December 4, 2012

  • Persuasion - Jane Austen

    Over the past few years I have become a well read Austenite.  Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and now Persuasion.  I started Emma, never finished.  Though, I know the characters and story seeing as how it's quite famous.  

    Everyone seems to like P&P.  However, I feel it is quite predictable, and Elizabeth is maybe my least favorite heroin.  Elinor and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility are more to my liking.  The fact that it doesn't have the romantic fantasy ending (at least for one character) makes the novel higher on my list.  Finally, a character who can take the love blinders off and see sense.  Fanny in Mansfield Park is supposedly the least favorite heroin.  I love her dearly.  

    I was excited when I picked up the paperback of Persuasion for $3.00.  I have been wanting to read it.  When I opened the book and found a dictionary of words used in English Literature I thought I was in heaven.  I read two pages before I could tear myself away to start the novel.  I was worried at the beginning because the characters introduced were not people I would want to know.  A few chapters in I realized it wasn't really their story, and I was rewarded with my favorite heroin thus far.  Anne Elliot.  The sister.  The helper.  A woman who was forever loyal in love to the man whom circumstance made her turn down.  A woman who everyone loved, but no one valued.  

    Jane Austen was never one to issue gasps and surprises in my reading.  That changed in the middle of the night last week.  It was the middle of a sentence, and the end of it almost made me drop the book.  Fast forward two sentences and my gasp was so loud, I thought it would wake my daughter.  Bravo, Jane!  Way to make it a page turner.  There were still the typical chapters it was amazing I kept my eyes open to get to the next page, but I had two separate occasions when I couldn't put the book down until the wee hours.  

    My only problem with the book is not really Austen's fault.  The ending gives someone like me this destructive hope that it might happen in real life.  I have enough trouble moving on as it is.  This book is so fiercely about the inability to move on, and the unchanging quality of love that I feel it must be so.  One day, I will end up with that one person whom I cannot be with now (Though this person has changed a few times).  No, Leah.  You are not Anne.  And he (neither one of them) is not Captain Frederick Wentworth.  

    Leah K.