February's "Out of the Best Books" Group reading!!

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Product Description

Persuasion celebrates romantic constancy in an era of turbulent change. Written as the Napoleonic Wars were ending, the novel examines how a woman can at once remain faithful to her past and still move forward into the future. Anne Elliot seems to have given up on present happiness and has resigned herself to living off her memories. More than seven years earlier she complied with duty: persuaded to view the match as imprudent and improper, she broke off her engagement to a naval captain with neither fortune, ancestry, nor prospects. However, when peacetime arrives and brings the Navy home, and Anne encounters Captain Wentworth once more, she starts to believe in second chances. Jane Austen's last completed novel features a heroine much older and wiser than her predecessors in earlier books, and presents a more intimate and sober tale of a love found long after such happiness had been deemed hopeless. This edition includes an appendix giving the original ending of Persuasion.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #270103 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author

Deidre Shauna Lynch is the author of The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning and editor of Janeites: Austen's Disciples and Devotees.

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Customer Reviews

The Best Austen, and Perhaps Simply the Best Novel
One of the major sources of contention and strife in my marriage is the disagreement between my wife and me over what is the best Jane Austen novel (yes, we are both more than a bit geekish in our love of words and literature--our second biggest ongoing quarrel is about the merits of the serial comma).

For my money, there are three of Austen's six finished novels that one can make a good argument for being her "best":

"Pride and Prejudice" (the popular choice, and my wife's)
"Emma" (the educated choice--most lit profs go with this one)
"Persuasion" (the truly refined choice)

Harrold Bloom in "The Western Canon" calls it perhaps a "perfect novel," and while I disagree with some of his interpretations of the characters (yes, blasphemy, I know), I wholeheartedly concur with his overal assessment.

While all of Austen's novels are generally comic, "Persuasion" is the most nuanced. It's been described as "autumnal" and that word suits it. There's a bittersweetness to it that you just don't get in Austen's other work.

The novel it comes closest to in terms of character and plot is probably one of her earliest novels "Sense and Sensibility." Like Eleanor in that novel, Anne is older and more mature than the typical Austen heroine. In fact, she's dangerously close to being "over the hill" at the age of 27(!). Love has passed her by, apparently.

But unlike Eleanor, who one always feels will muddle through even if she ends up disappointed in affairs of the heart, there's something more dramatically at stake with Anne. She is in great danger of ceasing to exist, not physically, but socially. When we meet her, she's barely there at all. Although a woman of strong feelings, she is ignored and literally overlooked by most of the other characters. In the universe of Austen's novels, the individual doesn't truly exist unless connected with the social world, and while Anne has a stoic strength, we understand that she is in some senses doomed if things don't change for her.

This is where we see what the mature Austen can do with a character type that she couldn't when she was younger.

This edition also has the original ending of the novel included as an appendix, which gives us a rare and fascinating look in to Austen as a technical artist.

I read this novel as an undergraduate, and have reread it several times since. I even took the novel with me to Bath on a trip to England, and spent a wonderful summer evening reading it while sitting in Sidney Gardens, across the street from one of the homes Austen lived in during her time in Bath, listening to Mozart's Piano Concerto #27. It's one of my favorite memories.

More than any other of her novels, "Persuasion" shows how Austen dealt with profound existential questions within the confines of her deceptively limited setting and cast of characters. Those who think Austen is simply a highbrow precursor to contemporary romance novels or social comedies are missing the colossal depth of thought that is beneath the surface of any of her novels, this one most of all.

Austen is nearly unique in the history of the novel for the consistency of her excellence. While most novelists have a clear masterpiece that stands out among their work, and usually a fairly sizable number of works that are adequate but not enduring, all of Austen's novels stand up to repeated readings and deserve a wide audience among today's readers.

Having said that, "Persuasion" is simply the best of the best.

An investment in pleasure.
Any person considering reading PERSUASION by Jane Austen must have several thoughts in mind before beginning. This book is a classic, written by a master. It requires an investment of your time, your patience, your understanding and your attention. It is a book to be savored, not galloped through as if it were a modern fiction bodice ripper. If you are willing to approach this book with an open mind, expecting only to receive pleasure from the written word, you will most likely enjoy it tremendously.

I read a lot of modern romance fiction. One of the things I have noticed on researching a book through the Amazon review system before I buy it is that so often reviewers state that they were able to finish the book in two hours, three hours, four hours. Do they honestly think that is a compliment to the author? One thing I can guarantee here, you will never be able to say that about PERSUASION. Slow down, read for pleasure, read for the pure joy of observing Jane Austen's manner of combining words. Her punctuation style is totally different from modern fiction. It requires that you hold thoughts in your mind long enough for her to have completed her lengthy and complicated sentence structure.

Fans of Jane Austen often say that one specific book is their favorite. My favorite is the one I happen to be reading at the time. I've read them all multiple times and am always able to find nuggets of pleasure either not noticed before or now understood from a fresh perspective. PERSUASION is a book which shows very clearly Miss Austen's feelings on the English class system and how appearances are very often deceiving. Anne Elliot's own family is (in their minds at least) in the top strata of society. In actual fact, they are very small fish in a wide pond and do not amount to much except when within their own corner of England. Anne spends much time with the Musgrove family and all those surrounding that happy, boisterous group. Although lower in the social standings, they are loving, kind and generous, traits which are totally lacking in her own father and older sister. Anne is considered of no consequence to her family yet is loved and admired by those outside her social set who can see her value and worth. This is a story of young love lost with the opportunity to reclaim that love when maturity has given new insights into reasons, details and personalities. This book does not specifically leave you with a "happily ever after" feeling. Anne will never be mistress of Kellynch-hall, probably never even live there again. Captain Wentworth is a career naval officer with all that implies in his future service during wars. And yet, you cannot help but feel that Anne and Frederick will be quietly, calmly, gloriously happy for their remaining days. Partially because of the eight long years of separation which allowed them both to mature and grow and partially because they are just so very right for each other.

Do not begin reading this book expecting a "romance" novel as written today. If you do, you are doomed to be disappointed.

Persuaded
I recently finished reading Jane Austen's Persuasion. It wasn't originally within my reading plans for the year, but I was inspired to read it by both The Lake House and the recent Pride and Prejudice film.

Jane Austen's work is notable for reflecting on the class structure of its times. Written in the early 1800s, at the time of the end of the Napoleonic Wars, England's upper classes are well structured, with rules in place to dictate exactly who has greater stature, and constricting how discourse occurs, and how romance should proceed. In Persuasion, the main character Anne Elliot finds herself ruing the decision she made some 8 years previously, that saw her send away the man she loved, because her family saw that the man had little stature. Well, he went off to fight in the Wars, and has come back, as many have come back, with greatly changed riches and improved stature. Anne finds herself still in love with the man in question, and over time the poor man finds that he has not changed his thoughts either, and they persuade themselves to re-unite, and marry, finally.

Some of what's observed, herein, is how the rules of society are changing to accommodate the newly-rich...and how Austen distinguishes between "gentlemen" (those who act as good people) and those with stature, but then doesn't allow her characters to be guided towards the gentlemen so easily. In today's terms, we would think Anne Elliot foolish for turning her back on love because her parent says the man is not a good match, because of stature, but these things happen even today. So, I think in this respect that the novel remains a good reflection on how poorly people navigate through the minefields of love, and how poorly people can themselves fare when they don't act according to their own true wishes.

This was Austen's last completed novel, as I understand it. It was a little more adult in terms of how it handled its themes, and it surprised me with some of its skill. A major character nearly dies part-way through the story; it happens abruptly, and it is handled as a natural abrupt event in a way that was momentarily shocking...a true sign of skill. Definitely, this is worth a read for fans of novels of this time period.