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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