tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-664958436931528900.post7591734072649478167..comments2024-02-27T07:15:23.786+01:00Comments on Simon's Book Blog: Jane Austen: Persuasion (1818)Simon McLeishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16433000161180042201noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-664958436931528900.post-74182423482554963612012-05-21T10:20:39.728+01:002012-05-21T10:20:39.728+01:00Update on re-reading in May 2012: I'm surprise...Update on re-reading in May 2012: I'm surprised by how much I missed from my reading thirteen years ago (which would have been my third reading of Persuasion). There is rather more substance to the novel than my review suggests, even if there are aspects I feel make it less than the best of Austen's novels.<br /><br />The title is massively important, as it is in the others of Austen's novels named after abstracts (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice). In every chapter, some form of persuasion is made or discussed, whether it is the work done by various people to persuade the Elliot family to let their ancestral home and stay in Bath, or to get Anne to take sides in arguments between her sister and brother in law. And of course it is the mainspring of the plot, as the past rejection of Captain Wentworth was due to the persuasion of Anne's friend and mentor Lady Russell, who thought it was a bad match on worldly grounds.<br /><br />And even though very little happens, it is a dense novel about the gradual changes that persuasion works on several of the characters.<br /><br />What is there not to like about it? Well, the ending is rather abrupt. Unlike the novels already mentioned, Persuasion originally appeared in two volumes rather than three, but it still reads as though the last three or four chapters could have been the basis for a whole third part. William Wentworth, the distant cousin who is to inherit the Elliot baronetcy, is almost too like Pride and Prejudice's Wickham, as an outwardly attractive man revealed to be dishonourable and shallow. And there is another issue shared with Pride and Prejudice, which is that Anne is a remarkably sensible woman given how silly all her immediate family are.<br /><br />But it is still an Austen novel, and as a writer she is certainly in the top five English novelists of all.Simon McLeishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16433000161180042201noreply@blogger.com