Essay
The Second Story in Persuasion: Peril, Age and Stasis at Love’s End
Austen’s most mature novel breaks the bounds of the marriage plot
Novels of parlour and drawing-room, full of sparkling social comedy and delicious ironic twists that render even the absurd lovable-that is how Austen’s ouevre is now commonly perceived . In terms of armchair literature that soothes and inspires, the 19th century novelist remains unbeaten with regards to popularity. The reason? Pride and Prejudice.
Starring what was probably the author’s favourite heroine, it’s a comedy of errors, featuring a set of both swoon-worthy as well as ridiculous characters (Mr. Collins, anyone?), offset by a timeless love story that still manages to charm the cockles of our hearts. Yet the enduring appeal of said story, which has been hailed as the modern precursor to the genre of romantic comedy has also led to the common misconception that Austen was preoccupied with a world of picnics and ball rooms, where ladies and gentlemen waltz in and out of life with nary a care to real-world issues such as death, war or actual danger.
It’s a view that was perpetuated even during Victorian times,when reviewers chose to evaluate Austen’s novels exclusively through the prism of femininity. As such, her writing has a history of being considered a work of art rather than true genius, whereas her contemporary, Sir Walter Scott (“Waverley”), despite garnering criticism, never needed to defend his claims to originality. The kind, dutiful daughter, the loving sister and the doting aunt, an image also perpetuated by her own brother Henry, could not be expected “to paint a rascal” (NBR, CH vol.I, p.246) and that is what ultimately consigned her to the post of being an accomplished writer, limited, however, in scope of matter.
Persuasion is the anti-thesis to that assertion.
Couched in polite society as her previous novels were, Austen’s final work offers a glimpse towards world-building that is primarily concerned with the failure of love, the menace of death and the importance of self-actualisation in a world breaking apart at its seams.
“Cruelty in Perfection”-Margaret Oliphant, 19th century Scottish novelist and historian, on Austen’s work
The notion of reality in fiction
Valued for her astute and poignant characterisations, the nature of Austen’s writing is tied to reality, from the commonplace names she uses in her fiction (Jane, Elizabeth or Anne as compared to Sophia, Evelina or Amelia in contemporary works of the time) to the plot which eschews any gothic elements such as damsels in distress, villainous monsters or even the slightest hint at the supernatural. (In fact, her earliest novel, Northanger Abbey, is a spoof of the celebrated gothic novel “The Mysteries of Udolpho”.)
Sadly, the apparent “triviality” of her chosen subject matter convinced and still manages to convince some people of the fact that her truths do not matter, seeing as they concern ‘frivolous’ topics such as the nature of love and marriage.
We need to remember, however, that Austen was a child of her times and that she lived in an era that was fraught by war and destruction-Britain and France had been continuously at war with each other from 1793 to 1815, the coontry simultaneously waging war with America from 1812–15.
Censorship was the rule and many celebrated female authors of the time period had already fallen foul of its stringent rules. Mary Wollstonecraft, the acclaimed writer of the feminist work “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” and mother of Mary Shelley, had been blasted for what was then considered a salacious personal life whilst one of Austen’s favourite authors, Charlotte Smith, got into hot water over a passionate defence of the French Revolution in her 1792 novel “Desmond”-even the most successful writer of the time, Maria Edgeworth, had to rewrite the ending of her novel Belinda (1801) merely because critics found the fact that one of her characters was black, morally disgusting.
As such, is it surprising that Austen chose to write social satire rather than anything ‘more substantial’?
The fact that she chose to depict reality in any way, shape or form rather than settle for gothic romance, a genre that partly bloomed due to the escapism it offered to cautious authors, should be considered revolutionary in and of itself.
Her last novel Persuasion is unique, however, in that it not only deals with reality but is a story explicitly tied to dates and facts.
It is possible to trace events as taking place between 1814–1815, the lost lovers that are Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth being re-united after seven years in the last week of February 1815, the exact same week Napoleon escaped from his exile on the island of Elba in order to gather a new army in France. Being able to pinpoint the narrative to actual historical events is not the only thing that distinguishes this work from her other novels but also the fact that it reflects events in the authors life more closely than other famous works of hers such as Mansfield Park or Emma.
The Jane/Anne Conundrum
There is the avowed danger in falling into the trap set by early reviewers by simply equating the character of Anne Elliot with the real Jane Austen. That would be taking too much of a liberty yet it is undeniable that Persuasion is influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by events relating to the author’s private life, most famously the undying love story between the two main characters.
With the veracity of Austen’s love affairs being doubted, especially her much touted star-crossed love with Tom Lefroy, subject to the film Becoming Jane starring Anne Hathaway, there are still grounds to believe that Austen did meet a young clergymen during a stay in Bath with whom she fell in love, a relationship that came to an end after the man in question died. However one construes this story, it seems natural to conclude that some of the grief she felt at this occasion may have been channeled into the story she crafted about missed opportunities and lost love.
It was called Persuasion and it told the plain story of the love between him and Jane-Rudyard Kipling in “Jane’s Marriage”
Beyond mere speculation, there are however landmarks that can be proven-such as the fact that Jane Austen wrote from experience when describing Lyme and Bath in her novel, having spent both a winter as well as a summer in both places respectively.
Just like Anne Elliot, she was 28 years old when she walked on the Cobb at Lyme and just like her protagonist she experienced a great shock in connection to the place. Whereas Anne left Lyme after her love rival Louisa Musgrove’s tragic fall, Austen’s close friend and distant cousin Anne LeFroy died from internal injuries after her horse bolted soon after she had left Lyme. Similarly, the town of Bath is not only a dark harbinger for Anne, due to being the place her mother died but also for Austen, who lost her own father there.
The close reader finds clues to death even on the very first page of Persuasion, hidden in the dates and facts given in a fictional excerpt of the Kellynch Barontage, a formal list recording the history of succession of all baronets of the Elliot family. The 16th of December, which may serve to commemorate Anne LeFroy’s death and Austen’s own birthday as well as the 9th of August, marking the death of her cousin Jane Cooper, are particularly telling examples.
From these hints, one begins to ascertain that this novel is atypical, set at a turning point in history and threatening loss and destruction whilst heralding change.
For those not familiar with the plot, the story orbits around the 28-year-old Anne Elliot, a woman on the brink of spinsterhood who seven years later encounters the man she used to be engaged to, Frederick Wentworth,gaining a second chance at a love considered lost by her.
Change in all its volatility
What is so refreshing in Persuasion, however, is that we are not preoccupied with the scaffolding of the story-the how, when or why the two heroes fall in love with each other from the start, the ways in which they may have blundered or even how their engagement came to be.
From the onset, this isn’t about the courtship that makes all the spice in the melodrama of Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility, the so-called first story.
No, this is the second story, about the interior life of a woman who fails to follow through her engagement and live happily ever after, who faces deadening loneliness in an estranged family yet is borne by her love for her oldest friend, her beloved books and the services she still sees herself capable to render others.
There is no love-sick repining either for a future that may have been- Anne Elliot is firmly grounded in the present, certainly sadder but also wiser and with a trove of mental fortitude she painstakingly gained over the years after her broken engagement at 19.
Her once lover, Frederick Wentworth, despite his propensity for flirtation on his return, is a man now accustomed to dangers at sea, who has seen active combat, fought for his life and has gained an understanding of what he truly cherishes in a partner, a “strong mind”.
Both characters have left behind the vestiges of the blooming, gentle and beautiful girl as well as the intelligent, handsome young man and truly come into their own.
What had been merely an attachment between a lonely girl and a bored man, based on outward appearances and certain character traits, solidifies into true love at the end of the novel. In this sense, being apart makes both characters grow as people, the change engendered actually deepening the relationship, with both partners standing as equals in a way that reflects the trajectory of real life.
By embracing all that is different, the characters manage to move forward, accepting once and for all that in “8 years (…) events of every description, changes, alienation, removals-all, all must be comprised in it and oblivion of the past must be natural and certain too”.
A perilous world
As an interior novel, Persuasion teems with stifled passions and unspoken desires.
Often, a knifes edge seems to underlie the words themselves, the emotional restraint expressed serving as a plot device to build tension within the narrative. As such, the book appears to be a melancholy ode to the nature of pain, both conscious and unconscious.
Austen, who was suffering from the last stages of Addison’s Disease whilst writing her last novel, is not sparing with hints of calamity and destruction. Accidents that threaten death or paralysis abound -from the fall of a child suspected to have injured its spine to Louisa Musgrove’s shocking fall and subsequent, mind-altering brain concussion, we are made to believe that there is no ultimate safe haven one can depend on. In Pride and Prejudice, a cold merely serves as a way for Jane Bingley to get closer to her beau Mr. Bingley while Jane Fairfax in Emma is ultimately saved from being dashed into the sea- but in Persuasion, tragedy is shown to be unforeseeable and inevitable within the course of a lifetime.
Redeeming the superfluous woman
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. In fact, the chaotic world order Austen touches upon renders opportunities for aspiring women, shedding light on the tropes of the “helpless invalid” and the “fallen woman”.
The first designation belongs to Mrs. Smith, Anne Elliot’s former classmate in school and now a bedridden, impoverished young widow living in relative obscurity. For fiction of the time, this portrayal is unique in that it does not introduce the trope of the rich, querulous widow but a woman with no social net or fortune to fall back on, an image that actually reflected reality to a greater extent.
Austen literally takes us into the squalor of the bed chamber in which the former belle has now re-invented herself as a trader of gossip and tales, assisted by a nurse hailing from the working class. We learn that Mrs. Smith is not above manipulating one of her oldest friends into marrying a man she knows to be a scoundrel for reasons of personal benefit. The fact that Anne is astute enough to realize her cousin’s true character before said manipulation can even come into play redeems the character but also sheds light on the plight of a desperate woman and the ways in which she can regain her power, unorthodox as they may be.
The working of subtle intrige and the possession of an enterprising nature is tacitly rewarded and maybe even condoned.
“here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone”-Anne’s praise for Mrs. Smith
Even the usual castigation of the immoral woman is foregone for a wry, ironic approach.
Whereas Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park is forced into seclusion with her obsessive aunt after running away with a man not her husband, Mrs. Clay in Persuasion may very well stand to enjoy the fruits of her labour by ultimately marrying Sir Walter, Anne’s father, as is hinted at the end of the novel.
Speculation is rife amongst literary reviewers and critics on whether or not Austen read Wollstonecraft but it is undeniable that her stories expose a sympathy to the plight of women.
One of the most memorable diatribes delivered in Persuasion concerns the strength of love in women.
Anne declares that women love the longest but laments that it is a failing since it only exposes the true helplessness of the sex. She states that it is “our fate perhaps rather than our merit. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions”.
Love, and by extension marriage, is the only avenue of choice left to a woman, an opinion seconded by Wollstonecraft. Austen shows us acutely how a woman who falls out of the marriage market due to age, sickness or societal blunders stands to loose all vestiges of personal autonomy as she is thrown on the goodwill and charity of an oftentimes indifferent society.
Mrs. Clay and Mrs. Smith are exemplary in that they forge a different path ahead, one which seems ‘maidenly writer’ seems to not so tacitly endorse.
What I personally love about Persuasion is the fact that Anne Elliot is a heroine who comes into her own by encountering all these women and perceiving their struggles. She has learned that uncertainty is part and parcel of life and she embraces it in her love for Wentworth. Anne knows the peril of being a sailor’s wife and is intimately familiar even with the looming spectre of widowhood. She is about to get married at the brink of war and she is about revoke her title, her large house and all vestiges of tradition, in exchange for true love, yes, but also utter and complete insecurity.
Yet all of this is not an end but a beginning, wherein she will learn to keep house, to barter and do business, sail alongside her husband, and, like Wentworth’s aunt, take the reins of the coach into her own hands and steer into the unknown. It’s a voyage of self-discovery that may shatter the illusion but reforge reality on the basis of truth-what higher notion can we depend on, ultimately?
It stands to reason that Virginia Woolf was right when she lamented the premature passing of Austen, an author on the verge of discovering that “the world is larger and more mysterious than she had supposed”.
Sources
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