Persuasion

By Jane Austen

Introduction and Notes by Elaine Jordan, Reader in Literature, University of Essex.

What does persuasion mean - a firm belief, or the action of persuading someone to think something else? Anne Elliot is one of Austen's quietest heroines, but also one of the strongest and the most open to change. She lives at the time of the Napoleonic wars, a time of accident, adventure, the making of new fortunes and alliances.

A woman of no importance, she manoeuvres in her restricted circumstances as her long-time love Captain Wentworth did in the wars. Even though she is nearly thirty, well past the sell-by bloom of youth, Austen makes her win out for herself and for others like herself, in a regenerated society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Release date: Oct 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781848703902

Jane Austen

Born in 1775, Jane Austen published four of her six novels anonymously. Her work was not widely read until the late nineteenth century, and her fame grew from then on. Known for her wit and sharp insight into social conventions, her novels about love, relationships, and society are more popular year after year. She has earned a place in history as one of the most cherished writers of English literature.

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Trayler

general introduction

Wordsworth Classics are inexpensive editions designed to appeal to the general reader and students. We commissioned teachers and specialists to write wide ranging, jargon-free introductions and to provide notes that would assist the understanding of our readers rather than interpret the stories for them. In the same spirit, because the pleasures of reading are inseparable from the surprises, secrets and revelations that all narratives contain, we strongly advise you to enjoy this book before turning to the Introduction.

General Advisor

Keith Carabine

Rutherford College

University of Kent at Canterbury

introduction

What does it mean, persuasion? When Jane Austen wrote her last complete novel, it could mean two different things. A firm belief, or else the process of persuading someone to think differently, and of being persuaded. Both meanings figure significantly in the action of Persuasion, which Austen wrote as she became seriously ill, between the midsummers of 1815 and 1816. She died, aged 43, before Persuasion was published in December 1817. The hero, Captain Wentworth, has a firm persuasion that Anne Elliot let him down unforgivably when she broke off their engagement. Nineteen years old, she had been persuaded by someone she respects, Lady Russell, that their marriage would be unwise. Eight years later, he comes back into the neighbourhood, wealthier and of more importance, through success in maritime action in the Napoleonic Wars. ‘Importance’ is another key word in the novel, and signifies someone worth knowing, worth making an alliance with, in the social hierarchies of the time. Anne herself has a different idea of ‘importance’ from that of her snobbish father, Sir Walter, and elder sister, Elizabeth, and the action of the novel affirms the importance of a rather different set of characters and values, especially those associated with the navy. Anne recognised the sterling worth of her naval officer before it was publicly proved. Although she begins as the one who has been too persuadable, she also represents constancy. She has never stopped loving him and regretting her decision. The story is one of persuading Captain Wentworth out of his resentment. This is partly due to accidents, but it is Anne herself who persuades him, at first helplessly and unintentionally, later with more conscious manoeuvring.

Marilyn Butler has divided Austen’s heroines into the ones in the wrong who learn better, and the ones always in the right (Elinor Dashwood [Sense and Sensibility], Fanny Price [Mansfield Park], Anne Elliot).¹ She rightly reads Austen’s fiction as participating in the debates of her time, not just polite entertainments (which they are, also). Her sense of the fiction as ideologically conservative is too rigid, however. She assumes oppositions which are too extreme, between the objective and the subjective, for example, and therefore sees the romantic subjectivity of Anne in Persuasion as confusing the generic form and ideology which she ascribes to Austen’s novels, as if that were not open to change, by desire, by ethical re-thinking. Butler also underplays the risk taken in representing heroines, in the right or in the wrong, who are not exactly ideals for identification according to the models offered in the writing of Austen’s contemporaries. Austen described Emma Woodhouse as a heroine ‘whom no one but myself will much like’, but surely she was wrong. She liked the spirited young women, Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice or Emma in the novel that bears her name or Marianne Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility), but the real risks she took were with poor sad Elinor, Fanny and Anne, when you compare them to the didactic novels of ‘sensibility’ of the time. She wrote to her sister that ‘pictures of perfection make me sick and wicked’, though she adds later that Anne is ‘almost too good for me’.² Her ‘heroines in the right’ are not only unhappy, they are treated with some irony, for their scruples and hesitations.

Readers then and now are challenged in the kind of woman they can take as a heroine: Austen created heroines with whom readers might find it hard to identify, a challenge to habits of idealisation. That has proved very true of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, a poor relation of a wealthy family who resists the marriage they try to impose on her. Anne Elliott is her opposite, in agreeing not to marry her apparently unimportant lover, but she is like Fanny in not being so pretty as the young relatives, the Musgrove girls, whom Wentworth begins to court, without quite taking stock of what he is doing. Anne is nearing thirty and has ‘lost her bloom’. Like Fanny, she is not an ordinarily attractive heroine, although both get more attention for their looks as their lives get more lively. Charlotte Brontë did not read Austen until late, and was hostile when she did, but we could see Austen’s plain, shy, fading but nevertheless heroic pro-tagonists as anticipating Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Lucy Snowe in Villette.

Many critics have commented on the romanticism emerging in Persuasion (this is true of young Fanny Price also, in her love for stars in the night sky and relics of the past). Earlier Austen novels tend to emphasise more the values of the Enlightenment, the reason and judgement of dominant élites. In Persuasion there are many images which can be called romantic, of natural phenomena and of change over time (loss of springtime bloom, for example). The tension within Anne between emotion and being reasonable is, however, the most romantic aspect of Austen’s representation of her. In the final phase of the novel, Anne suddenly sees Captain Wentworth, unexpectedly arrived in Bath, while she is waiting in a fashionable establishment for transport. Austen uses free indirect speech:

Her start was perceptible only to herself; but she instantly felt that she was the greatest simpleton in the world, the most unaccountable and absurd! . . . She now felt a great inclination to go to the outer door; she wanted to see if it rained. Why was she to suspect herself of another motive? Captain Wentworth must be out of sight. She left her seat, she would go, one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half, or always suspecting the other of being worse than it was. She would see if it rained. [p. 136]

Free indirect speech is the invasion of the ‘voice’ of a third-person narrator by the thoughts or emotions of a character, without using direct speech or an explanatory ‘she thought’ (‘She left her seat [narrator], she would go’ [implicitly Anne’s thought]). ‘Captain Wentworth must be out of sight . . . She would see if it rained.’ Anne’s rational side denies her motive for going to the door, then turns back on itself. The style mimics Anne’s nervy agitation and struggle with herself – the self-questioning, the repetition. Does she want him to be out of sight, or to see him? She doesn’t know. When Wentworth actually comes into the place: ‘It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery.’

This style implicates the reader in Anne’s inner struggle and confusion. If she could, I guess she would have just walked away, but that would have scandalised her companions. The end of Persuasion satisfies both the romantic and the rational elements which Anne represents; it is a novel of reconciliation, sometimes near to loss and disaster. A slow starter, it grows on the reader with wonderfully staged scenes, expressive dialogues and solitary meditations. Consider these two examples, the first ‘romantic’, the second involving ‘rational’ discussion. Anne has no confidante of her own age. Although she trusts Lady Russell as a substitute for her mother, she cannot trust Lady Russell’s opinions about Wentworth, or about Mr Elliot, the heir to her improvident father’s estate. Lady Russell wants Anne to marry Mr. Elliot, who has suddenly turned up and courts Anne, so that she could take her mother’s place as lady of the estate. But Anne in her own mind has already rejected her ‘too generally agreeable’ cousin, before she knows the story of how badly he has behaved:

Mr Elliot was rational, discreet, polished – but he was not open. There was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne, was a decided imperfection . . . She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped. [p. 124]

Here is a romantic sensibility indeed, and the style mimes the ‘burst of feeling’. Once again it’s the equivalent of an interior monologue, though flecked with ‘indirect speech’ managed by the narrator (‘to Anne’, ‘She felt’). That objective ‘she’ could easily be replaced by ‘I’ – this is Anne talking to herself and making her own decisions on the grounds of sincerity, warmth, enthusiasm. Austen, the most precisely and subtly balanced of stylists, admits a preference for those who can be careless or hasty, whose tongues may slip. To be just ‘rational, discreet and polished’ is, paradoxically, ‘a decided imperfection’. Mr Elliot is too civil to be trusted; she enjoys his company at first (his evident admiration for her even before he has calculated reasons for courting her is one of the things that makes Wentworth also look twice), but she cannot feel any warmth for him. In terms of style, Miss Bates in Emma and Mrs Musgrove in Persuasion are examples of how much Austen can appreciate a style, or lack of style, which just runs on, both careless and caring. They are treated with comic affection, more than satirically, although Austen is notoriously cruel at one point, when Mrs Musgrove is indulging sentimentally in uncalled-for grief – she suggests that it is hard to sympathise with a fat person’s grief (p. 51).

In Anne’s mental rejection of Mr Elliot, however, the romantic attitude is manifestly approved, and the whole plotting of the novel confirms that bias. This is why Marilyn Butler’s judgement is too rigid in trying to cram all Austen’s novels into the same ideological schema. It is she who wants things to be more cut and dried than exploratory or challenging, or open, and that is why she counts Persuasion a relative failure: because it is not conservative enough to succeed! An odd attitude. The example which contrasts with the previous one is the dialogue in Chapter Eight of the first volume, when Captain Wentworth has a friendly disagreement with his older sister, Mrs Croft; her husband the Admiral is renting the Elliot estate, Kellynch Hall. Wentworth thinks that ladies should not be transported on navy ships, because it is impossible to provide them with the ‘accommodations on board, such as women ought to have’. Mrs Croft has never been uneasy except when she has been unable to be on board with her husband, and upbraids her brother:

‘But I hate to hear you talking so, like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.’ [pp. 52–4]

In this other surprise of Persuasion we find Mrs Croft (obviously an admirable character even though she is in her thirties and a bit weatherbeaten) speaking a language associated with the early feminist polemics of Mary Wollstonecraft:

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists – I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.³

Reading Jane Austen’s novels, you would not know that a woman like Mary Wollstonecraft could have existed at the same time. In her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1790), Mary Wollstonecraft seized on rational and radical commitment to ‘the rights of man’ and asked who, at this time of Enlightenment, were excluded from such rights, slaves as well as women? If ‘Liberty’ was exclusive it undermined itself, becoming a new form of tyranny.

In Persuasion we do have a more romantic Austen, and at the same time, a subtle-sharp kind of feminism, born of Enlightenment thought and questioning. There had been complaint from women before, but the time made such demands more possible, as in Wollstonecraft’s work. This is not altogether new in Austen’s work. In Chapter Twenty-Four of Pride and Prejudice (1813), there is a long conversation between Jane and Elizabeth Bennet on optimism and pessimism, which recalls the Enlightenment use of fiction to discuss philosophical issues (Voltaire’s Candide, for example). Jane thinks well of people, angelically, and therefore suffers; her more spirited sister says, ‘There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well.’ Jane responds, ‘My dear Lizzy, do not give way to feelings such as these. They will ruin your happiness.’ It is Elizabeth’s spirit, however, which finally ensures Jane’s happiness; Jane’s passive optimism is actually the closer to despair. In relation to Persuasion my point is that Enlightenment reasoning was always part of Austen’s fictional discourse, and both feminism and romanticism were always potentials within that reasoning, not just opposed reactions.

Like all Austen’s fictions Persuasion is a socially concerned work. There is no absolute distinction between the subjective and the social, any more than there is between the romantic and the rational. One way of arguing this would be to consider the original chapter Austen wrote, to bring Wentworth and Anne together again. Gossip that Anne is likely to marry Mr Elliot is spreading round Bath, and Admiral Croft wants to be forewarned if this should mean that the couple would want to reoccupy Kellynch Hall. Bumblingly, he gets Anne to his house when he happens to meet her on the street, and commissions Wentworth, of all people, to ask her if the rumour is true (only immediate family and friends know of the previous brief engagement, and barely remember it). She denies the rumour, and ‘all suspense and indecision were over’. The problem with this narrative stratagem is not just that everything is over too quickly, but that the scene excludes the social circle which so importantly circumscribes Anne and Wentworth. After their reunion, scenes involving the rest of their circle might have felt redundant. We would have the kind of quick tidying-up that George Eliot does at the end of Middlemarch (1871). The desire, the drive of the novel is to get them back together, as in a romance. But it is also precisely to represent certain social relationships and behaviours. Chapters Ten and Eleven in the second volume, which replace the cancelled one, draw in strands of the story which concern other characters. The scene in Chapter Eleven is one of those in which several characters gather in a hotel room, and this becomes the orchestrated setting for the renewed understanding of Anne and Wentworth. The constraints on them, in the company of family and friends, are like those in the concert room earlier, when Anne wants to get close to Wentworth (his renewed love for her being now pretty clear), but Mr Elliot has greater acceptance in her circle, more right, in their terms, to approach her. Sheer frustration: ‘How was the truth to reach him? How, in all the peculiar disadvantages of their respective situations, would he ever learn her real sentiments?’ (p. 149). Austen cannot give Anne the freedom to move of twentieth-century women, but she certainly represents the acute frustration of a woman in the early nineteenth century who cannot act boldly and independently to express her desire without disapproval, which would include that of the man she loves.

The great scene in Chapter Eleven is set in the White Hart in Bath, where the Musgrove family, near relations, are staying. Visitors include some of the navy people. Anne had only to ‘submit, sit down, be outwardly composed . . . deep in the happiness of such misery, or the misery of such happiness, instantly’ (p. 180). During this scene, Wentworth writes a secret note to Anne making clear his desire to propose to her again. But all the time other things are going on, being sorted out. One example of this orchestration is the basso continuo of Mrs Musgrove giving intimate details of her daughters’ engagements in a loud whisper which everybody can hear without wanting to. Wentworth’s letter is on behalf of Captain Harville – he is distressed at the transfer of a miniature portrait meant for his dead sister who had been engaged to Captain Benwick, to Louisa Musgrove; she and Benwick have transferred their affections to each other. This is the motivation for the discussion between Anne and Captain Harville as to whether men or women are more constant in love. It is a duet, and Wentworth, overhearing, makes it a trio with his letter to Anne. These trials and triumphs of love take place in public, but with some secrecy. Anne had manoeuvred to get near to Wentworth at the concert, now she doesn’t know if he can overhear her, and maybe she isn’t so calculating, just spontaneously expressing her sentiments.

Anne has taken to the up-and-coming navy men and their wives, preferring their ways to the silly aristocratic pretensions of her landed-gentry family. Their company makes her feel what she had missed in refusing Wentworth, an addition to her regrets. She argues with Harville about the ‘nature’ of men and women. He claims that men are more constant in love because they are stronger and more enduring in every way, and that all histories, stories and verse prove him right (Benwick doesn’t). Anne’s response revises Harville’s analogy, which sees male and female behaviour as rooted in their essential ‘natures’. She says that women do not forget so soon as men, because men have so much else to occupy them. This recalls Donna Julia’s letter in the second Canto of Byron’s Don Juan, where she writes ‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart / ’Tis woman’s whole existence’ (not an anti-feminist statement, because it is so historically specific). According to Anne, it is no achievement for women to be so constant, their fidelity is due to the circumstances in which they are made to live, without the professions or pursuits of privileged men: ‘[it is] our fate rather than our merit’ – a remarkable statement. She also questions the bias of the stories with which Captain Harville supported his argument: ‘Men have had the advantage of us in telling their own story . . . the pen has been in their hands.’ At this point, neatly, Captain Wentworth drops his pen.

One element in Persuasion’s quiet and moderate feminism is the redistribution of gender characteristics. Anne’s father Sir Walter is a bit of a dandy: ‘Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did; nor could the valet of any new-made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society’ (p. 4). He is declassed and unmanned by this description. The assumptions about gender and class are quite conservative, here, implying that he is not the proper gentleman he should be. The navy men are in strong contrast. Admiral Croft puts away most of the mirrors he’s faced with at Kellynch Hall, but within the navy group, Captain Benwick is an avid reader of romantic poetry (Scott and Byron, the bestsellers), and Captain Harville, disabled in the wars, not only reveals a tender sensibility but is an efficient homemaker, ‘turning the actual space to the best possible account’: ‘He drew, he varnished, he carpentered, he glued; he made toys for the children, he fashioned new netting-needles and pins with improvements; and if everything else was done, sat down to his large fishing-net at one corner of the room’ (p.75). Naval and domestic capabilities are fused here – ‘a woman’s work is never done’. Austen, whose brothers Francis and Charles had considerable success in their naval careers at the period when Wentworth and his friends were serving, ends the novel by saying that the navy is ‘if possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtues than in its national importance’. The stateliness of the ironically balanced prose masks what is possibly the most affectionate thing she ever wrote. In contrast, Mrs Croft takes the reins from the Admiral, literally, to save them from his dangerous driving, and the solicitor notices that she has the better business head in arranging the lease of Kellynch Hall. Even Captain Wentworth shows his knowledge of feminine matters in comparing the first ship he commanded to ‘any old pelisse, which you had seen lent about among half your acquaintances . . . which at last, on some very wet day, is lent to yourself’ (p. 49). The Musgrove girls’ avid searching of the Navy List, and Anne’s metaphoric ‘manoeuvring’ are counterparts to this. This quality of being or thinking ‘in-between’, characteristic of post-modern and post-colonial and feminist thinking, depends on the differences, but calls them in question.

The happiest existing marriage in all Austen’s novels (as distinct from those with which they, hopefully, end) is that of the Crofts, which is childless. Mrs Croft is not the only strong-minded woman in Persuasion. There is Anne’s older, not altogether wiser friend, Lady Russell, whose taste for serious reading and lack of care for her complexion distress Sir Walter. One of the most acidly understated remarks about happy family life is Lady Russell’s, leaving the Musgroves’ home after a visit: ‘I hope I shall remember, in future . . . not to call at Uppercross in the Christmas holidays’ (p. 103). This is at a period when maternal values were being assiduously promoted, from diverse directions. Then there is Anne, who is repeatedly shown to be invaluable in an emergency. In Bath she links up again with an old school-friend, Mrs Smith, who has fallen on hard times after a life of high-living. Now widowed, she is crippled by rheumatism. Anne muses about her at some length. There is no condemnation of her for her previous life-style, rather her earlier gaiety is transformed into something better than resigned endurance: ‘that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself . . . ’ (p. 119). Attending on Mrs Smith is Nurse Rooke, so low in the social scale that Anne didn’t notice her as she opened the door (Austen notes this indifference, even in Anne who values people for whom her father and sisters have no time). Nurse Rooke knows more about Anne than Anne knows herself; she is one of the transmitters of gossip, as midwife to a ‘fine lady’, wife of an acquaintance of Mr Elliot. ‘Rook’ could mean a confidence trickster, and Nurse Rooke uses the sickly state of her wealthy clients to sell them Mrs Smith’s handwork, as charity goods. But there is the same even-handed respect for her, from the narrator. Nurse Rooke is tougher and kinder than a gossip and a con-artist, though she is both.

Equally tolerant is Austen’s account of the lively and affectionate Musgrove sisters, as compared to the attitude towards Lydia and Kitty Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, whose liveliness, with its potential for disgrace, is a danger to the futures of Jane and Elizabeth. Here we can see that the various strengths of women are part of Persuasion’s theme with variations. At one end of the continuum we have the strong women, all different but all respecting and liking each other. In the middle is Louisa Musgrove. In the ‘hedgerow’ scene (Chapter Ten of the first volume), Wentworth encourages her to demand what she wants and to stick by it. Henrietta, the other teenage Musgrove, is under pressure to give up her clergyman suitor; Wentworth obviously has Anne’s defection on his mind in advising and encouraging Louisa. Anne, unseen and silent, overhears their conversation. From this follows Louisa’s insistence on playing the childish game of jumping down the steps of the harbour wall at Lyme Regis, which results in a severe head injury. Louisa is reckless, and it is Anne’s abilities which sort out help for her, while all the men are momentarily useless. At the further end of the continuum is Anne’s middle sister Mary, married to the Musgroves’ elder son. Insisting on how sensitive her feelings are, as a mother, she is happy enough to delegate her maternal care to Anne when her son injures his collar-bone, arguing that Anne can’t feel her son’s injury as a mother would! She is the sort of self-absorbed woman who is never quite happy, of the sort defined by Mary Wollstonecraft: ‘ever restless and anxious, their over-exercised sensibility not only renders them uncomfortable themselves, but troublesome, to use a soft phrase, to others.’⁴ Mary Musgrove is a nuisance, to women as much as to men, but also an example of the manipulative women Wollstonecraft deplores, who use their weak position to impose on others. A different sort of manipulative woman is widowed Mrs Clay, the solicitor’s daughter who latches on to Anne’s elder sister, and is suspected by Mr Elliot of aiming to marry Sir Walter, doing him out of the inheritance. She has two children, but apart from that information we never know how their care is provided during her prolonged stay at the Elliots’ lodgings in Bath. The lack of interest may be that of both character and author.

‘The Strengths of Women’ could have been an alternative title for Persuasion. Critics have disputed whether Austen’s novels are simply conservative, or more progressive; it used to be a regular exam question. Persuasion touches the boundary. Austen calls in question capabilities, activities and virtues that can be called masculine or feminine. She tests the values of her social group, her first readers, of being ‘important’ or ‘nothing’, or ‘singular’, odd, as Anne risks being. She questions ‘civility’, and the several meanings Dr Johnson’s Dictionary gives to this term in its various forms; the tenth meaning he gives to ‘civil’ is ‘Complaisant, civilised, gentle, well bred, elegant of manners; not rude, not brutal, not coarse’. Being ‘complaisant’ is not identical with the modern ‘complacent’. Henrietta Musgrove is criticised for being too complaisant, too eager to please, in giving up her suitor, though she gets back to her desired direction quite quickly, perhaps with a bit of a push from her sister Louisa, who at this point wants Wentworth for herself (p. 67). Simply being civil is frequently criticised by Austen: Elizabeth Bennet’s aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, are praised in Pride and Prejudice for being ‘more than civil’, they are actively warm and generous. In Mansfield Park, Fanny Price is ‘very civil’ when the much wealthier Mary Crawford demands forgiveness for commandeering the little horse reserved for Fanny’s use; Fanny cannot afford to be anything else but civil, but hates this situation. The heartbreak that Anne has to endure on Wentworth’s return to the area is ‘the commonest civility’, experienced as ‘a perpetual estrangement’ and ‘cold politeness’. They are ‘worse than strangers’. It is Mr Elliot’s too composed civility that puts Anne off. ‘Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still.’ After Wentworth’s letter, Anne and he finally get the chance by

Reviews for Persuasion

[kimkimpton · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book so much more on my second read. In my opinion, it still doesn't beat Pride and Prejudice, but it it a good one!

[jonfaith · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

When Louisa stumbled, I sighed and, yet, continued through the remainder of the book. I knew that Mr. Scott would be unmasked and that all would be well. The flimsy layers did trouble me greatly. I don't know whether it is national chauvinism or some maudlin coddling but how is it that most consider Austen to be superior to Balzac?

On a personal level, this was likely the only book given to me by the mother of a woman I was seeing.

[sandra.pinkerton83 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lovely and fun book of Victorian era.

[mhanover10 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As an audiobook I found I enjoyed this more than Little Women.

[humouress · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of my, possibly my absolute, favourites of Jane Austen's major works (I've not managed to read everything, yet...) It's not the wittiest, I think, though the humour is very much in evidence, but it's the sweetest romance.Anne Elliot, having fallen in love as a young woman, but having dutifully declined a proposal of marriage, lives with her older sister, Elizabeth, and father, the baronet Sir Elliot at Kellynch Hall. Unlike Anne, they are very vain about their place in the peerage, but are careless about the duties of a landowner. Her younger sister, Mary, is married into the Musgrove family, and is also proud of the notice due to an Elliot of Kellynch Hall. When the Elliots decide to move to Bath, Anne stays first with her sister Mary and the Musgroves, and then continues on to Bath. At both these places, she finds herself thrown into company with the man she still loves. Her feelings for him have not changed, but he - now a man of fortune - is no longer interested in her. How will Anne find the happiness in life that she so richly deserves?I do like this book, mainly, as I said, for the romance. But I like the comfortable family life portrayed in this Austen, which, offhand, I don't think we get in any of her other books. The Musgroves senior and the Crofts enjoy life, and are happiest when they have lots of other people around them who enjoy life, too.Although Anne is neglected by her own family, her friends see her value, and she is not as timid or put-upon as Fanny, of Mansfield Park. As a heroine, she has a quiet, purposeful dignity.And I think, of all the Austens I've read, this has the happiest ending.

[stewartry · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I say this a lot, but it's been a very long time since I read Persuasion. I know the movie (Ciaran Hinds & Amanda Root, the only one worth watching) very very well, and it was a pure joy to be reminded of how utterly and beautifully faithful it is to the book, and another joy to be reminded of all of the elements that did not make it into the film. Karen Savage's reading was lovely and just enhanced my enjoyment of the story.Sparing Goodreads my ponderings on the Defense of Frederick and Why I Hate Lady Russell; they can be found on my blog.

[danielstj · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I don't get all the literary aplomb about this book. I didn't find it to be anything special.

[underthebookpile · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Persuasion is a classic, and a charming one! It follows twenty-something Anne as she navigates the path to almost certain spinsterhood. She had a love once, but gave it up due to the expectations of her family and their certainty she could get a "better match." Fast forward: she didn't. But...she might have a second chance.Anne's "late in life" (for the time period) love story is the main plot driver in the book, however my favorite part was her observations, and the comments of, her family and friends. The book is quite savage toward the stuffy upper crust and it was actually laugh out loud funny at parts. It is partially set in Bath, England, where Austen did live, and I think a lot of the author's own feelings toward the people around her were coming out here in a thinly veiled way. Great, short read!

[nalis7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jane Austen does romance like nobody else. The tension and the anticipation, drawn out for a novel's worth, perfectly balances the convention of her day with the impatience of the modern reader. Jane Austen is the only author of her day that does not try my patience. And she's one of the few who don't mess up a good romance with embarrassment. This, of all Jane Austen's books, is the one I find the most influenced from her life. And it is for that more that the story that I liked the novel. On the pages of the book I found myself more rooting for a scenario where Jane was thrust into society with the man she had wanted to marry but was not of influence enough to be accepted with the tables now turned and her in every position to say yes. I wanted Jane to relive her life as a small part of her did on the pages of her novel.

Of all the characters in the book Ann was the only likable one and while it would have been better for her if Captain Wentworth had saved her from her selfish family 8 years prior, late is better than never. The interactions full of blushes and meaning had me wanting to shake both of them to swallow their pride and take the first step. It's hard once you've been rejected, had your heart broken, to admit to being vulnerable again, but they were obviously both miserable with just the thought of each other and if they missed connecting with their love this time around, they wouldn't have the meddling of other to blame.

Which brings me to the statements about society Austen made. Two kind souls perfect for each other are torn about because circumstance is not favorable. To make the statement that money and position are not good judges of character, Austen surrounds Anne with characters one more deplorable than the next: a father spending his family into bankruptcy, a cold emotionally void sister, a selfish competitive sister who whines until things fall in her favor, silly cousins, a gold digger, a power/money hungry man who cares not who he ruins in his climb. And these are the people who are supposed to be good blood and therefore good people. But we all know riches more often than not buy spoiled self-centered shallow personalities, not better ones. I wanted to despise the characters more than Austen allowed because they are presented through the eyes of a loving relative.

And then we get to the topic of persuasion itself. Modern society cares not for the influence of the elderly nor the advice it imparts, but throughout history and other cultures, the elder reign with too much power. There must be a happy median where one listens to the counsel of those who have lived through it and respects older generations without letting such opinions stand supreme. Nobody makes decisions for one's life better than that person and all well-meaning meddling should be taken and considered, but not let it overpower ones own persuasion. When one makes decisions to please others and not with the best at heart, it is the wrong decision. It's not even just a young/old problem. It's a personality issue too where the shy or insecure let the out-spoken run their lives for them because it's easy to go along than fight sometimes. I say if you get what you want too easily from someone, be careful because it's not given whole-heartedly and your tactics may come back to hurt you in unexpected ways when that person finally breaks. I suppose I related more to Anne than I initially realized.

There are a few parts that dragged just slightly but overall I once again loved Jane Austen's work. Although I enjoyed this one more for the picture it gave me into Austen's mind and soul than for the story itself, the story is good too.

[teaswirls · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While I love Jane Austen and her characters I'm at a stage where I want to be so much more invigorated by a book and I just cannot (to use an awful phrase) "get into" this kind of novel at the moment. Time to spend a while reading other genres and then come back to these. Ahhh, feels good to say that and not feel guilty.

[sas_7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What can you say? It's Jane Austen; it's Persuasion; it's brilliant. Funny, sad, wise, true, and still relevant

[sferguson_79 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Just read this last night. One of the best novels I have ever read. The 'Classics' are, overall, a number of works whose value I think are slightly overrated, but Austen's work seems (in my experience) to be much superior to the majority of what are considered classics in this day and age.Persuasion is a great tragic romance with a happy ending that I would honestly recommend to anyone interested in a good read.

[daveroller-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My experience when it comes to reading a book adaption of a movie I have seen or seeing a movie version of a book I have read is generally the same. I tend to like the version which I have read or seen first better than the one I've experienced second. This is not necessarily the Case with Jane Austen's Persuasion.I really enjoy the film Persuasion and have just recently finished the novel. I am a big fan of Austen's works generally through the medium of film. I found that the reading of Persuasion really enhanced my appreciation of the film. Much of the dialogue in the movie is pulled verbatim from the book. The only difference being that it was adapted into dialogue from exposition in the original source. This task is done artfully by the filmmakers and removes any need of a voiceover narration which would have hampered the cinematic presentation.On the other hand, a reading of Persuasion gave me new insights and understanding of her characters some that I had grown to love and others I had learned to disdain in my multiple viewings. Mary, for example, is a much worse sister to Anne on paper than celluloid. If you have seen the film, you know that is quite an achievement. There is also more to like about Captain Wentworth, Mrs. Smith and even Lady Russell.I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, especially those fond of any Austen work in print or pixel.

[lisa2013_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I’m embarrassed to admit that this is my first Austen, at least I don’t remember reading any of her books, although I have seen many of the movies based on her books. I’ve wanted to read all her novels. It’s all the more astounding that I’ve managed to not do so given that in high school and through my first two years of college I majored in English/English literature. I’ve always known that there are gaps (an abyss) in my education, yet this particular one does surprise me.I suggested this particular Austen to my book group, partly because it’s the favorite of so many I know, and partly because I knew a bit about it, but except for Northanger Abbey I knew less than I knew about her other novels.This edition of the book has an introduction by Amy Bloom and she tells the entire plot, but atypically I didn’t care at all knowing the book’s story before I read it. I pretty much knew it, and I guess I feel I should have read it long ago. The edition also has the originally written final two chapters, inserted after the rest of the book's text.But, if not for needing to read it for my real world book club, I’d have put it down and picked it up another time. Actually, I think I’d like to read Austen’s books on the order she penned them. But the main problem is that I’m in a reading slump and this is a case of a good book at the wrong time. It didn’t help that while reading I was often listening to the (very modern) college guys upstairs and other modern and annoying sounds. I should have probably made a point of reading this in the park or some other more suitably atmospheric place. The most ideal years for me to have read this was probably 25-35; that doesn’t mean I won’t have other ideal timea in the future. I can see giving this book 5 stars but I don’t think it’s destined to be one of my favorites.Apt title. Beautifully written. Wicked wit! It’s also funny and bright and poignant. But mostly waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting…and I kind of got impatient with everybody. So, I really like and admire Anne, a lot, and I love how Austen skewers the society that was familiar to her. Nobody really escaped my periodic irritation though, nor did the situation. I don’t have patience for certain types of plots, and I’m not big on romance stories, although this one wasn’t as “romantic” as I’d expected. Despite the ending, I did find this story a sad one, most likely because of my own current frame of mind: wrong timing for me. Also, I am aware of Austen’s condition when she wrote this novel. I do hope to pick it up again someday, along with all of Austen’s books.As I was reading I felt sometimes as though I was reading a play. It read that way to me. I could “see” it all. I can see why Austen’s novels translate so well to film.

[trinitym82 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very placid novel, as it was meant to be. Anne Elliot is the only one in her family worth a darn, and the only one that has the sensitivity to see the other side and feel as others do. Therefore, she is the heroine and suffers the most.

[the_hibernator · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Anne Elliot has lived with regret over being persuaded to reject the love of her life when she was very young. The objections to this match - money - were quickly assuaged when the man went to war and earned his fortune. But, until now, no contact had been initiated. To her horror, Anne now has to live in close proximity to Captain Wentworth and watch him woo other women. Anne is the most mature of Austen's characters. Partly because she's the oldest, but also because she has accepted the mistakes she has made in the past, and forgiven herself. She handles tragedy and awkwardness with an aplomb which makes even Captain Wentworth believe nothing is amiss in her feelings. Sense and Sensibility has always been my favorite of Austen's books, but Persuasion comes in a close second because of the maturity of Anne's character and Austen's exquisite representation of pain endured for years.

[jayne_charles_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A slightly different take on the 'marriage game' but still the same sort of thing Jane Austen is known for. Surprisingly easy to read, an interesting and witty depiction of the manners and social conventions of the time.

[pensivecat · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Probably the most sober of all of Jane Austen's novels, Anne Elliot is on the road to being an old maid when the man she came close to marrying years back returns to her life. It can be painful at times as he is flirted with right in front of her, and she can't say anything as she was the one who rejected him in the first place. Of course, she was persuaded to do so, hence the title. Of all of Jane Austen's books, this was the one I stayed up all night to finish.

[libbeth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this book way back in 1982 and to be honest, gave it 4 stars purely because I remember loving all Jane Austen but I can't actually remember the story. Time for a re-read I think.

[reidm_11 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great romance though a bit sad

[dee_kohler_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oh I love my jane. "you pierce my heart" only a woman could think up that line.

[mbmackay · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jane Austen's final novel, and the last in my re-reading of Austen as an adult. As a teenager, I was overwhelmed by the archaic aspects - the speech, the settings, the manners and lost the books. But as an older reader, the old fashioned aspects blur into the background and I find that Austen is very current. This book portrays a middle daughter with ditzy sisters and a vain and empty-headed father - a scenario that has no trouble transcending a couple of centuries. While the plot is clearly from the early 19th century, I have no trouble greatly enjoying the book in the early 21st century. Read as ebook August 2011.

[bleached_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another fantastic love story by Jane Austen. Full of romanticism and cynicism of the pride of social classes.

[queencersei · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jane Austin's most mature story. Anne Elliot finds unexpected love with an old flame.

[spirea_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I think this is my favourite Austen novel. There is something so romantic and appealing about the story of Anne and Wentworth. Getting back your lost love like that. But it's not too syrupy which such stories can often be.

[vrsteffen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have no idea if this or P&P is my favorite of Austen's novels. The character development in Persuasion is much more interesting, and the love story more complex.

[bduke_15 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this book! It is my favorite Austen love story. I can never decide what Jane Austen book is my all-time favorite (it seems to change every time I re-read one), but Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth are by far my favorite couple. I love them both, and love their story. I will continue re-reading this with love and pleasure for the rest of my life

[techeditor_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It's been many years since I read a Jane Austen novel. Would I like her as much now as I did when I read her PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and EMMA? I was 14 then. Answer: no. Or is it fair to compare those novels to PERSUASION, which was published after Austen died?I don't remember needing to reread many paragraphs in order to understand them when I read PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and EMMA. But that is exactly why it took me a week to read PERSUASION, which is short and should have been a quick read.Another problem with PERSUASION was probably also the same in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and EMMA. That is, the whole story is about nothing but romance. When I was younger, that appealed to me. Now I want more.Maybe Austen intended to do some rewrites on PERSUASION before she published it. We'll never know.

[dcmullins10 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen novel. It gives you a couple that you can't help but cheer for. It has enough angst to keep you reading, and just overall great characters that you get attached to. Such a great read!

[ishanella · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Persuasion is the last complete novel of Jane Austen. It’s the story of Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth and the misunderstandings that lead to their happily ever after. Anne and Frederick were to be engaged to be married when Lady Russel persuaded Anne that she could do better. Frederick went off to be a seaman and came back a rich. As he and Anne are re-introduced the interaction between become comically tense.

In true Jane Austen style, Persuasion touches a number of characters in Anne and Fredrick’s circles and deals with a lot of interconnected relationships. However, this was one book that I found a little on the slow side, I absolutely loved the story, I just wished it got to the ending a bit quicker - and preferably less of the Musgroves and Anne’s father and older sister.

Pacing aside, I found Persuasion to be an charming read (or in my case, listen) and a bit of a comedy of errors when it comes to Anne and Fredrick. Jane Austen fans will enjoy.