Persuasion (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Nevertheless, their proposed alliance is the beginning of the Trouble around which all narratives are said to center. The marriage of Anne and Wentworth implies a rejection of the traditionalist principles of stable and universal hierarchy, since Wentworth is, in that perspective, “a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in that profession” (p. 26). Wentworth is the upwardly mobile, talented young man of the nineteenth century, “full of life and ardour”(p. 26). He has only his own resources rather than privilege to fall back on, yet he is confident and proud. The contrasting terms that describe him illuminate the tensions between two worldviews: what Anne Elliot in her youth sees as “brilliant, headstrong,” fearless, warm, and witty, the traditional Lady Russell sees as “dangerous” and imprudent. Though Anne rebels in feeling against an “over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence”(p. 29), she obeys out of deference to Lady Russell’s superior wisdom and authority, breaking the engagement.
    In doing so Anne “relies” on Lady Russell as a mother—one who combines wisdom with “tenderness”—and is “persuaded” that the alliance is wrong. Yet Lady Russell is immediately shown up as narrow and self-interested when she wishes Anne would marry the mediocre Charles Musgrove because of his “landed property,” “general importance,” “good character and appearance,” and (apparently not least important) his location “near herself.” She displays a shrewd awareness of the marriage market: “However Lady Russell might have asked yet for something more, while Anne was nineteen, she would have rejoiced to see her at twenty-two” so respectably situated(p. 27). Anne’s feelings count for little here; whereas Jane Eyre tells her own story and finds her voice in narrating it to us, we are told “How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been,—how eloquent, at least, were her wishes”(p. 29). So far the theme appears to be “prudence” (privilege, disguised as wisdom, going by the rules) versus “romance,” in which prudence comes up against an egalitarian meritocracy, identified with “romance” and its trans-formative capacities and possibilities: “She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning”(p. 29). This well describes the way in which Austen reverses the usual narrative association of youth with romance and feeling and age with reason and wisdom. The story looked at in this way is one of romantic renewal, a kind of Winter’s Tale.
    The heroine’s traditional solution to this classic problem of the novel, the conflict between categories marked “feeling” and “reason,” or “individual” and “community,” is love and marriage. Through the social legitimation of her personal feeling, her personal worth is recognized, her social status as wife established, and her economic future as middle-class or better secured. Lady Russell is the temporary impediment in that she has a “value for rank and consequence” that “blinds her”—in this trait she is partly aligned with the social traditionalists, though also partly with the new ranking by feeling, since she alone is capable of appreciating Anne’s worth. Though Lady Russell is not entirely condemned—she is said to have a “more tempered and pardonable pride”(p. 25)—her decisive victory over the lovers at this point groups her with those who defend social hierarchies as fixed and given, so that she stands in need of correction by Anne.
    The title of the novel, Persuasion, points to the causes and consequences of this momentous decision in Anne’s life. Feeling and reason are commonly categorized as inimical to each other in regard to the