Persuasion

Abstract

Persuasion is the darkest of Jane Austen’s novels; it begins and ends on a note of faint fear, as if the world of the character, whether Sir Walter Elliot or Anne Elliot herself, currently is in balance but may unbalance at any moment. And indeed in the course of the novel we see many lives topple from security and happiness to various states of distress, sometimes to recover, as Anne’s does, but always to remain changed. There is much loss in Persuasion, eight years gone in Anne’s and Frederick’s lives, several dead spouses, and less serious but nonetheless important, the loss of Sir Walter’s place at Kellynch Hall. Persuasion takes as its province people caught in the movements of a shifting, often frightening, society, unstable and therefore treacherous.