Can there be a more appropriate time of the year for me to read a Jane Austen novel? Valentine's day is coming up and this book fits the romantic bill. The book is mostly about love, but it is the better kind of romance novel. It is not all sex and lust. It is about love, about longing for the other half of your heart, about finding the person you are meant to be with. Miss Jane Austen did romance the right way.
Anne Elliot is the main character of this fantastic book. She is one of those characters that do not act like main characters. Miss Anne is the youngest of the three Elliot daughters. The middle sister is married, the oldest takes care of the estate and helps their father, and Anne takes more of a back seat.
At the beginning of the book her father decides to rent out their estate because money is running short. Sir Walter Elliot and Miss Elizabeth Elliot are to move to the exciting city of Bath. Anne has no desire to move with her father and sister. Instead she goes to live with Mary for a few months until a family friend, Mrs. Russell, is back in town to take her in. While visiting Mary she is thrown into the social circle of the Mussgroves. Included in this circle is the man she once loved, Captain Frederick Wentworth.
Eight years previous Captain Wentworth was not a captain, had no money and no land, but had a heart full of love for Anne. Anne was persuaded to break off their engagement because of the lack of money. She has secretly regretted the decision. Seeing him again puts her in quite in a conundrum. Now that he has money and a title Captain Wentworth is looking for a wife to spend his life with. Who Captain Wentworth ends up with is no surprise. It ends the way most romance novels end, but the way it gets there is interesting, exciting, and full of suspense.
Besides the wonderful love story to book contains excellent commentary on the sexes. One of the main points of the novel is whether men or women remember past love longer. A few suitors for Anne in the book lost wives with in a few months of meeting her. The question of whether they can move on that fast is brought to light. During one conversation between Anne and Captain Harville this is discussed at length. Eventually Anne comes to the conclusion that men love "so long as you have an object. I mean that while the your love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that loving the longest, when existence or when hope is gone." Women will be in love even when there is no hope of being with the man they love. Anne after being persuaded to leave the man she loved was still in love with him. She knew that after rejecting Captain Wentworth he may never take her back but even with little to no hope she still loved.
Love is a silly thing. Sometimes we cannot understand it, but Miss Austen did a very good job of explaining lost love and rekindled flames in Persuasion.
Lindsey
