Persuasion by Jane Austen

Ok, so a couple summers ago I decided that I'd like to read all of Jane Austen. I started with a re-read of Pride & Prejudice, which was even better than I'd remembered. I read Sense & Sensibility which was also good, but not so good as P&P. Then I started Persuasion and it lingered and lingered. I'm reading them all in my email via Daily Lit, so it was easy to just forget. A couple weeks ago I decided to pick it back up. To my amazement, it wasn't hard to fall back into. Sure, I'd forgotten a few of the supporting cast, but they kinda all blend together in Austen anyway.







Persuasion is about Anne Elliot, a 20-something spinster whose looks are fading and whose family is running out of money. Her father spends more than he has so they have had to rent out their home and move. Anne goes to visit friends in Bath (of course she goes to visit someone, they always do in Austen novels!) and while there runs into Captain Frederick Wentworth. Some 8 years or so in the past, Anne and Captain Wentworth had fallen in love, but a family connection persuaded Anne that it was an undesirable match due to his station and Anne called it off. Now Anne is thrown into a situation with Captain Wentworth where he is actively seeking a wife, and they are forced to pretend the past never happened. A previously untrustworthly cousin shows up to court Anne soon after his first wife's death and Anne spends a lot of time wondering how honest he's being and if she wants to consider marrying him. There's some other stuff going on, but we all know the real story is about the romance, right?


Anne and Captain Wentworth are both perfect, of course, except for the fact that she dumped him so long ago. Handily, we can blame that on someone else. I really think Captain Wentworth could give Mr. Darcy quite the run for his money! The two spend the entire book circling each other and thinking about the past and wondering if each is noticing the other. Being Austen, there are a lot of big scenes about other people and you really have to pay attention to notice the parts that are about the romance. It's subtle in parts, but it's there in the details. If this were a modern romance it'd be much more in your face and obvious. The two of them slowly fall back in love and near the end is perhaps the world's best ever love letter. The scene surrounding the love letter is perfect- each of them is hyper aware of the other and is evesdropping on the other to look for clues of the other's feelings. You can feel the tension in each of them (not tension in the room between people, but the inner turmoil and desire.) It's perfect and delightful and I saved that installment to read again and again.


I think prior to the ending this was going to be my 3rd choice (of the 3 I've read) but now I'm madly in love with it and think it's a close tie to Pride & Prejudice for my favorite. I need to find a copy of the movie, because I'd really like to see that last scene played out.




This leaves me Mansfield Park, Emma, and Northanger Abbey. I hope it doesn't take me three years to wrap them all up.



(I did not like any of the covers, so I went with the modern looking one.)


Persuasion by Jane Austin
Penguin Classics
1818
272 pages

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