Persuasion

Persuasion (#46), of all Jane Austen's novels, is my favorite.  Just about everyone has read or seen a version of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, but mention Persuasion and most people don't have any idea that Jane Austen is the author.  Yet Anne Elliott with her blighted dreams and self-effacing manner is the heroine most deserving of her happy ending.

Anne, at nineteen, falls in love with a poor young naval officer.  She accepts his proposal, but is persuaded by her family and her mother's old friend, Lady Russell, that she would be throwing herself away on a nobody with no prospects in the middle of a war.  Anne decides, sadly, that they are right and withdraws from the engagement. 

The next eight years spent as a cipher in her own home are enough to convince Anne that she should never have taken Lady Russell's advice.   Her younger sister Mary has married a suitor that Anne has refused, and is wrapped up in the most important person in the world - herself.  Her father, a baronet, and her eldest sister are totally taken up with their looks, status and consequence in the world and are very well pleased with themselves to the exclusion of Anne.  In pursuit of a lavish life style, Anne's father and sister have frittered away most of the family's money.  They are forced to rent out the family seat Kellynch-hall to a mere admiral and take up residence in Bath.  Enter Anne's long-lost love, Frederick Wentworth, brother-in-law to the admiral come to stay at Kellynch-hall.  He is now a rich naval captain, a self-made man, ready to find himself a wife and settle down.  What could be more painful to Anne than to see him in company with close family connections when it appears that he has forgotten all about their past together?

The characters that Jane Austen draws in this novel are as sharp and comic as in any of her books.  Her father, the fop, with his plethora of mirrors; her sisters with aims of placing themselves in the best possible position in the highest of society; the scheming heir to the title, Mr. William Elliott; all are mercilessly skewered in this book.  The treatment that Anne receives at their hands makes you want to thump them all.  How did Anne turn out to be such a normal and nice person, valued by everyone, it seems, but her own family?  It must have been her mother who died when Anne was only fourteen who managed to keep everyone else in check. 

Since I was helping to lead the discussion on this book for the Literary Circle, I decided to watch a movie version of this novel as well.  I own three different BBC videos of this book.  (Of course I do!  I'm a Jane Austen fan.)  If you decide to watch one, I'd recommend the one starring Ciaran Hinds, which is the latest version as being closest to the story line.  The one starring Sally Hawkins really bothered me, because it makes Anne look like such a wimp, and she definitely was not!  Anne was constrained by the conventions of the time, but she had both spunk and determination.  If you aren't familiar with this book, watch the video version on YouTube, but give yourself the pleasure of acquainting yourself with Anne Elliott.