Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: In Chapter XXII, Anne dismisses the pleasures of Bath by saying "I am no card-player." How does Austen characterize the society and amusements of Bath in the novel? Why doesn't Anne "fit" here--and how does she learn the truth beneath its veneer of refined respectability? (note: Austen lived in Bath briefly and hated it)
Q2: In Austen's day, letters were vitally important as carries of news, friendship, and scandal. Austen's first novels were actually written in the form of letters (but only one, Lady Susan, survives). What role do letters play in this novel, and why are they able to do things that normal speech and interaction are incapable of?
Q3: In Chapter XXIII Anne and Captain Harville have a famous conversation about the nature of men and women: why is this conversation one that could only be written in the Romantic period? Additionally, why is it important for Wentworth to overhear this conversation?
Q4: Though Persuasion is many things, how is it also a novel passionately concerned about the education of women? How are the various women in the book educated in right and wrong ways by the end of the novel? How, too, might this novel be a way of educating young women who read it (Austen had many young nieces that she often wrote for)?
2. Letters play an important role in this novel because all of the characters are too stubborn to actually listen to another person or hear their side of things. Basically, most of the characters are dreadfully passive aggressive. Thus, when writing a letter, it forces the other person to hear your side and not be able to interrupt while you explain and say everything you mean to. Wentworth had to write the letter to Anne because there was no other way to effectively communicate exactly what it was he wanted to say.
ReplyDelete4. One of the biggest take aways from this novel that a young woman reading it could get is that, regardless of age or "wisdom," someone else's idea of "what is good for you" may not always be accurate. Sure, Lady Russell valued Anne above the other daughters, but she eventually (after 8 long years) ate her own words when it came to actually making her happy. The other Elliot sisters weren't exactly happy, and they were living lives that others had essentially told them they ought to live to carry on a legacy or to continue to be happy in their current setting instead of actually being happy in a loving relationship. Young women reading this may also be filled with a sense of courage, as Anne is definitely the most level-headed individual in the book and we essentially hear the entire novel being told about her third-person
Great responses...though I don't see letters as showing merely a one-sided conversation (except with Mary, though all her conversations are this way!). Life was lived in public at this time, so people could rarely say what they meant or ever speak in private. Look at how much trouble Anne and Wentworth having talking to one another with all Bath watching. A letter was the only way people could speak privately and intimately in this society. It was also the one freedom women were allowed--to write and receive letters. A man could break the taboo of respectability and pour forth love to a woman, as Wentworth does. So the novel lets us in on these intimate conversations, which is the hallmark of a novel: we get to see the inner life of our characters, which would otherwise be a closed book to us.
Deleteq1. I think that by saying she's not a "cardplayer," Anne is suggesting that she's not so wealthy and spoiled that she has to resort to spending her time playing games and not contributing to a family or household. She had lived in Bath previously when she was put through a women's training course.
ReplyDeleteq3. In the conversation, Anne suggests that "Women love the longest" but Hargrave disagrees and says that men love long after the women have moved on. This is a direct reference, from Austen of course, to the relationship between Anne and Wentworth. Anne is implying that if she were to ever love a man that she would love him forever even though he wouldn't. The response to that, though it didn't come from Wentworth, is the response that we see in the novel later on; Wentworth loves Anne long after she has supposedly moved on. Wentworth hears this conversation because Austen wants us to know that he is beginning to see that Anne does still care for him. He's also in the loop and realizes that if Anne feels this way then it would make sense that she would still love him even after all this time and all the unkind things he's said.
Great responses...this conversation is Austen's sly way of entering into the age-old conversation of women's fidelity which stretches back to Gawain and Chaucer (from Brit I). Men don't trust women because the books men wrote make them look faithless and disloyal; yet no one let women write their own stories until now, and Anne is an early portrait of a woman who gives up rather than "play the game" of marriage. If she can't love on her own terms, she won't love at all. And for a woman of that time, that decision had pretty bleak consequences.
DeleteQ2: The characters of the novel are very polite, never wanting to offend or say the wrong thing. Letters can convey more frank and intimate conversations. When Mary sends Anne a letter, it is the first time we hear about Louisa and Benwick's engagement. Had it been announced verbally between characters, there likely would have been a great deal of holding back true feelings and trying to spare the (extremely, maddeningly) delicate characters in this novel. The letter from Mr. Elliot to Mr. Smith is used as a segue to reveal to Anne his true nature. Because these are very emotionally repressed people without a modicum of forwardness, letters allow these feelings to be introduced into the novel.
ReplyDeleteQ4: Every time I read an Austen novel, I'm always disappointed that it is about matchmaking and marriage...again. I suppose this is all women looked forward to at the time, so I'll try not to be too judgmental. Anne's sisters Mary and Elizabeth have been educated the "wrong" way. Mary is almost useless, and perpetually bored. She has married into a "good" family without regard to her affections (or lack thereof) for her husband. Elizabeth is very vain, and also seeking to marry someone of high status. Anne is reluctant to marry simply for status/money, and is especially wary of the charming Mr. Elliot. Because this is an Austen novel, of course Mr. Elliot is a horrible person, and Captain Wentworth is wealthy now anyway, so the two can relax in comfort for the rest of their lives. I suppose this could be a lesson to Austen's nieces that good things come to people who do things for the right reasons.
Great responses...but remember, love and marriage was a woman's world at this time (and really, are our novels today really about anything different? Most of them, anyway, since that's what most people want to read about!). But Austen is never so black and white about anything: she's satirizing her society's values about the marriage market, and note that Anne takes no part in it herself. She is a "romantic" in that she simply wants to live with truth and sincerity or not at all. Eliot isn't evil, but he's not 'real' either--he's a veneer, reflecting what he thinks others want to see. And Anne doesn't want to relax--she wants to travel and experience life, which she can now do for the first time in her life with Wentworth. As Mrs. Croft says early in the book, "we none of us want to be in calm waters all of our lives."
ReplyDeleteQ2: Letters serve as an avenue through which Austen's characters can express themselves freely, because outsiders have no influence on the writer's thoughts. Wentworth is finally able to explain his feelings - something he could never do in person. Mary's communications, although not much different in writing than in person, carry the news that completely changes the entire novel. I am no Jane Austen scholar, but this pattern was also present in Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Darcy could only tell Elizabeth how he really felt through a letter. Additionally, Mrs. Gardiner, a somewhat minor character, delivered life-changing news through a letter. It's definitely an interesting connection!
ReplyDeleteQ4: Austen wants women to understand that life is so much more than social obligations, marriage, and children. If that is all a young woman pursues, she never builds her own personality or develops her own interests. When her husband dies and her children leave, what will be left? I think a great example in this novel is Mrs. Smith, who Anne describes as "living in a very humble way, unable to even afford to even afford herself the comfort of a servant, and of course almost excluded from society" (107). Mrs. Smith, who was once married to a very affluent man before his death, is very dear to Anne. Her attributes and former status, however, were dependent upon her husband's life. Now that he is gone, she has nothing. I felt very sad for her. I think Austen uses Mrs. Smith to point out that in this type of society, even a woman as kind and admirable as Mrs. Smith cannot have a fulfilling life.
Ashley Bean
ReplyDelete2. Interaction is under strict scrutiny at all times in this time period. People assumed that Anne was about to be engaged to Mr. Elliot just from seeing them together a lot, therefor such encounters should be carefully limited, or else the rumors fly and could break up a perfectly could friendship, or otherwise. Letters are more private, you can say exactly what you want to say and hopefully, only the person it is addressed to will read it. Letters can be secret, like the one we see Wentworth give to Anne. The letter was the only way to truly get across what he meant, since they had been trying to give each other a clue as to how they felt in person with no such luck.
3. Since women are more or less second class citizens at the time, there is no worry for men being truly angry or offended at her statement. It is especially important for Wentworth to overhear it because this was the final straw for him to finally communicate his feelings. It snapped him into reality. They could have kept floating in this limbo where neither was sure of how the other one felt for months if this conversation hadn’t happened. This conversation communicated that deep down, Anne was truly afraid that Wentworth had forgotten her in the eight years apart, while she held on to those feelings and memories.
2. Letters were usually written and they portrayed a type of honesty. In a letter you were no longer wearing the mask you had put on to hide from whomever you were hiding. Letters allowed us to see what was truly going on is a characters life. Also, letters are the only way women could communicate to their loved ones. Letters are very intimate as well. It created the sense that you are really within the character.
ReplyDelete3. This conversation was very popular in the Romantic period because the past stories were of women who are not virtuous. It also presents a great idea to Wentworth that Anne has had plenty of time to sit and long for his love. It kind of showed that Anne was sitting around waiting for Wentworth, putting that idea in his head. Also, it defends women from being forever portrayed as a harlot.
Karlyn Hedges
ReplyDelete2. Letters are an intimate form of communication, and are especially useful in giving men and women a method of getting to know each other in a time when this was very hard. I think the most significant letter in this novel is the one that Wentworth gives to Anne telling her of his true feelings. Throughout the entire book they hadn't had a chance to really talk and get their feelings out in the open. The letter allowed them to do this.
3. This conversation shows that women are important and have strong feelings too, which are also important. It challenges past ideas from other literature that suggest the opposite: that women are fickle, not constant, and able to move on from love very easily, which Anne knows is not the case. It is important that Wentworth heard the conversation because it gave him the hint that Anne was on the same page as him when it came to their feelings for each other.
Q2: In this novel, letters are used to show how certain characters truly feel. As in the case of Mr. Elliot, we may have never known how much of a chum-guzzling sleazebag he really was without Mrs. Smith’s letter. Anne and Captain Wentworth may have continued their dance of maybe-I-like-you-maybe-I-don’t-like-you until the very end of time if Wentworth hadn’t taken the easy way out and written the letter. Letters were kind of like their version of text messaging, except way more private. It’s almost funny that an entire society so hung up on watching every move another person makes is also the same society that also declares that you can’t read someone else’s letter because it’s private. But because of this weird, society-approved loophole, people could be honest so long as it was in letter form. People knew that a random stranger wasn’t going to just read their letter, and it reflects in the things that they say. Letters can also be composed when a person is calm and has their head together, whereas in person you either have to wing it or try to remember that speech you wrote exclusively for this occasion.
ReplyDeleteQ4: Persuasion often mentions school when it comes to the education of one of its female characters, but it’s a school that teaches a woman how to be pretty, dainty, and basically how to look good so your husband looks good. It doesn’t teach a woman how to survive in the real world, and that knowledge is often just left for the woman to discover on her own through experience, usually too late to save her. Mary knew where she stood on the societal ladder, and that to that ladder she was better than the family she was marrying into, but she had no idea how things were really going to happen. She had never been taught how to be a good wife or even how to be a good mother to her own children. It wasn’t that she was stupid, it was just that she was uneducated about the real world. Even Anne had to learn important lessons about life from personal experience and mistakes. She loved Wentworth, but the people in her life that she looked up to and saw as knowing what they were doing told her not to marry him. Her lack of experience – both in her own opinion and in standing up for what she wanted – caused her to doubt herself and eventually buckle underneath their will, even when it turned out that her decision had been the best one. It just goes to show the young women who read this that to survive they have to strive. Depending on someone else to make the big decisions for you is a big mistake, and while some things you’re going to have to learn on your own, it doesn’t hurt to look around and get info where you can.
Elyse Marquardt
ReplyDeleteQ3: This conversation is essential to the Romantic attitudes which have been carried throughout the entire book. It's like we discussed in class: Anne is not allowed to say her emotions outright (very 19th century), so she expresses her deep, pent-up feelings indirectly to her love interest by talking to someone else in front of him. The Romantic era was all about getting your most intense emotions out there for the whole world to see (usually in a declarative way like poetry), and Anne is doing this by reciting this speech to an audience so that the center of her world (Wentworth) will understand what she feels. It is essential that he overhear the conversation so that he can get her point and respond to it accordingly.
Q4: This novel focuses a lot on the education of women in very subtle ways. It perhaps focuses more on the way that the women RECEIVE that education, rather than how it is presented to them - for they've all gotten the same teachings. For instance, Henryetta and Louisa received the education by taking it as "Ways to Snag a Dude 101." Mary took it as "How To Play the Part of a Well-To-Do but Discontented Housewife." And Anne took all the intellectual and edifying parts and discarded all the flippant, silly parts of it, so that she turns out as a well-rounded and practically-minded woman that several men are eager to marry. This book educated the young women who read it by showing the contrasts between girls and women: Louisa and Anne, for instance, or perhaps a younger and easily influenced Anne and an older, aristocratic Lady Russell. Readers are shown several different examples of the women whom they could become, and they are given their choice of which one they'd like to be.
Elyse Marquardt