"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Monday, August 5, 2019

Favorite Characters: Anne Elliot (Persuasion)


Anne is a Jane Austen heroine I return to again and again.  I love her so much – she’s written with such richness of emotion, a beautiful undercurrent that carries through from her introduction straight to the last page.  I don’t know that I’d call her my favorite, since I also have a huge soft for Elinor, Catherine is a delight, and it’s hard to beat Lizzy (better to just not play favorites with Austen characters,) but all the same, she’s an absolute triumph of a heroine (premise spoilers.)

More than anything, I think Anne is a reflection of Austen’s maturity and introspection at the time she wrote her.  Anne is older than any other Austen heroine, but it’s more than just her age.  It’s the fatal mistake made in her youth that has muted the colors of her life ever since:  refusing Wentworth’s proposal of marriage under the “guidance” of Lady Russell.  A family friend persuaded her to turn her back on true love because it wasn’t prudent and Wentworth didn’t live up to the standards of “the Elliot name,” but the promised opportunities for future love never came.  Not even future advantageous matches – at the start of the book, the still-unmarried Anne is 27, considered well past her prime.  Wentworth once nurtured the spark that Anne’s petty, proud family did their best to snuff out, but amid her enduring regret at letting him go, it’s flickering and faltering.

Instead, Anne pours herself into duty.  Elinor and Fanny both have similar aspects of that “thankless workhorse” role, but the type looks slightly different on each character.  On Anne, it looks downtrodden in a bleak, windswept sort of way.  She’s just kind of sleepwalking through trying to keep the family afloat – not sleepwalking in the sense that she’s not invested or that their constant slights don’t hurt her, but in the sense that she can’t quite feel them fully (for a reaching comparison, I’m reminded of the rather dampened reactions of the Knave on Once Upon a Time in Wonderland when he’s without his heart.)  Nothing quite reaches her, not until she hears news of Wentworth’s return into their part of the country (as well as his social elevation via his military service.)

Then, it all hits her, a constant tidal-wave crash against her heart.  At every mention of him, every chance meeting, every outing which holds the possibility of his appearance, it all comes back to her afresh.  She can’t read him well enough to decide what he must think of her now, but she naturally assumes the worst.  It was hard enough to be without him for eight years, but to have him before her every day and yet truly feel that he’s lost to her forever is so much harder.  I find this so affecting because it’s only in part because of how much she continues to love him.  It’s also about her – her regret at the choice she made all those years ago and everything she wishes she could give to take it back and erase the years that followed.  Seeing him is a painful reminder of what she believes she can never have, but it’s also a reminder of her former weakness of conviction and her wish that she could have been better.

And because this is Anne we’re talking about, all this grief, regret, and longing is held down inside of her.  She’s so used to being what everyone needs her to be that no one thinks of her as having concerns of her own.  But even if they weren’t all so obtuse, she still wouldn’t say anything.  She carries her unhappiness like a penace, a private burden that’s hers alone to bear.  While no one in her family would ever think to wonder about Anne’s well-being, I still think she’d fairly die for them to know.  So all this emotion is so silent, so lonely, which makes it even sadder.  Gah, it’s just… my heart.  Austen’s hand here is so deft and so touching.  Team Anne’s Happiness forever.

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