I think there can be merit in stories about suffering and its role in transforming people for the better, but I don’t understand when people attribute this kind of message to Persuasion because the narrator directly makes fun of it at the end of the novel:
[after Captain Wentworth recovers Mrs. Smith’s property] “Mrs Smith’s enjoyments were not spoiled by this improvement of income, with some improvement of health, and the acquisition of such friends to be often with, for her cheerfulness and mental alacrity did not fail her; and while these prime supplies of good remained, she might have bid defiance even to greater accessions of worldly prosperity. She might have been absolutely rich and perfectly healthy, and yet be happy.”
This is satire on the religious moralizing of novels about how poverty, illness, and other kinds of suffering are inherently redemptive forces that will somehow purify the soul and improve that person’s character.
Here I will cite the late and great Orson Welles:
“Did my poverty help my creativity? Uh, no.”
So I find it difficult to believe that Austen thinks Anne’s rejection of Frederick, eight years of mutual separation, and the resulting grief are directly responsible for their being “more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other’s character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting;” they did that on their own. The growth they did to reach this point was motivated by their natural goodwill and mutually intelligent, conscientious characters. In fact, Anne admits that heartbreak didn’t magically induce character growth and she’s being a hypocrite when she advises Benwick on how to stop wallowing:
Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.
What does help Anne recover from her depression - because that’s really what it is - and gain confidence in herself is time spent in pleasurable, jovial company like that of the Harvilles and engaging in their daily activities and hobbies like Captain Harville’s carpentering and toy-making, and going on nice walks by the sea and feeling the sun and wind on her face. If anything, she stagnated in those 7-8 years immediately following her heartbreak and her personal growth was actively hindered by the resulting suffering. While Anne’s diminishing and “loss of bloom” are more explicit in the text, it’s underappreciated that heartbreak also reduces Frederick to his worst as we see him in the novel - he may have been “unjust,” he is “weak and resentful” with Anne (though note that he still maintains polite civility with her, just nothing more).
Hence Anne’s assessment at the start of the novel that the years have only improved him in every way is a mistaken notion, confirmed as mistaken when Frederick at last confesses that he has been just as affected by her absence as she was by his through his letter. This also provides irrefutable proof of Anne being an unreliable narrator in the first half of the novel, which was only increasingly hinted at before, e.g. even when she notices Wentworth’s disappointment at her not staying with him to nurse Louisa, she self-deprecatingly decides that it was only because he saw her utility to Louisa as opposed to wanting her company for herself; this, of course, is very untrue. On the other hand, toward the end of the novel when Frederick leaves the concert after an abrupt goodbye, she doesn’t decide that it was because he was displeased with her, but rather correctly attributes it to jealousy of Mr. Elliot for being so close in company with her. Thus we as the readers evolve to more closely trust Anne’s own judgements just as she herself does.
But anyway, I find it particularly difficult to believe that said grief and heartbreak could be in any way responsible for Wentworth’s success in those eight years, especially with the reasoning that it was accompanied by spite. Austen doesn’t reward spite. Austen characters who exhibit spite include the likes of John and Isabella Thorpe, Lucy Steele, Mrs. Ferrars, General Tilney, and Mrs. Norris. It’s especially silly because 1) we know Wentworth was ambitious from the start, he was planning to do all that he did regardless of whether he had a wife and family:
He was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit, and brilliancy.
(…) he was confident that he should soon be rich: full of life and ardour, he knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that would lead to everything he wanted.
(…) All his sanguine expectations, all his confidence had been justified. His genius and ardour had seemed to foresee and to command his prosperous path.
2) Naval officers, especially those who hadn’t yet earned the rank of post-Captain, didn’t get to choose whether to take risky commands/missions or not; they had to go wherever the Navy sent them. When the Admiralty gave Wentworth the Asp; he would’ve had to accept it even if he didn’t want to. But of course, literally any and every officer would want to, any possible risk wasn’t a deterrent at all:
“The Admiralty,” he continued, “entertain themselves now and then, with sending a few hundred men to sea, in a ship not fit to be employed. But they have a great many to provide for; and among the thousands that may just as well go to the bottom as not, it is impossible for them to distinguish the very set who may be least missed.”
“Phoo! phoo!” cried the Admiral, “what stuff these young fellows talk! Never was a better sloop than the Asp in her day. For an old built sloop, you would not see her equal. Lucky fellow to get her! He knows there must have been twenty better men than himself applying for her at the same time. Lucky fellow to get anything so soon, with no more interest than his.”
“I felt my luck, Admiral, I assure you;” replied Captain Wentworth, seriously. “I was as well satisfied with my appointment as you can desire.”
3) Would a skilled, considerate captain really be so callous with the lives of his entire crew by taking huge, insurmountable risks out of heartbreak? I don’t think such a person, no matter how lucky, would last long in a navy at war with Napoleon and his military.
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