Rating: 4/5 stars
Although I read and loved Pride and Prejudice in high school, I hadn't read Persuasion until now, and it is an interesting book to read at the age of thirty. Where Pride and Prejudice revolves around younger people blundering their way through new relationships, the cast of Persuasion
are a little more experienced. Anne Ellis, having declined a proposal
due to being too young, is still single some 8 or 9 years later. Other
characters are widowed, looking for the second love of their life. Some
have been married for a long time - a few very happily, the rest rather
miserably. Through these characters, Austen explores how people change
during their twenties. What acts can be forgiven? Can old relationships
be rekindled? If I've presented Persuasion as being dry and academic,
that is on me entirely - the characters are colorful and the prose is
dripping with snark.
Somehow, Jane Austen's work became
associated with romance for women, when her writing is closer to that of
Dan Carlin than of Nora Roberts. I suppose it's because her incisive,
acerbic commentary is centered around interpersonal relationships and
the day-to-day concerns of the over-privileged and under-employed,
rather than more "serious" topics like politics, war, or media. But in Persuasion, although there is the usual "will-they-won't-they" plot, Austen comments quite extensively on political matters.
One
of the key themes is the decline of the aristocracy class, or the rise
of the "self-made" men wealthy men. The skincare-obsessed and
spendthrift Sir Walter perhaps personifies this critique of the useless
navel-gazing of the gentry most starkly. He is foiled against Admiral
Croft, who earned his wealth (albeit, as an instrument of brutal
imperialism...) and is an upstanding gentleman with an enviably adorable
relationship, and who finally did something about the draft in Sir
Walter's estate's cupboards. "Productive" members of the gentry fare a
little better than their more idle counterparts; Mrs Smith atones for
her profligate past by industriously selling items she knits. One
imagines that Austen sees herself in this class of privileged but
productive aristocrats.
Feminism, or rather, questioning the
existence of native differences between men and women, was thoughtfully
presented. Mary Ellis decries that no one would judge a father for going
to a dinner party while his child is sick, but that a mother is
expected to stay home due to some presumed inborn ability to care for
children that Mary doesn't recognize in herself. The resolution of the
love story is spurred by Anne discussing with Captain Harville whether
men and women are equally 'constant' in their love. If men and women
love differently, is it due to social expectations, or due to biology,
or due to (aristocratic) women having little other occupation? Austen
also slyly suggests that the nature of women cannot be understood at all
from books, because overwhelmingly books are written by men. I see you,
Jane, and I appreciate you.
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