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A review by halcyon_rising
Persuasion by Jane Austen
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!
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!