Today, we’ll discuss chapters 1 – 8. First, some links:
- The full text of Persuasion online
- Persuasion study guide
- Another Persuasion study guide
- Yet another Persuasion study guide
- Persuasion FAQ page at Pemberley.com
- Canceled chapters of Persuasion
- Jane Austen Centre
- Austen.com
- Pemberley.com
I love this book. I have to admit, I’m not quite done with it, and I keep sneaking in pages here and there when I run to the bathroom or when the kids are happily playing. (With three small children, reading non-children’s books is something you have to really want.)
I’m going to try to salvage some of my thoughts from the first post that the Internet ate. I’ll post some comments/questions from various study guides, as well as a few of my own. Feel free to respond to anything I type, or throw in your own comments.
- We can observe a matured tone in this novel. This is perhaps because the heroine, Anne Elliot is not the usual seventeen or twenty of Marianne Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse romping around the countryside. She is twenty-seven and values quietly the melancholy, introspective pleasures of the autumn. It does not exude the same qualities of cheerful security as Emma and its narrative progression is unusual when compared with that of Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice as the lovers have failed before the opening. Anne and Wentworth have already met and declared their feelings: it is a love story that starts in the middle.
- Unlike Austen’s other heroines, Anne is almost entirely isolated. She lacks close sisterly relations, friendships or respectable mentors. She is instead relegated to role of listener, advisor, patient carer, alienated from her own family where her word has no weight (”she was only Anne”), she is a quiet heroine (”her convenience was always to give way”) and she moves from community to community.
- Explore the implications of the title. (Who wants to persuade whom and why? Which sorts of persuasion might be allowable and which might not be and why?) How do we see the theme of persuasion used in the first eight chapters?
- What motivates Lady Russell to help Sir Walter Elliott and his family? How does the narrator maintain Lady Russell as a respectable figure while at the same time making clear the limitations of her character? What advantage might it be to Jane Austen as a novelist to criticize without necessarily condemning or harshly satirizing some of her least admirable characters?
- Chapter four recounts the brief (two-month) romance between Anne and Captain Wentworth seven years before the present narration. Why did the attachment go wrong, and what is unusual about the development of Anne’s sensibilities and opinions from that point forwards–what separates her from the rest of her family?
- It is a love story imbued with the pains of the past and the hopes of the future. The past can be seen as manifesting itself in the present, the tensions and sense of loss motivates the couple, who appear looking backward and forward simultaneously and their relationship has both progressive and regressive tendencies. (So true! Such tension!)
- From the start of Wentworth’s return into her social world, their relationship is governed by faulty or indirect communication in the form of overheard or heard second hand.
- While Sir Walter and Elizabeth (along with Mrs. Clay) travel to Bath, Anne stays behind to tend to her sister Mary at Uppercross Cottage. What qualities of observation does Anne show with regard to her own position in the family and the relations between the Elliotts and the Musgroves (i.e. the family of Mary’s husband Charles)? Mainly, how does she deal with Mary’s complaints and Lady Russell’s snubs, and how does she think of Miss Louisa and Henrietta Musgrove?
- How do Mr. and Mrs. Croft–i.e. Sophia and the Admiral–serve as a model couple in chapter eight?
- Do you ever just want to tell Anne to stop being so self-sacrificing, already, and just tell everyone that Captain Wentworth was in love with her once? And, to apologize to him and be reconciled?
- Who is your favorite non-Anne character? Least favorite? The one you love to hate?
First, thanks for doing this. I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading others’ comments. To start, I am just making a couple of comments of my own. Your questions take more time to think through, so I will be back on later…
Jane Austen is an elegant writer but her characterization of Anne is one dimentional. She is pure heroine with no character flaws, so is somewhat unrealistic. Jane uses Anne to point out the serious social mores of the day, but I do wish that Anne were more outspoken and less the suffering, silent one. (but I guess if she were the story would have been different…..)
What is the deal with three characters having the same first name. There are 2 Charleses in the first 8 chapters with another Charles showing up towards the end of the book. Were men’s names in such short supply when Jane Austen authored this book!!!
You asked for favorite other characters…. How about those we disliked. Mary comes to mind immediately. How self serving and self indulgent can you be! Elizabeth seems caught up in the social climbing of the day and “Daddy” Elliot is obnoxious. I think I liked Louise and Henrietta.
i’m sorry you had trouble with your first post and that you had to retype it all out!
i think i’m the minority (probably the only voice?) in this discussion that is so incredibly annoyed with this book. i can’t even bring myself to read anymore more of it!
i was feeling a bit guilty over that fact, but i have come to grips with it. at least i’m allowed to speak exactly what i think/feel – something these characters don’t do at all! i know it’s good to hold our tongues when the time is right, but for pete’s sake…be open! be honest! don’t hold back all the time.
i know that it’s a character trait of the day. i know that it’s a social grace. i don’t know why it’s so annoying to me now, and it wasn’t in college when i read a few jane austens (”Pride and Prejudice” and “Mansfield Park”) and loved them.
could it be that i’m a product of modern writing? am i not able to enjoy the delicacies of austen’s writing anymore? i enjoy watching austen movies, but reading the originals has become more of a chore to me anymore.
and this is a surprise to me. i thought i was going to really enjoy reading this and talking about characters again, and plot development (just like the old days of english classes!). but i’m so done with this novel. i’m barely through the first 8 chapters and i forced myself to get to this point by today.
any way…i promise to keep on trekking! i will finish the book, i promise. it alone is my lenten discipline.
~liz
I agree, Diane–Anne is too perfect. But that’s why we love her and we love suffering with her through the whole book.
The names thing bothered me, too! I think, in the Masterpiece Theater movie adaptation, they changed some of the character’s names to make it less confusing. It makes me wonder if there is a deeper reason that Austen chose to name the characters the same, or am I just digging for nothing?
Yeah, Mary is my least favorite character, as well. Austen seems to want us to dislike her, though it would be more believeable if Mary had any good qualities at all (which it seems she does not).
Do you think that people were as conscious of status in
“those days” as Jane makes her more dislikable characters or is she exaggerating it to make a point?
When we lived in England in 1985 I believed that there was a sharper status delineation there than here. From Margaret Thatcher’s Oxford English to the more cockney speaking of the common folk there were layers of social status. But, now that I am older and wiser, I believe we have the same thing here.
Do you think that people were as conscious of status in
“those days” as Jane makes her more dislikable characters or is she exaggerating it to make a point?
I actually get the feeling it was really like that. From this page:
“Throughout the nineteenth century Jane Austen was applauded for craft, finish and elegance; even critics who scorned her lack of passion found want of force compensated by “all the minute attention to detail of the most accomplished miniature-painter”. She is famous for her exceptional portraits of society and concern with manners; the relation between social standing and behaviour. Thus the novels are permeated with the language of politeness, gentility, class-consciousness and social values. She presents the world she knew from acute observation: its smooth veneer, social distinctions and with that its commercialism and snobbery.”
I read commentary, over and over, that suggests that Austen was considered masterful (even in her own time) at social commentary.
But, now that I am older and wiser, I believe we have the same thing here.
I think you’re right, Diane. It’s subtler in some ways, more glaringly obvious in others, and just plain different than England–but we certainly have class consciousness here.
Liz, I think it’s easy to get completely lost in Austen’s writing style. It’s full of long paragraphs of internal monologue, and Austen is a genius when it comes to crafting run-on sentences. (I learn from the best, you know. Run-on sentences are my particular speciality, but I’m nothing compared to some great authors. Ever read The Awakening, by Kate Chopin? Don’t try unless you’re very alert. Very different, as you suggest, from some modern writing.
You shouldn’t feel guilty for not liking it. Tastes change, you know?
I also think the book picks up a bit after the first eight chapters, so hang in there. You can’t read Austen without full focus, and I know that as a busy homeschooling mom, I’ll often read paragraphs over and over without comprehending. My mind is just in too many places. But if I can get an hour or two alone (usually very, very late at night) and keep myself awake, I can fully focus on her writing and ingest it all much better.
When I was in college English classes, I could read dozens of these types of books in a row for British Lit without having to re-read anything. Motherhood changes your brain.
Interesting how tight in the throat I feel as I read about this little world where no one with any sense can speak aloud. I feel such rage for Anne among a family of dolts. I wonder how much rage was in the discipline of ’social criticism’ for which Austen is famous. Or maybe that’s just a 20th century filly champing at the 18th century bit.
I do, however, appreciate some of the devices Austen uses to indicate ripples going on outside the point of focus, particularly in the discussion of the “Wentworth who used to live here” scene that subtly shows Anne’s focused attention in a dizzy conversation that has no focus whatsoever.
I can’t decide if the quiet tolerance for the anemic regard her family has for her is a sign of being one-dimensional, or if it is just making me very interested to find out more about this quiet girl whose spirit was broken and why she’s so willing to be such a shadow in the scene. If there’s more revealed in the second half of the book, then I’ll consider such characterization a success. If not, then I’ll agree with Diane that Anne is flat. Right now, I’m holding back on the decision.
Sorry to come in so late on the scene, ladies. It’s been Quite A Day here at the Academy!
I love the introductory description of Mrs. Croft! Just who I want to be, you know?? Tan and quietly confident. I’m only into chapter 7, so I haven’t gotten to more of her yet.
I want to roll my eyes at Lady Russell, full of genuine concern, but bumbling and lacking in wisdom. Beyond that, though, I often feel as though her character is not quite concrete, I want to grasp who she is, and I cannot get a firm grip on her. Why is that?
I am behind the reading schedule but I wanted to share my thoughts about Jane’s characters. Some of you really dislike Mary and I totally undersand – she is annoying. But what I love about Austen’s books is she writes at leat one character that is so obsurd! I find that I love to read how totally embarrassing and annoying they are.. I find that Austen uses these characters to pull out what I think SHE thought was annoying about the customs of women and men of society in her time. I imagine Jane Austen to have been a woman who was ahead of her time in being a free and liberated woman!
Thank you, Serina, for all the great background and links to good conversation starting supports and research thingies…
and of course, for hosting!
Let’s keep it going, this is cool!
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Do Mrs. Clay and Lady Russell have first names?