Recently Revisited: Persuasion by Jane Austen

After watching Becoming Jane for the first time a few weeks ago, I decided to revisit my second favorite Jane Austen novel, Persuasion, which is a strong contrast from Pride and Prejudice, her most beloved (and my all-time favorite) novel.  Although both books deal with the everyday lives of genteel society in early 1800's England, there is a light-hearted tone throughout Pride and Prejudice,  that is lacking in the more serious Persuasion. 

Let's think for a moment, on Jane Austen's life, and when she wrote the two novels.  Although Pride and Prejudice wasn't the first manuscript that Austen wrote, she began writing the drafts for it in 1796, when she was just 20 years old. Austen was still relatively young and optimistic, and it is evident that some of this worked it's way into the feisty and playful heroine, Elizabeth Bennett.  Elizabeth flies in the face of convention, and still manages to catch the man of her dreams.

Austen too, had flown in the face of convention, but instead remained unmarried, and living with her mother and sister Cassandra, fell ill in 1816 while completing Persuasion.  The story, although fantastic, just doesn't sparkle the way that Pride and Prejudice, or her other earlier works seem to do.  The last two chapters had been re-written by Austen, perhaps hastily, just eight months before her death when she was noticibly ill. You can almost feel the urgency of the final two chapters, and ultimately, the last minute redemption.  It is the only time, in any of Austen's books, that I have noticed a disjointedness.  Maybe, Austen was looking out for Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion, and just wanted to hurry up and give her the happy ending that Anne deserves, or perhaps, the happy ending Jane Austen longed for in her own life.

I believe that the love story of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth is fantastic in its own right, standing alone from Austen's other works.  It's the kind of story I love to read as Fall approaches, bittersweet and reflective, full of insight, and if you look closely enough, a mirror into the author's own heart.

Persuasion is like literary Hot Chocolate, the kind made from melted chocolate bars and milk, not that powdery stuff.

                   

  

For more information on the life and times of Jane Austen, please visit: http://www.janeausten.org/