Eileen Battersby revisits Persuasionby Jane Austen.
MARRIAGE WAS far more than the stuff of romantic fantasy in the society in which Jane Austen lived and wrote, it was a pragmatic reality. For all the wit and brilliantly observed social comedy in Austen's work, there is also the terror of spinsterhood. A girl who failed to attract a husband was facing a shadowy life as, at best a dependent, at worst a reminder of what every girl dreaded most. For Anne Elliott, the heroine of Austen's final and darkest novel, she has to contend with a sensation worse than failure; regret.
She is 27, and the unassuming middle daughter of the ridiculous Sir Walter Elliott, an impoverished baronet. He is vain and managed to beguile his late wife with his good looks. As Austen reiterates throughout the narrative, he judges people on their physical appearance. His selfishness and snobbery has been duly passed down to his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, who ranks amongst Austen's coldest creations. Already disappointed in her efforts to marry her father's nephew and heir, William Walter Elliott, who had instead wed a rich woman of inferior birth, who later died, Eizabeth is a study of angry panic, particularly as her equally self-centred youngest sister, Mary, is already married. But Anne is different; gentle and quiet, she is resigned to having lost her early bloom, and with it, any chance of happiness - or even escape from her father and elder sister.
As the novel opens, Sir Walter is finally accepting that he must rent the family seat, Kellynch-hall. The new tenants represent a new breed. Admiral Croft is not a landed gentleman, but a naval careerist. His face may be weather-beaten, but he has sufficient money to lease Sir Elliott's house.
Admiral Croft's wife has two brothers, one of whom is Captain Wentworth, a now successful, highly eligible man, who had been rejected years earlier by Anne under pressure from her family's advisor, the well-intentioned Lady Russell: "She was a benevolent, charitable, good woman . . . but she had prejudices on the side of ancestry; she had a value for rank and consequence which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them." Just as she had "protected" Anne from an inferior marriage, she is preoccupied with preventing Sir Walter falling prey to Mrs Clay. Quite by chance, Anne, who is well accustomed to living within the noisy family society of the Musgroves, into which Mary has married, overhears that the Wentworth mentioned in conversation is none other than her former suitor.
The arrival of Frederick Wentworth proves initially crushing for Anne. Mary is quick to report that he had mentioned to one of the Musgroves that "You were so altered he should not have known you again." He is polite but detached. Anne's regret turns to pain, particularly as he becomes friendly with the two unmarried Musgrove girls and a match seems likely. When one of the girls falls and suffers a head injury, Wentworth looks to Anne for help. A slow, tentative reconciliation begins, assisted somewhat by the young Mr Elliott's rival interest in Anne and by her deep feelings for Wentworth. The sharp social observation is present, yet this is a tender, subtle work. Persuasion was published in 1818, the year after Jane Austen died aged 42.
This is a weekly series in which Eileen Battersby revisits titles from the literary canon