are not privy to our innermost desires and our hearts. Nor do they have to live with the consequences. Persuasion is an interesting look at how much we can be influenced by others when we don't trust our own intuition. Women are socialized to not trust themselves and to make our own choices, particularly in the early 1800s when this novel is set.
For Lady Russell, she valued security and social standing above all else, so her advice for Anne was based on that. Anne was torn between passion and convention. Neither one is right or wrong within themselves, but you have to be honest with yourself about which set of consequences you can live with. If you choose the man with lower social standing and lack of fortune but you love them, can you be content with your choice without regret? If you decide not to marry the person you love and your options are theoretically open, will you really feel open to other options or be shackled to idealizations of what could have been? Anne learns the hard way that she is a romantic and can’t ignore her heart. She and Lady Russell have different values so following Lady Russell's advice led to years of unhappiness as opposed to meeting someone else with higher social standing and more money as surely Lady Russell was hoping.
This book makes the case that persuasion and influence are not bad things, but they must be balance with our own convictions. While having an independent mind is important, it is also equally important to be open to other points of view. You don't want an echo chamber of your opinions, because then you'll never grow. But if you aren't grounded in your values and a sense of knowing for yourself, you'll always be a pendulum swinging between the values and views of others.
The love letter Wentworth writes to Anne might be more romantic and lovely than the charms of Mr. Darcy… I said it! But, what keeps this novel from being the most romantic of Austen's novels for me is that Elizabeth and Darcy have far more chemistry as a couple than is shown between Anne and Frederick; As their relationship is more tell and not show. We are told that they loved one another and there are residual feelings but it is not felt in the way that the tension between Elizabeth and Darcy was more than agitation with each other. If Austen didn’t tell me that Anne and Frederick loved one another, I would not have picked up on it between the lines.
We get a glimpse of equality between men and women by Admiral and Mrs. Croft. Mrs. Croft goes out to sea with the Admiral and he helps around the house. They are described as an ideal marriage and seem to be the most happy out of all that characters in this story. Austen introduced her ideas of feminism with this couple.
A cool and modern twist would have been if Anne were to have proposed to Captain Wentworth in the end since she ended their engagement previously. Put herself out there for him this time! Poor guy has laid himself bare more than once for this chick and has been burned and yet still composes the greatest love letter of all time. Anne just pined for 8 years and likely would have for the rest of her life if Frederick didn’t pursue her again.
