Why Persuasion is one of our favourite Austen novels, right on top with her most famous work!
Why Persuasion? Why not Pride & Prejudice, or Emma or any other Austen classics? What can we say about Elizabeth and Darcy that has not already been said, depicted, re-told, and re-imagined? (Although, this has to be said: Colin Firth as Darcy in BBC’s Pride & Prejudice - Pemberley piano scene anyone? Ha, and you thought we would talk about the lake!) And the wonderful Eleanor Dashwood who feels deeply yet acts with sense and constraint. We can go on about Jane Austen’s classics, her insightful observations on society, absurd & delightful characters laced with a lot of wit and satire.
But Persuasion is right on top with these other books for us! Like its titular characters, it’s deep, melancholic, quietly significant, and not imposing. The story follows Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth, two people who are persuaded apart by society’s misconceptions and take years to find their way back to each other. It’s not easy to follow your heart and stand up against society’s mould of what is right and wrong, and Anne learns it the hard way.
Anne is an unassuming, gentle, and sensible woman in a family of selfish, and imprudent people who live well beyond their means. You see Anne’s quiet dignity shine through even when faced with the opposing sensibilities, injustices and partialities from her vain father and sister. No matter what, Anne shows up for her family even when they believed her convenience “was always to give way,” and treated her as such.
While Frederick was deemed an unworthy suitor (‘just a simple sailor, not even a gentleman’), he returns as a Captain and is suddenly the most sought-after bachelor. Yet, he holds on to the hurt, anger, and sorrow of being rejected and treats Anne with a cold reserve. While she feels shame and grief at how they parted, he feels disdain for loving someone who could be so easily persuaded. But his affection for Anne never wavered because she is still Anne, the fastidious, capable, “good and excellent creature” and all the other lovely things he writes in that letter (you know it!) A reminder to “never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.”
Of the Jane Austen classics, this book to us is an underdog. It may not have a feisty, impassioned heroine or energetic and exciting like her other books but it’s a story of growth, of a woman who becomes her own person and breaks from society’s clutches to finally go after what she wants. (And it has the most romantic story!)
A stand out quote from the book:
This quote🙌🏽✨The narrative depends on who is telling the story, Churchill's whole "history is written by victors." Jane Austen writing this in the early 1800s is something else👏🏽🤩
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