“Literature, Love and Suffering”

PERSUASION BY JANE AUSTEN

LITERATURE

Persuasion is Jane Austen’s last completed novel, was published posthumously in 1817. By some it is considered her best work.

Jane Austen's final novel Persuasion remains the most critically neglected text in her canon. At the time of its publication it was criticized for being “a much less fortunate performance than [her previous novels]” and viewed as little more than a substandard version of her practice of writing stories (The Critical Heritage, 80, 84).

A closer look at Persuasion, however, reveals it to be Austen's most revolutionary and socially interesting novel for the way that it portrays the role of the heroine in the world of 19 th century England.

Persuasion is Austen's most radical novel because it accounts for and endorses a philosophy where action is based upon emotion, instinct and interest for one's own personal happiness. Additionally, in Persuasion, Austen engages in a language of allusion through the situations and characters that elicits her first novel, Pride and Prejudice.

In Persuasion, Jane Austen offers an argument for the right that a woman in Regency England has to pursue happiness.

The novel Persuasion addresses the question of happiness and reveals many of Austen's influences, primarily though the topics of social change in England, the role of the family, the literature and poetry of Romanticism.

In regard to Anne's visits to Mrs. Smith, Anne's father says that:

“everything that revolts other people, low company, paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting associations, are inviting to you”

Throughout the earlier part of Austen's canon it is clear to readers that her heroines and the characters around them are judged by the principle of personal merit being ultimately connected to their power and ability to discern general universal truths. By Persuasion, however, Austen appears to have shifted to a perspective where she values the courage to identify and act upon personal values and instincts.

In Persuasion, the reader is confronted with one

of the most radical novels to focus on the

women's point of view.

A good example of this is when, after seeing Captain Wentworth through the window of Molland's sweetshop, Anne feels "a great inclination to go to the outer door; she wanted to see if it rained," and thinks, "Why was she to suspect herself of another motive?She left her seat ,she would go ,one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half or always suspecting the other of being worse than it was(chapter 19).

The narrative style of Persuasion is a much more interior narrative than any of Austen's other novels, and the prose is also unique in the way that it follows and meanders with Anne's thoughts and perceptions in a style that looks to be borderline stream of consciousness.

Letters serve as the cathartic event towards marriage in both novels. Both Darcy's defensive epistle and Wentworth's furtive note are similar and implicitly in dialogue with one another.

“ Dear Smith”... I have got rid of Sir Walter and Miss. They are gone back to Kellynech, almost made me swear to visit them in this summer, but my first visit to Kellynech will be with a surveyor, to tell me how to bring it with best advantage to the hammer. The baronet, nevertheless, is not unlikely to marry again; he is quite fool enough. If he does, however, they will leave me in peace, which may be a decent equivalent for the reversion. He is worse than last year.I wish I had any name but Elliot. I am sick of it. The name of Walter I can drop…. (chapter 21, p. 150)

They are viewed as imperative by

male writers for voicing emotions and

circumstances that they feel can not

be spoken out loud for fear of

disgrace and humiliation. In this way,

Austen forces the male characters to

act in an epistolatory sphere. Persuasion is also the first n

ovel

where Austen portrays genuinely

impoverished and lower class

characters like Mrs. Smith and

her nurse. Essentially, in this last

novel, Austen finally shows her

readership the darker side of the

social and economic issue that

she has been tiptoeing around

for her entire career.

In Persuasion, Austen is using poetry as justification for Anne's emotional maturity.

Anne is deeply affected by the poetry of the Romantics. Indeed, the notion of Romantic poetry in Persuasion is used as an important instructive device in Anne's development to individuality, and as a thematic touchstone for helping to elucidate Austen's intentions and thesis.

Austen references several poems specifically, all written by Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. The poems in Persuasion are “Marmion” and “The Lady of the Lake” by Scott and “The Bride of Abydos,” “The Corsair,” and “Giaour” written by Byron.

The barest and most precise tenets of the Romantic movement - individualism, imagination, and emotion - are all present in Persuasion and viewed as qualities in Anne to be admired.

Persuasion is a novel about revolution and a dying aristocracy. In Persuasion, Austen renounces the notion that women should be forced to marry within their social class and that class distinctions are worthwhile at all. Austen echoes that women be educated and well-read and allowed to hold emotional and subversive literature close to their hearts, even if it complicates a gentlewoman's worldview.

LOVE and SUFFERING

“What I needed most was to love and

to be loved, eager to be caught.

Happily I wrapped those painful

bonds around me; and sure enough, I

would be lashed with the red-hot

pokers or jealousy, by suspicions and

fear, by burst of anger and quarrels.”

When you are in Love you can't

fall asleep because reality is

better than your dreams."

There is only one happiness in life -- to love and to be loved.

Anne Elliot Frederick Wentworth

….He was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit, and brilliancy; and Anne an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling. Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly anybody to love; but the encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail. They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love…. ( chapter 4, p.18)

A short period of exquisite felicity followed, and but a short one. Troubles soon arose. Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all the negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence, and a professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter. He thought it a very degrading alliance; and Lady Russell, though with more tempered and pardonable pride, received it as a most unfortunate one. ( chapter 4)

Such opposition, as these feelings

produced, was more than Anne could

combat. Young and gentle as she was,

it might yet have been possible to

withstand her father's ill-will, but

Lady Russell, whom she had always

loved and relied on, could not, with

such steadiness of opinion, and such

tenderness of manner, be continually

advising her in vain. She was

persuaded to believe the engagement

a wrong thing: indiscreet, improper,

hardly capable of success, and not

deserving it……..

Their love was left half finished and

suffering started.

He had left the country in

consequence.A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance; but not with a few months ended Anne's share of suffering from it. Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth, and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect.(Chapter 4)

…..She was persuaded that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every anxiety attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays, and disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in maintaining the engagement, than she had been in the sacrifice of it;….. (chapter 4, p 20)

How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence! She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.( chapter4, p.21)

Soon, however, she began to reason with herself, and try to be feeling less. Eight years, almost eight years had passed, since all had been given up. How absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an interval had banished into distance and indistinctness! What might not eight years do?.... (chapter 7, p.43)

Now, how were his sentiments to be read? Was this like wishing to avoid her? And the next moment she was hating herself for the folly which asked the question.(chapter 7,p.43)

He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill, deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure. She had given him up to oblige others. It had been the effect of over-persuasion. It had been weakness and timidity.

Whether former feelings were to be renewed must be brought to the proof; former times must undoubtedly be brought to the recollection of each…. (chapter 8,p. 45)

“They had no conversation

together, no intercourse but

what the commonest civility

required. Once so much to

each other! Now

nothing!”(chapter 8, p.46)

“Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.”(chapter 8,p.46)

“…her affection would be his for ever. Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation.” (chapter 21, p.142)

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

“Of what he had then written, nothing was to be retracted or qualified. He persisted in having loved none but her. She had never been supplanted. He never even believed himself to see her equal. Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge: that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done.”(chapter 23,p.180)

TUĞBA ÖZCAN

WORKS CITED

Austen, Jane. Persuasion. Ed. Stanley Appelbaum. Canada, 1997.

Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. Persuasion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasion_(novel). Web.

Tarlson, Claire Eileen. “Jane Austen, Persuasion, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Lethbridge Undergraduate Research Journal. (2006). http://www.lurj.org/article.php/vol1n1/austen.xml. web.