I was just reflecting on what an uplifting story Persuasion is, despite its bleak beginnings and stark lines between heroes and villains. As Austen’s last novel, some critics have dared to attack it for containing lesser subtlety—almost a fairytale of sorts. While I’ll have to defend fairytales another time, I’d like to defend Persuasion against a jab about its subtlety.
It isn’t a typical happy ending tale. This isn’t a case of a princess having a fleeting meeting with her prince, a brief period of disappointment and longing, and then bliss. This story comes to us after eight years of Anne Elliot’s suffering. She didn’t have just a fleeting meeting; she had a real chance at love, and threw it away.
Elizabeth Bennet arrives on the scene not yet one-and-twenty, never having been in love. Marianne Dashwood has probably thought she was in love half-a-dozen times.
But Anne. Anne screwed up. Now, I don’t blame her—she was young. She was basically unsupported in every area of her life except by one, much older friend who was basically a surrogate mother figure—and that’s the voice that told her to let go of Wentworth the first time around. I don’t blame Anne for listening to that voice.
But can you imagine the guilt? The misery of looking around at your foppish father and your querulous sisters, and thinking, I chose this? And eight, eight years go by. Reinforcing the permanence of that choice every day.
I guess I resonate with this because I feel like one of my greatest fears is missed chances. As if I, like Anne, listened to the wrong advice and threw love away before I knew what it was. Or maybe I never got the opportunity because there’s something wrong with me—I’m just trapped by a refrain that, this is my life, this is my life, so nothing good and unexpected and beautiful could happen…
What a hopeless refrain! Yet it permeates much of Persuasion…because after eight years, Wentworth returns…and seemingly wants nothing to do with Anne. Yes, we can imagine her bitterly thinking (for even Anne, with her patience and goodness and sweetness, had some bitterness mixed in by the force of cruel circumstances)—this is my life. He comes back, he doesn’t want her, he throws the possibility of a relationship with a younger, spunkier woman in her face—and Anne just has to suffer through it. She has no one to confide in, no one who is looking at her. The one person who she might have shared everything with is angry with her. And one of the sharpest truths is that he is still in love with her, and that’s where his anger comes from—but all she can see is his indifference, because as every woman knows, we can’t see inside men’s heads.
And then. Anne keeps living, because this is her life. She sucks it up, she continues to be patient, to be good. She doesn’t wallow, as much as she probably wants to. And it is that persistence that shows Captain Frederick Wentworth what he’s missing—that resentment isn’t going to mend his heart, she is–and he cannot live without her. This is his life, and he can’t imagine Anne not in it.
They get their happy ending. And I get a bit of hope—all of us readers do, if we are struggling with the mundane realities of every day, with the fear that we blew our big chance at a golden future.
Of course our lives aren’t novels. (At least, they haven’t inspired any yet). But our lives are not without hope. And the uplifting message of Persuasion is that sometimes living out the lives we have is what draws in the sunshine we have felt so lacking for so long.
titsay
germansingergirl
jacobvanloon
dailybridgerton
dededos
