the power of persuasion

I'm well on my way to having read every one of Jane Austen's main novels. Wow, that's something I've been attempting to check off my bucket list for a while now! I started listening to Persuasion in audiobook form awhile ago, but quickly realized that that was simply not going to cut it -- it was all going over my head. Getting to read this book in a classroom setting was very helpful since the parts that still managed to go over my head were what seemed to go over my classmates' heads as well. Our discussions were mainly centered around the importance of the novel's navy men characters, different examples of marriages, the historical context of the Napoleonic Wars, and two chapters that were originally supposed to function as the final two installments Austen decided to rewrite (I'm glad she did; if she hadn't, we wouldn't have Wentworth's dramatic love confession via letter). I knew I was really going to like this book within the first four chapters. We're immediately introduced to a vain father obsessed with his status and reflection before being introduced to the woman who ends up being our heroine. I really like Anne Elliot as a character. She reminds me of a mixture of Elinor Dashwood and Fanny Price, with just a hint of Elizabeth Bennet's spunk from time to time. Hers is a story that could be labeled by modern readers as "right person, wrong time," which is a trope I find very appealing despite limited popularity among other tropes. It's a romance that stands out from Austen's other crafted love stories, as it exists between two people who loved each other eight years prior and were convinced (or persuaded) that theirs was not a fortuitous match, only to be thrown together again under very ironic circumstances. Both parties must then do their best to hide their still ardent feelings from the other. This is a story that pays attention to the environment and raises questions about the generational prestige of the gentry class in comparison to the growing prestige of the working class career of joining the British navy. I've learned nearly more than anything else from reading Austen's novels that while she seems primarily like a romance writer, she is really writing about so much more, poising romance and happy matrimonies in the background of larger cultural, social, and religious concepts her characters and landscapes portray. I've immensely enjoyed analyzing Austen through what we can glean from her novels as an actual human being and woman as well as prolific writer. I recommend reading at least one of her books despite any preconceived notions you might have! :)



Some of my favorite quotes from Persuasion:

"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives."

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you."

"There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison."

"I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."

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

"Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter."

"Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion she certainly had not."

"Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death."

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