Persuasion by Jane Austen

It's been over thirty years since I read a print copy of Jane Austen's Persuasion. In fact, when I read it in 1988, I didn't like Anne who seemed like too much of a doormat; when I watched the 1995 film with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds, I saw Anne in a completely different light. Since then I've listened to the audio version two or three times. Now thirty years later I revisited the actual book and loved it unequivocally. I laughed out loud at Mary's overgrown sense of importance. I relished each carefully crafted sentence. I agonized over Anne's losses. And I identified with her in a new way. She and I are both #2 on the Enneagram! Please beware of spoilers throughout this post.

The title of the book took on much more depth this time through. It not only refers to Anne who had been influenced to give up Wentworth as a young girl but also to Louisa Musgrove. Louisa declares she could never be persuaded to give up the man she loves, but later proves that implacability can be the same as pigheadedness. Even Wentworth admits that he was persuaded (by his own pride) to give up Anne too easily. The nuances of persuasion are noted in Anne's reflections after Louisa's accident. She is sitting next to Wentworth and wonders 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 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 favor of happiness as a very resolute character. Later Austen writes of the necessity of distinguishing between steadfastness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will. In the end we find in Anne the perfect mingling of fortitude with gentleness.

Chapter 23 is pure literary comfort food as Anne and Harville debate over who is more faithful in unrequited love: men or women? And then there's THE LETTER from Wentworth to Anne. As Austen herself wrote, Such a letter was not soon to be recovered from.

If you haven't read this Austen title yet, please rush right out go online and get a copy. Preferably a hard copy that you can read, re-read and underline at your leisure.

Blessings,