About this title: Jane Austen's last and most melancholy novel was published posthumously in 1818. In PERSUASION, Austen creates a strong, mature, and independent heroine, Anne Elliot. Having foolishly broken off an engagement eight years earlier to Frederick Wentworth, a penniless naval officer, Anne at the age of 27 has remained unmarried--and secretly devoted to ...
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Dover Publications
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780486295558ISBN:0486295559
Description: New. Slight shelf wear. GoodwillnyBooks is committed to providing each customer with the highest standard of customer service. You may return new items within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: PENGUIN LONGMAN PUBL
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780760716809ISBN:0760716803
Description: Fine. Slight shelf wear with slight scuffing to cover, corners and edges. GoodwillnyBooks is committed to providing each customer with the highest standard of customer service. You may return new items within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. read more
Description: New. Orders placed after Dec. 7 cannot be guaranteed delivery before Christmas. GREAT BUY. Brand New From US Distributor. WE ARE A 5 STAR SELLER with OVER 3, 500, 000 BOOKS SOLD. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9780141439686ISBN:0141439688
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. read more
"Persuasion, Austen's last completed novel, has little in common with her earlier, more celebrated works. There is comparatively little in the way of surprising plot twists, clever witticisms, or amusing comic moments. It even lacks a heroine that we could look up to, or even identify with. It is as if Austen had dispensed with nearly all conventional means that novelists use to hold the reader's interest. Shorn of literary ornamentations, Persuasion is instead a moving story of lost love and regrets, second chances and reconciliation, told with remarkable economy and precision. What is lost by the exclusion of the qualities that are usually present in her works, is amply compensated by a greater clarity of focus and depth of feeling. The mature Austen was no longer interested in amusing us with her cleverness, or with being a moralist, but instead chose to delve into the secret depths of men and women's inner lives, resulting in a deeply affecting contemplation of the limits of romantic love and devotion.
My Wordsworth edition contains an earlier draft of Chapter Eleven of Volume II, which omits Captain Wentworth's letter (surely the mother of all love letters!) and the fascinating discussion on the constancy of love among men and women between Anne and Captain Harville. Fortunately, Austen changed her mind and rewrote that part. The ending would have lost much of its impact without them.
The other surprising element in the novel for me is the 'feminist' (or perhaps proto-feminist?) depiction of Mrs. Croft and her marriage to her husband the Admiral. While criticism of society's treatment of women, particularly women who are either poor or low in rank, has always been implied in her previous novels, it has never been as explicit as in this one.
It is a tragedy that Austen passed away soon after completing Persuasion, and thus we are left with a mere glimpse of her mature style. It would have been fascinating to know what her subsequent novels would be like."
"I believe it is customary at the beginning of any discussion of Austen's work to line up her books and discuss which ones are the favorites, the most mature, the most critically acclaimed. Such as: Pride and Prejudice is clearly her most liked, but the heroine of Emma really is a better model of someone being confronted by their limitations and learning from them again and again. Fanny Price is the most morally assured, the elder Miss Dashwood the most practical, the best this, the most that, et&c. It's weird. Why we do this? Is it because Austen is a girl, writing about girl-things? Because there are only six books?
Anyway, here goes mine: Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel. I'm not exactly sure why. Of course, I, like everyone, loves me my Lizzie Bennet. But I've never been quite easy with her epiphany at Darcy's estate. Why there, surrounded by her spurned lover's pile of furnishings and stuff, did she understand that she never knew herself? The answers bother me. It's too, I dunno, bourgeois or something. (I know, I know, it really doesn't do to bring up this sort of language when talking about Austen, but there it is.)
I like the difference between Anne and the narrator. The narrator says terrible things, is prickly and funny, and does all the social mockery that Austen is best at. Her conjuring and dismissal of Dick Musgrove is truly brutal, and hysterical in its brutality. Anne is nothing of this. She is docile, domestic, competent and extremely forgiving. You'd probably want to punch her in the face. But the narrator doesn't lionize her, doesn't set her up as "perfection itself" (as Wentworth says, in the end). Indeed, Anne isn't even mentioned until several pages into the book, but she slowly appears, like someone being unwrapped. A corpse, or a lover. Both at once.
I like Anne and her regret. I like the silences she shares with Captain Wentworth. Reading this time, I noticed how little was actually said by our protagonists, how their silent misunderstanding tips slowly into silent understanding. Even Wentworth's declaration, the mending of the breach, is done in a letter, not with a voice, a rush of declarations. Those silent, speaking words themselves are penned while Wentworth eavesdrops, listening to Anne's quiet demurrings about her gender's capacity for pain and loss. Ah. And again, ah."
"This is a lovely story at any age, I think principally because the relationship between Anne Elliott and Captain Wentworth is the truest to life, the most nuanced and complicated, of any of Austen's. It's also actually, to me, the most romantic.
It also seems particularly rich in humor, characters' absurdities, revealing behaviors & funny dialog.
But to an older single woman, this story has even greater resonance - it's so satisfying to watch Anne come into her own when everyone thought it was too late for her. And remember, as I read on a friend's birthday cake, 50 is the new 30!"
"Whoa, I didn't expect this to be so heartbreaking. The only other Austen I've read is Pride and Prejudice, which I read as a teeenager. While I'm not certain, I suspect that I would still find Elizabeth Bennett sort of annoying, the way I find Katherine Hepburn sort of annoying. I really related to Anne Elliot, which is slightly embarrassing because what I responded to most was her pathetic-ness. I don't think I've ever seen insecurity and intense preoccupation/infatuation so truly depicted, or depicted to similarly to the way I experience the emotions. The novel picks up at a point where regrets from Anne's youth have become an intrinsic part of her personality. The man she loved, but rebuffed, has come back and she's forced to revisit the moment of this defining regretful moment. Anyway, what's so interesting, is that the book is not about her making amends, but about her understanding why she did what she did, how it's shaped her life and outlook, and figuring out how she should act in the present. She learns to understand herself and becomes a stronger person as a result. Plus, romance."
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