Reviews

Persuasion by Jane Austen

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daisyreadsfantasy_'s review

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emotional hopeful reflective relaxing tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

sfeldmann's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The ending was a little bit of a letdown for me as someone used to modern romances with big finishes. I also would have liked it more if the original engagement was actually played out and not just summarized later, I'm not sure if that's a modern desire too or not.

mcmah303's review

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4.0

This was a nice, light, feel-good story that was a great distraction from regular life. I laughed out loud several times; I wasn't sure how I would feel about this book as its been a while since I read Jane Austen last, but I'm glad I picked it up! A very enjoyable read.

halcyon_rising's review against another edition

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3.0

I had a feeling going in that this was not going to be my favourite Jane Austen, and I was right.

I have seen the 2007 and the 2022 movie adaptations of this novel, and the love story between Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth never seemed to capture my heart. I assume, going forward, that it will be the same for Northanger Abbey, and maybe even Sanditon and whatever is left of Jane Austen's work. The one I still have hope for is Mansfield Park, but I have yet to check out the movie for this book.

But back to Persuasion. I did not feel much love for the characters, not in the same vein as Pride and Prejudice and Emma (those, I feel, are my babies). Anne was a nice and sensible girl to follow, but all her direct family members were a bit frustrating. The father is vain, the eldest daughter follows in these footsteps, Anne is nice but not appreciated at all and so there's no close relationship between her and her father and eldest sister, and Mary is the emotionally heightened mandatory character in the book. Anne does have a close relationship with her godmother, but there aren't that many scenes between them either. About almost every other character is nice, but I'm not sure they each have their own distinct voices. In any case, if you couldn't remember one of the names, I don't think it mattered much.

Persuasion is a bit of a slower book, and only seems to find its stride around the time the good Captain is on his way to Bath. Anne by then is half being courted by a Mr. Elliot, her father's heir, and that sets the pace for her second chance at love story.

This novel has a couple of scenes in it that are very important to the story, to the personal growth of the characters, and I don't really like them. The first is the speech Anne had to overhear of Wentworth saying to Louisa (?) how he liked people who could not be easily persuaded by others, but were of a strong mind. I don't like the dig at her. He should have realised the moment he planned on making her an offer of marriage, that it would be no good to marry someone only to then leave for years on end via ship where he could have easily died, which would have made her a young widow with no fortune at all, nor should she have been asked to wait for him until he came back with a fortune to take care of her. It really was bad timing.

The second scene I didn't like was the one in Lyme where Louisa fell, and Anne's quick actions and steady character was the reason he began to see her as a person again. It's horrible that another person had to get hurt for him to see her again, while she always was right in front of him to begin with. I am not the biggest fan of second chance love stories (that I know of), and this does not warm me up to them either. Their interaction was fine after this, or at least better than avoiding each other like before, but still not my favourite.

Towards the end there is an exchange of words between Anne Elliot and Captain Harville, who lost his daughter recently and sees her ex-fiancé soon engaged to someone else. He is hurt by this, and so he enters a conversation with Anne about feelings, and how both sexes deal with them. In this conversation it is said that in poems, it is often said that women are fickle of feelings - but then of course the poems are written by men. Another good paragraph was the one where Anne makes a great note on women versus men, on how they deal with hurt feelings. Women 'cannot help themselves. They live at home, quiet, confined, and their feelings prey upon them, versus men who 'are forced on exertion. They have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take them back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions. They agree to disagree.

I agree to give this book a 3 star rating, as I expected for me to give it before I started reading it.

Happy Reading!

barkjenna's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Not much happens. Characters are written very Jane-Austen-y. You know who you are supposed to like or who you aren’t. Sometimes I think Anne is too well developed but I think it’s bc of all those 8 years reflecting.

swemo's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

mdarceyhall's review

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5.0

I’m so happy I read this again. Not surprisingly, I enjoyed it more than I did the first time, and I owe that to age. This is one of those books, like "Anna Karenina," that’s most appreciated when you’ve lived long enough to make mistakes, to be able to look back and see how easily influenced you were, whether by internal or external pressures. Persuasion is Jane Austen’s quietest novel. It’s not as obvious in its humor as Emma or as traditionally romantic as Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility. Anne Elliott is not the obvious heroine of this type of social novel. She’s not Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse. Anne’s character growth is measured in inches, not miles. It’s subtle, like the romance in the novel, which makes her so unique. We’ll always remember the “big” romantic heroines in great literature, like Anna in “Anna Karenina,” Becky Sharpe in “Vanity Fair,” and Natasha in “War and Peace,” because they take up space with their bold actions taken in the name of love or lust. Anne Elliot is not an Anna, Becky, or Natasha. She most resembles these protagonists’ foils—the women who take up fewer pages but ultimately achieve a more wholesome love, like Maria Bolkonskaya’s eventual romance with Nikolai Rostov in “War and Peace” and Kitty and Levin in “Anna Karenina.” And that’s what I love about this novel—that Austen made what other authors might relegate to a side plotline into the main story. Ultimately, this is a book to be read, and then read again a decade or so later, in order to fully relate to Anne’s development of character. And, of course, to appreciate her sister Mary’s hilariously self-centered comments.