Some of my favorite underappreciated/often unmentioned canon things in Persuasion:
Lady Russell starts to love Captain Wentworth like her own son: “[She] found little hardship in attaching herself as a mother to the man who was securing the happiness of her other child.”
By the end of the novel, Anne and Captain Harville have grown so close that they see each other as brother and sister, implying that Harville has started to move past the death of Fanny Harville too
When Louisa told Wentworth that Anne turned down Charles Musgrove’s marriage proposal, it turns out he subconsciously wondered/hoped that she did it for him: “It was possible that you [Anne] might retain the feelings of the past, as I [Wentworth] did; and one encouragement happened to be mine. I could never doubt that you would be loved and sought by others, but I knew to a certainty that you had refused one man at least, of better pretensions than myself; and I could not help often saying, ‘Was this for me?’”
When Anne and Wentworth sneak off at the end to talk to each other, it’s with the excuse of “each apparently occupied in admiring a fine display of green-house plants”
After Wentworth rescues Anne from the toddler and starts playing with him, Charles Hayter gets salty because he feels bad about sitting on his ass: “[Anne] had a strong impression of [Charles Hayter] having said, in a vext tone of voice, after Captain Wentworth’s interference, ‘You ought to have minded me, Walter; I told you not to teaze your aunt;’ and could comprehend his regretting that Captain Wentworth should do
what he ought to have done himself.”
On that note - right before that scene, Wentworth tries to make distantly polite small talk with Anne and she doesn’t reply lmao: “He continued at the window; and after calmly and politely saying, ‘I hope the little boy is better,’ was silent. She was obliged to kneel down by the sofa, and remain there to satisfy her patient.”
Sophia Croft holds grudges on behalf of her loved ones: “If you look across the street, you will see Admiral Brand coming down and his brother. Shabby fellows, both of them! I [Admiral Croft] am glad they are not on this side of the way. Sophy cannot bear them. They played me a pitiful trick once.”
Back when he was the curate of Monkford, Edward Wentworth managed to reach “an amicable compromise” with a robber who was stealing apples from his orchard instead of attempting to enforce any legal consequences
Anne decides that even though the Musgrove sisters are young, lively, and very close (whereas Anne has strained relationships with Mary and Elizabeth), she doesn’t envy them because she’s more intelligent
Captain Benwick and Charles Mugrove went rat-hunting in the Musgroves’ barn together and became total bros
At the end of the book Charles Musgrove basically says screw the upper classes (“Don’t talk to me about heirs and representatives,” cried Charles. “I am not one of those who neglect the reigning power to bow to the rising sun. If I would not go for the sake of your father, I should think it scandalous to go for the sake of his heir. What is Mr. Elliot to me?”)
Wentworth then immediately turns to Anne like that L looking at Light meme to see if she agrees: “The careless expression was life to Anne, who saw that Captain Wentworth was all attention, looking and listening with his whole soul; and that the last words brought his enquiring eyes from Charles to herself.”
Mr. Elliot indirectly proposes to Anne but she ignores him because she’s too busy listening to her father call Wentworth hot:
“Such she believed were his words; but scarcely had she received their sound, than her attention was caught by other sounds immediately behind her, which rendered every thing else trivial. Her father and Lady Dalrymple were speaking.
‘A well-looking man,’ said Sir Walter, ‘a very well-looking man.’
‘A very fine young man indeed!’ said Lady Dalrymple. 'More air than one often sees in Bath.’”
Wentworth brought an extra umbrella to Bath because he came to town explicitly hoping to take a romantic walk in the rain with Anne
Both Anne and Wentworth are well-spoken and can talk gently and reassuringly when another person is upset:
When Mrs. Musgrove was sad about her son: “[Wentworth] was perfectly collected and serious; and almost instantly afterwards… entered into conversation with her, in a low voice, about her son, doing it with so much sympathy and natural grace, as shewed the kindest consideration for all that was real and unabsurd in the parent’s feelings”
When Wentworth was sad at the concert: “Anne replied, and spoke in defense of the performance so well, and yet in allowance for his feelings, so pleasantly, that his countenance improved, and he replied again with
almost a smile. They talked for a few minutes more; the improvement held; he even looked down towards the bench, as if he saw a place on it well worth occupying;”
The reasons why Sir Walter approves of Anne’s marriage are not only that Wentworth is hot and rich, but also because he has a “well-sounding name”
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