Jane Austen’s novels are my comfort reads.  In her last complete novel, Persuasion, a gentle romance, Austen considers the power of persuasion. Persuasion ruined Anne Elliot’s life, though the gentle heroine blames no one.  Persuaded by her mentor, Lady Russell, who was her late mother’s best friend, that it would be imprudent to marry Captain Wentworth, since he was in the Navy and beneath her in class, Anne, now 27, regrets the decision.

The truth is that eight years ago the opposition beat her down.  Her ridiculous father, Sir Walter Elliot, who likes reading the Baronetage (a book listing baronets), said the match would be “degrading.”  Lady Russell thought it “unfortunate” that a man of Captain Wentworth’s “uncertain profession” and lack of “connexions” would propose marriage.

Anne is confused, incoherent, and desperate to rationalize.  “Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than her own, she could hardly have given him up. – The belief of being prudent, and self-denying principally for his advantage, was her chief consolation, under the misery of a parting…”  Captain Wentworth was hurt and furious:  he left the country.  And now he is a wealthy, successful naval captain – a suitable match.

Single daughters and widows in Regency England are often emotionally, if not financially, dependent on their families.  Anne, a single woman, has and had no autonomy or power.  Now at 27, she  has lost her looks and is on the way to being an old maid, or so people say.  Anne is dutiful, the one who visits and cares for her hypochondriac married younger sister, Mary, when Mary has a headache or an imaginary cold.  Anne also looks after Mary’s unruly children.

This is not the fate of her unmarried older sister, Elizabeth.  By a twist, Elizabeth is her father’s female double, treated more like his younger sister than like a daughter. Father and daughter are always together. Elizabeth, a vain, empty-headed woman, does not have to visit Mary. That is Anne’s duty. Elizabeth is still beautiful – almost a professional beauty – but slightly anxious about marriage now that she is 29.  She has her eye on delightful Mr. Elliot, the relative who will inherit Kellynch after her father’s death, because Sir Walter has no male progeny.  But delightful men are not always the most devoted, as we know from Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility, Mr. Crawford in Mansfield Park, and Wickham in Pride and Prejudice,

Very little of the novel is set at Kellynch (the Elliots’ home. Travel is very much part of the characters’ lives. Travel to Bath and Lyme gives the characters more scope for action.  Anne’s father and Elizabeth move to an apartment in Bath, where they parade around in all their beauty, while Anne is taking care of Mary at Upcross. Here she encounters Captain Wentworth. Anne barely dares to look at him at first. He has not forgiven her.  And yet he is always swiftly, discreetly helping her. He assists her into a carriage when she is tired; when Mary’s unruly little son climbs on her back and won’t get off, he swoops down and removes him.

Captain Wentworth is courteous, but when the Musgroves visit Lyme, she attracts two eligible men, one of them Mr. Elliot. Anne’s rivals, Louisa and Henrietta Musgrove, Mary’s young, vivacious sisters-in-law, are perfect marriage candidates for Captain Wentworth.  Anne assumes that he will marry Louisa, the liveliest of the two. 

The marriage plot proceeds. In Bath, Anne once again meets Captain Wentworth and Mr. Elliot.  But we also contrast Anne’s not-particularly-enviable position with that of her old school friend, Mrs. Smith, an impecunious widow, who lives in a tiny room, crippled and poor.  Having lost all her money and marital status, she entertains herself with gossip delivered by her nurse and the maid.  Anne does not approve of gossip, but Mrs. Smith’s correspondence backs up her experiences with charming but devious Mr. Elliot. Anne’s instinct was right: she had not entirely liked him.

In this perfect novel, Austen portrays a mature heroine: Austen’s other heroines are in their late teens or early twenties.  Certainly it is delightful to read about a woman blooming in her late twenties.  If only Austen had lived longer, she might have written about even older women. That is not, however, in the tradition of the 19th-century novel.