Tomes of Miscellany: Persuasion

Tomes of Miscellany

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This review does not represent the opinions of the general public. It reflects my personal thoughts and opinions on the book.

That said, on to the review!

Title: Persuasion
Author: Jane Austen
Publisher: Bantam Books
Format: Paperback
Copyright Date: 1984

What's a young British gentlewoman like Anne Elliot to do when she has nothing to recommend her to young men in search of wives? She had beauty...but it faded early on to a simple pleasantness of figure and expression. Her father is a baronet...but he has, while trying to maintain the lifestyle he thinks everyone expects him to enjoy, lived beyond his income, forcing the family to remove themselves to Bath while letting Kellynch Hall. She has relatives...but her father and elder sister are generally indifferent to her, her younger sister is married but constantly repining, and her cousin--the heir to the baronetcy--is a man with his real face buried beneath the one he displays to the world. She is a good, kind character, gentle and thoughtful...but what man in his right mind would take her to wife without any pecuniary substance to assist the betrothal? There was one man...but she rejected him eight years ago at the advice and urging of a dear friend. Now that fate has brought them together again, can she find the happiness she thought lost eight years in the past...or must she watch as he pays court to another?

What can I say that hasn't already been said about Jane Austen and her works? Nothing, really. However, I will say that, while Pride and Prejudice will always be my favorite of Austen's writings, Persuasion is certainly second, or at least tied with Sense and Sensibility. It's difficult to really relate to anything written almost two centuries ago, given the difference in lifestyles from back then and now and from Britain to Hawai'i and the United States. However, Austen works in several truths that make sense, even in the present. For example, the caution of exceeding one's income to maintain a lifestyle one feels that others expect one to live...makes perfect sense to me. So, too, does the providential notion of being persuaded against rashness rather than for it. Far better, I'd say, to be persuaded against something--say, maybe, marriage--than be urged into risking all for what may not be the best thing in the world--say, again, maybe marriage.

Now, I can't conclude without saying that Anne Elliot is probably the most sympathic heroine of all of Austen's novels...well, Fanny Price of Mansfield Park might give her some competition. She has certain traits that would make her a tremendous boon to any man, yet she is undervalued by her immediate family and only finds contentment and happiness--more or less--when with those she really has no connection with except through a sister's marriage. She also possesses great inner strength and fortitude, at least in so far as conquering her own fears, worries, and griefs to better serve those more sorely afflicted.

Reading from the classic literary canon is something I don't do so often now that I'm out of school, but there are reasons aplenty for going back to it. Persuasion is just one of them. Then there's Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist...

Rating: Thumbs up! Let yourself be persuaded to happiness!

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