Persuasion

18th century literature is not for me. They didn't even kiss.

Re-reading this because when I read it last time I was not in the right headspace to appreciate it enough.

This book is so patiently beautiful to me. Jane Austen reawakens the soul to liberty and desire. In short, ‘I am half agony, half hope’

This may be my favorite of Jane Austen so far (more likely it is Emma). It has also reminded me just how fickle her romances are. Yet, a guy just needs to read some Jane Austen every now and then.

Storytelling

Each time I reread Jane Austen I love them more and get more out of them. Even tough I don't love this as much as her other novels I still really enjoyed it

***2.0***

RTC

A more mature look at love

…there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.

2023 reread: How much I've changed as a reader in two years! In 2021 I found

Persuasion one of the dullest, densest novels I'd read; this year it's charming, moving, and completely captivating. It also has one of the most romantic letters in any Austen novel.

My one real criticism is that Anne is basically perfect: clear-headed, competent, self-sacrificing, kind, loyal, able to handle delicate social situations with grace and aplomb. Even her initial decision to break off her engagement

is vindicated in the end, with Austen squarely placing the blame on Lady Russell’s shoulders

. I love Anne, but wish Austen would have given her some flaws.

Some favorite passages:

Mary talked, but she could not attend. She had seen him. They had met. They had been once more in the same room.

“Altered beyond his knowledge.” Anne fully submitted, in silent, deep mortification. Doubtless it was so, and she could take no revenge, for he was not altered, or not for the worse. She had already acknowledged it to herself, and she could not think differently, let him think of her as he would. No: the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages. She had seen the same Frederick Wentworth. “So altered that he should not have known her again!” These were words which could not but dwell with her. Yet she soon began to rejoice that she had heard them. They were of sobering tendency; they allayed agitation; they composed, and consequently must make her happier.

He had thought her wretchedly altered, and in the first moment of appeal, had spoken as he felt. He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill, deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shown 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.

“The name of Anne Elliot,” said he [Mr. Elliot], “has long had an interesting sound to me. Very long has it possessed a charm over my fancy; and, if I dared, I would breathe my wishes that the name might never change.”

Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation. Prettier musings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy, could never have passed along the streets of Bath, than Anne was sporting with from Camden Place to Westgate Buildings. It was almost enough to spread purification and perfume all the way.

We certainly do not forget you as soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions.”

I will not allow it to be more man’s nature than woman’s to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.” “Your feelings may be the strongest,” replied Anne, “but the same spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments. Nay, it would be too hard upon you, if it were otherwise.

I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression—so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.”

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan.

Who can be in doubt of what followed? When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other’s ultimate comfort. This may be bad morality to conclude with, but I believe it to be truth;

Anne was tenderness itself, and she had the full worth of it in Captain Wentworth’s affection. His profession was all that could ever make her friends wish that tenderness less, the dread of a future war all that could dim her sunshine. She gloried in being a sailor’s wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtues than in its national importance.

Initial 2021 review (★★☆☆☆): I feel so incredibly guilty rating this novel two stars. I was trying to convince myself that I could give it three, but that just wouldn't be an honest representation of how I feel. Unfortunately, I love everything about the

idea of Austen…but it turns out her style is just not for me.

First, though, the things I liked: I thought Anne was an interesting character, if a little too perfect, and many of the side characters were well-developed and intriguing; I found the idea of the plot compelling, even though the pacing and structure is very different from contemporary literature (Anne doesn't really

do much other than react to things that happen), and even though this novel

does boil down to the sometimes frustrating plot device of a central conflict that could easily be solved if the characters would just talk to each other (in this case, I understood why such a conversation was impossible until the end); and I enjoyed Austen's exploration of the theme of persuasion.

However, none of that can change the fact that I find Austen's prose incredibly difficult to follow—so many commas and semicolons! such odd and convoluted phrasing! so many allusions to Regency-era social expectations that I’m completely unfamiliar with! so many different names for the same character, and so many different characters with the same name!—and just generally, well…boring. The first ~25% of the book is legitimately some of the most dull writing I've ever suffered through, and while it picks up slightly once Wentworth finally reappears, I mostly felt like it was a chore to finish this.

Some favorite passages:

She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.

The portraits themselves seemed to be staring in astonishment.

Alas! with all her reasonings, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing.

While we were together, you know, there was nothing to be feared.

Anne’s object was, not to be in the way of any body, …

Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.

The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by—unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory.

It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on.—You are never sure of a good impression being durable. Every body may sway it; let those who would be happy be firm.

Her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.

he repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry; and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.

Anne wondered whether it ever occurred to him now, to question the justness of his own previous opinion as to the universal felicity and advantage of firmness of character; and whether it might not strike him, that, like all other qualities of the mind, it should have its proportions and limits. She thought it could scarcely escape him to feel, that a persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness, as a very resolute character.

One man’s ways may be as good as another‘s, but we all like our own best.

It was now some years since Anne had begun to learn that she and her excellent friend could sometimes think differently;

For a few moments her imagination and her heart were bewitched.

She distrusted the past, if not the present.

Your peace will not be shipwrecked as mine has been.

She was deep in the happiness of such misery, or the misery of such happiness, instantly.

“…Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.” “Perhaps I shall.—Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove any thing.”

There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other’s character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting./

My rating has changed since I first read this… Current ratings and reviews found at

this edition.