Tag Archives: Jane Austen

I Am a Janeite

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I did not intend to become a Janeite.

I had read all of Austen’s books over and over, with the exception of Northanger Abbey, which was too light for me. But when we moved to a dark, gray-skied city where the sun shone only wanly and it snowed in May, I reread Northanger Abbey.

And then I attended a Jane Austen Society meeting.

It was a tiny meeting, unlike the huge Jane Austen Society conferences of today, which, as I understand it, are fueled by films based on her books. There were only eight or nine charming old-fashioned women at the society meeting, all of whom knew Jane by heart.

These kind old women served scones and tea, and then passed out xeroxed copies of a play of Pride and Prejudice.  I don’t remember what scene we read, but I was assigned multiple tiny parts.  In retrospect, I would have liked to read the role of Lydia or Mrs. Bennet, because both are flighty and ridiculous, and I like a good laugh.

Reading aloud the play was fun, even soothing. And after the meeting, the youngest Janeite (perhaps in her thirties or forties) chatted with me about how much she’d learned from these older women, who, as she said, “knew everything about Jane Austen.”

And that’s how I became a Janeite, though I didn’t hear the term Janeite till much later.

. FACTS ABOUT MY RELATIONSHIP WITH JANE

My three favorites of Jane’s books are, in no particular order, Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Emma.

My favorite hero is Captain Wentworth of Persuasion.  He is the sexiest man in Austen’s books, and I love it that Anne got him back.  Good for her and him!

How Jane Austen’s views on persuasion are not dissimilar to Lady Russell’s. Jane Austen and Lady Russell both advised young women on the subject of marriage. In Persuasion, Lady Russell persuades Anne Elliot to turn down her suitor’s proposal, because he is poor and has no rank.

And Jane Austen, in real life, wrote a tactful letter to her niece Fanny to dissuade her from accepting the proposal of a young man, whom Jane liked very much but did not think was right for Fanny.

Jane writes tactfully:  “Your own feelings & none but your own, should determine such an important point. – So far however as answering your question, I have no scruple. – I am perfectly convinced that supposing you were to marry now, would be sufficient for his happiness; – but when I think how very, very far it is from a Now, & take everything that may be, into consideration, I dare not say, ‘Determine to accept him.’ The risk is too great for you, unless your own Sentiments prompt it -“

My favorite Austen heroine is Anne Elliot in Persuasion.  She is sensible, tactful, pretty, and capable, but doomed to be an unloved daughter and spinster after she is monstrously persuaded by her mentor, Lady Russell, to reject her suitor Captain Wentworth because of his poverty and rank then.

Not all people think Lady Russell was monstrous: in fact, they feel that she was looking out for motherless Anne.  But Anne’s concession to Lady Russell led to eight unhappy years, until by chance she met Captain Wentworth again – and now, ironically, he is rich and a captain.

As a 21st-century reader I prefer the delicate style of Persuasion to the broader comedy of Pride and Prejudice, but I return to P&P because Lizzie Bennet is a modern woman, and, in a way, I struggle to understand Anne.

Is Anne Elliot on the Shelf? Down and Out in Spinsterdom

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In Jane Austen’s last novel, Persuasion, we have a fairy tale structure. The heroine, Anne Elliot, once beautiful, smart, and in love, rejected the proposal of the man she loves. Eight years later, having been persuaded by family and friends not to marry Captain Wentworth, she is still on the shelf when he returns to England, successful and rich.

And being on the shelf is such a peculiar state for women in the English novel. Perhaps these women are not quite spinsters, but they ae very close to it. They help out at home, try to balance the family’s budget, have no prospects, and are stricken when they run into their ex-lovers in social situations. But it is clear that Anne Elliott would not be on the shelf if there were suitable men in the neighborhood. She is the perpetual aunt, but she could run a corporation. That’s how smart she is.

Spinsters in novels are sharp and intelligent.  Some eventually marry, some do not.  They don’t choose to be spinsters: somehow it just happens. Dickens’ novels teem with spinsters, Miss Havisham, a bitter, jilted woman in Great Expectations, and Miss Lucretia Tox in Dombey and Son, an aging woman, rather nice when you get to know her, and ever hopeful of marrying Mr. Dombey, who doesn’t notice her at all.

The novella that breaks my heart is Storm Jameson’s A Day off. A “kept woman” slightly past her expiration date is down and out in London, out of money, getting older, dumped by her latest, and she steals the purse of an old woman who sits down at her table in a tea room. This novella is very painful to read, because what are the options for her?  Will she return to being a shop girl, or is she too old for that?

There’s something magical about Persuasion. Anne is a kind of Cinderella, with her older sister and father (wrong sex, I know) ignoring her and in general treating her poorly. But she becomes a fairy tale princess, pursued by good and bad men, when her bloom returns to her, on a trip away from home, and the good man prevails. Of course, in Austen’s Persuasion, there is a marriage plot, so Anne will be spared the fate of Miss Tox or the unnamed narrator of A Day off.

Writing this, I realize how odd it is Austen, a spinster, a woman on the shelf, loves a love story so much. Love can save or destroy women’s lives in so many of Austen’s novels. Wickham in Pride and Prejudice elopes with Lydia, with no intention of marrying her, and Darcy comes to the rescue, because he is in love with Lizzie, Lydia’s sister. So love can save or destroy women: Austen is aware of that.

The Daily Jane Austen Delivery

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My husband brought in the mail and gave me a package, then said with a straight face, “This is your daily Jane Austen delivery.”

“How did you know? Which one is it then?”

You see, there is a Jane Austen deficit at my house so I had to order a new copy of Emma. I’m not quite a Janeite – I don’t belong to the Jane Austen Society – but I’ve loved her since my teens when I carried The Modern Library Complete Austen Novels everywhere one summer.

“Is it Emma?” he guessed.

A lovely Vintage classics edition

How many copies of Emma do you need? Two? Three? It depends on the condition, and how often you read it. (I’ve read it 10 times.) I have my Norton from college, but the paper is tan and fragile; I also have a well-read paperback with fabulous footnotes and an introduction; and a cheap flex-bound paperback I picked up at a used bookstore. (It’s not as nice as you might think, except for the flexible cover), So you could say I go through a lot of Emmas.

Another question:  how many copies of Pride and Prejudice do you need?  At the moment I only have one, and it struck me that it might fall apart at any moment. I had to order a new paperback to make up for the condition of the old orange Penguin I’ve depended on for years. (I’ve read it six times.)

And how many bodice ripper covers do you need? Well, Austen’s heroines are not the bodice-ripper type, but some of the old designs are funny. Take a look at this Emma.

Sometimes I donate old Jane Austen books to sales.  In fact, that’s why I have a deficit.  I gave away a circa-80s Oxford because there was a small tear in the cover. It was necessary to buy a new one.

Is there a virtual JASNA now? If there is, perhaps I could tune in to some of the talks and the papers read.

And if you want to know where the phrase Janeites came from, read Rudyard Kipling’s moving short story, “The Janeites.”

Brontë vs. Austen: “Emily” and “Sense and Sensibility”

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You know there’s something wrong with the culture when you find a movie on Netflix about Emily Brontë.

The notion horrified me.  But maybe…? I’m desperate for a good movie.

I did not watch the entire 2-minute trailer, but it resembled a Jane Austen film:  twirling, laughing, emaciated sisters, bonnets on and bonnets off, Emily alone with a man….  Good God! 

And you see, there’s this:  Emily would not have been a movie-goer.  She and her sisters were writers from childhood and would have written or directed their own movie if they’d wanted one.  Branwell preferred drink and opium to writing after a certain point, so he might have gone to the movies – on drugs!

If you don’t want to watch Emily, and I definitely don’t, you can see the latest adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. I watched only part of the trailer but noticed the following:  the actresses wear their hair loose, instead of up, and the film has a non-Austen sexualized atmosphere:  sisters confiding in bed, having pillow fights, and then strangely cuddling in bed, getting out of bed to take walks in a ravishing landscape and, in Marianne’s case, meet her beloved, and Elinor barely touching her boyfriend’s hands, an intensely sexualized moment .  It is mostly a bonnets-off movie! I’m all for sex and bonnets off but I want the book more.

“Will there never be an end of Austen and Bronte films?”  asked my soulmate.

“Never.”

I will wait to watch Sense and Sensibility on Netflix.

The Paperback Road Trip

Road trip reading is not restricted to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road or Fanny Trollope’s Domestic Habits of Americans.

I prefer Jane Austen. And I always take a rather scruffy paperback.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman on a road trip needs an inexpensive, even disposable, paperback that will fit in a purse, backpack, or bike pannier.  She needs to leave the “nice” editions on the shelves, because road copies get smudged and dog-eared.

Jane Austen’s novels are not travel books, but all the heroines except Emma travel.  They ride in carriages and other quaint 19th-century vehicles to London, Bath,  Derbyshire, villages, and huge country houses.  

In  Persuasion, Austen’s sexiest book, Anne Elliot, the unmarried heroine, is constantly traveling.  She blooms on a visit to her sister Mary in the village of Kellynch. Later, when Anne joins her spendthrift father and pompous older sister in Bath, a romantic spark is reignited between Anne and Captain Wentworth, who were in love seven years ago.

One of the more attractive cheap editions is the Modern Library Torchbearers paperback above ($7.00). The introduction is by Uzma Jalzluddin, and more important, it has an attractive cover!

You should also check out the cheap Bantams and Signet editions of Persuasion in the $5 – $6 price range. 

Signet edition

2 Pride and Prejudice.  The Bantam mass market paperback ($5.95) is plain but sturdy.   It  lacks an introduction and notes, but who needs them on a road trip?

The mass market Signet paperback of P&P  ($5.35) is comparable, but it has an introduction by Margaret Drabble and an Afterword by Eloise Janes.

Modern Library edition (2001)

3 Emma.  A 2001 Modern Library paperback  ($9) strays from Modern Library’s drab trademark brown cover by substituting a flashy orange cover with a charming illustration by Jillian Ditner.  It also has an introduction by A. Walton Litz, notes, and a reading guide.

The Signet edition ($5.41) has an introduction by Margaret Drabble and an Afterword by Sabrina Jeffries.  

Bantam

The Bantam edition ($4.65)  has no frills, but does the job.

4 Mansfield Park.  The Wordsworth edition ($3.95) is the cheapest.  This budget publisher always provides an introduction and notes.

Wordsworth edition

If you want to pay a few dollars more, the Penguin edition ($7.95) has an introduction by Kathryn Sutherland and notes.

5 Sense and Sensibility,  I broke the paperback rule when I discovered the Puffin in Bloom hardback edition  ($11) of Sense and Sensibility.  This is smaller than most paperbacks.  No frills – no introduction or notes – but it survived the trip, and it is now one of my prized go-to editions. 

6 Northanger Abbey. The Dover Thrift edition seems to be out-of-print, but you can buy used editions online for $5 and up.

Be sure to compare prices of Signet, Penguin, Bantam, Modern Library, Wordsworth, and Puffin in Bloom before you pick out the right road book for you.

Great Fall Reads: Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” & Robert Macfarlane’s “Is a River Alive?”

On a recent vacation, I was fascinated by Fanny Burney’s Cecilia, a smart 1,003- page novel about the perils of being rich and female in the 18th century. 

And then Burney pointed me in the direction of Jane Austen, when, on page 930, she repeated the phrase PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (all caps) three times. 

Yes, Jane Austen took the clever title from Burney’s Cecilia. 

Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s most popular novel, and  perhaps it is her best. Austen herself said modestly that P&P was “rather too light & bright & sparkling,” but her fans are enraptured by the romantic comedy and witty dialogue.  

She borrows tropes from her favorite 18th-century novels and adapts then neatly to fit domestic fiction.  But she is never conventional:  she veers off course during love scenes, or, in Mansfield Park, goes so far as to make Edmund, who is the closest thing to a hero in the book, so indifferent to Fanny that we almost prefer his rakish rival.  In P&P, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are so mismatched that Elizabeth’s father and her older sister can’t believe it when she says they’re engaged.

In a way, I know what they mean, but it is all part of the comedy. Austen’s heroes are often deeply flawed.  Darcy insults Elizabeth at a ball, deplores her silly mother’s character, and later during a marriage proposal adds that he tried to resist his love because of her disgraceful family.  How do they get together? You have to read the book.

The Concept of a River’s Personhood

 Robert Macfarlane’s new book, Is a River Alive?, explains the concept of rivers as living beings.  Part nature writing, part travel writing, part science, this beautiful book is a lyrical description of rivers and their need for protection.   On his journeys to three countries he “meets” rivers and converses with scientists and activists. He paints a convincing portrait of the personhood of rivers.   He even refers to rivers by the relative pronoun, who.

I had no idea there was a Rights of Nature movement.  In many countries, rivers are now protected by law. Macfarlane says that a city council in Sussex in England “has acknowledged the rights and legal personhood of the River Ouse.”   

I picked up Macfarlane’s book because of a near-total fish kill in two rivers in the Midwest.

 A year and a half ago a fertilizer spill in southwest Iowa  killed over 750,000 fish in the East Nishnabotna River in Iowa and the Missouri River in Missouri.  It was a near-total fish kill in both states.

I understand that the rivers will come back – but this was a tragedy. As far as I know, no new measures have been legislated to protect the rivers.

Dandelion Wine & Rereading “Persuasion”

I have never made dandelion wine, but I read part of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine years ago. (I was a fan of The Martian Chronicles and disappointed that DW wasn’t science fiction.) The dandelions are blooming here and I wondered whether you use the flowers or the stems. However, I’m not sanguine about boiling dandelions when so many weed killers are squirted in the neighborhood.

Here are the ingredients and a link to the recipe online. It looks simple.

INGREDIENTS FOR DANDELION WINE

  • 1 quart yellow dandelion blossoms, well rinsed
  • 1 gallon boiling water
  • 8 cups white sugar
  • 1 orange, sliced
  • 1 lemon slice
  • 1 (.18 ounce) package wine yeast

I would recommend MUCH soaking as well as rinsing!

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS POST-MODERN BOOK COVER?

The Janeites have been oddly quiet in their celebration of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday. I expected bonnet-sightings, buddy reads, and Jane Austen-inspired fashions.

Last year I reread four of Austen’s novels, so I am temperate, too; it’s too soon to reread her complete works. And in Captain Nemo’s view, that is a good thing. He cannot understand the extent of the fandom. And it can be over-the-top: costumes are worn at the revival of the 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice. At my age, I would dress as Mrs. Bates, which I might do by flinging a shawl around the shoulders and wearing a cap (but all I have is a Fordham baseball cap).

Anyway, my quiet celebration consists of rereading Persuasion. Anne Elliot is my favorite Jane Austen heroine.

And this is my favorite quote in Austen’s novels. Anne wittily says:

“My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”

“You are mistaken,” said he gently, “that is not good company, that is the best.”

Mr. Elliot is not, however, the romantic hero: that would be Captain Wentworth, who, ideally, would be played by Clark Gable or Gary Cooper, depending on your interpretation. I see Joel McCrea as Mr. Elliot.

Every year I enjoy Anne’s company more, though I don’t approve of her turning down Captain Wentworth when she was 20. (She was persuaded by family and mentor.) She tries to persuade herself, and us, that she was right: it is better to be persuadable, she thinks, than rash like Louisa Musgrave, a young woman who endangers her life by impetuously jumping off the steps at Lyme despite Captain Wentworth’s warning.

But the present is all that matters. It is a pleasure to see Anne bloom again in the company of two suitors. She is in charge of her own life now.

TGITh! and have a good weekend.

A Year in Reading: SF, A Victorian Novella, Who Will Inherit Carlice Abbey?, & the Price of “Pride and Prejudice”


Books don’t let you down, people let you down.

And that’s why books are important. Forget AI: who needs that when we have books? Deeply flawed human beings moonlight as poets, playwrights, and novelists, and sibyl-like fall into a trance to chart the nuances of our changing culture. They mourn or satirize the economy, waste and conspicuous consumption, hatred and schadenfreude, and the extreme violence that destroys our already dying (dead?) planet.

Every year I sift my book journal for trends in my reading. My saddest interest in 2024 is the culture of “forgetting”: the blasé acceptance of climate change; a new feminist backlash, the elimination of American Studies and Women’s Studies departments from universities; the dearth of nature as industrial farming takes over every inch of land; life-threatening battles over lands, oil, and estates; and an earnest reminder that, even in our favorite Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer novels, money and marriage are intertwined.

These are not necessarily the best novels I’ve read this year, but they are the most memorable. I hope you enjoy reading about them!

The End of Civilization

Science fiction writers often embed controversial warnings about the future of Earth in their narratives. That is certainly true of the controversial Philip Wylie, who was put under house arrest in 1945 after the publication of his short story, “The Paradise Crater” (1945). In this story, he revealed information about the atom bomb a few months before the U.S. tested it successfully at Alamogordot.

Wylie’s last science fiction novel, The End of the Dream (1972), is a long, fascinating political rant about an ecological holocaust that decimates all but a tiny percentage of the population. Not only could it happen here, it has happened during heat bulb events in India. (The heat bulb is not the catalyst in Wylie’s novel, though.) The End of the Dream is a bit lopsided, but it is the most fascinating, utterly weird book I’ve read this year. And it’s a wonder Wylie didn’t get arrested for this book too. Well, he died. And, fortunately, the book is in print: it has been reissued by the University of Nebraska Press. (You can read my post about Wylie here.)

This fall, I was also fascinated by Frank Baker’s novel The Birds, a prototype for Daphne du Maurier’s macabre 1952 short story, “The Birds,” which was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds. .

The elderly narrator of Baker’s novel recalls the days before civilization fell. As a bored young insurance clerk in London, he spent much of his time writing poetry at his desk. One day he looks out the window and notices a flock of strange birds flying over Trafalgar Square. An old woman tries to feed them: a bird attacks her and follows her into the underground, where she is pecked to death in a phone booth. It turns out she was not a simple old woman who fed the birds but a procurer. The birds kill many people: some are simply in the way, others seem to be killed because of some egregious deed.

The birds get more aggressive as time goes on. Sometimes a single bird detaches itself from the flock and follows one person everywhere, even tapping at the person’s windows at night. This happens first to the narrator’s mother, then to him. It is terrifying and embarrassing. When the narrator meets Olga, a Russian immigrant , she explains that she had been followed by a bird, too, but you can get rid of the shadow bird if you look at it, let it do what it wants, and don’t show fear.

Without the assistance of the outsider (Olga, the immigrant), he would not have survived. And the birds bring about the ruin and collapse of civilization. (You can read the rest of the post here.)

Both Frank Baker and Philip Wylie are telling us what may or may not be true: that few will survive the end of civilization, whether wrought by corrupt technology or human greed.

A Pastoral Novella

Cousin Phillis, by Elizabeth Gaskell, a novella. In her gorgeous, lyrical style, Gaskell describes the unspoiled countryside before the railroads were built. The narrator, Paul Manning, is reminiscing about his youth and his happy times at Hope Farm. He left home at 17 to work to as a clerk for an engineer who planned railway lines. Not knowing what to do in his leisure, Paul decided to visit some cousins he had never met. Their home, Hope Farm, is idyllic, and his contact with the pastoral life balances Paul’s relationship with the industrial revolution.

Certainly this mellow farm will soothe even modern readers. Mrs. Holman prepares delicious fresh food, the like of which Paul has never tasted, while Mr. Holman, a minister and farmer, expands his mind with lively conversation. And most important is Paul’s beautiful, kind, scholarly cousin who knows Latin and Greek and is learning Italian. She is far more intellectual than he, but the two become close friends, almost like brother and sister. And then a romantic interest is introduced… Consider this a utopia compared to the previous two dystopian novels.

This year I was keeping my eye on the pastoral countryside – what’s left of it!

Who Deserves Carlice Abbey?

Birthday Party by C. H. B. Kitchin is perfect light reading for fans of Dicken’s Bleak House and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (a strange duo, I know). Published in 1938, this brilliant novel is the story of Carlice Abbey, a crumbling country house with a beautiful garden. There are four narrators, the elderly Isabel Carlice, who grew up at Carlice Abbey, her silly sister-in-law, Dora, her radical nephew, Ronald, who will inherit when he turns 21, and Stephen Payne, Dora’s lover. What begins as a cozy English novel turns unexpectedly creepy as we learn more about each character’s feelings about the house. Who will inherit the house? Consider this a “light” horror novel.

The Price of “Pride and Prejudice”

Everyone loves Jane Austen’s iconic Pride and Prejudice, but it wasn’t till a fifth reading that I made an unromantic observation: everything comes with a price tag. The heroine Elizabeth Bennet fiercely resists the lure of lucre when she turns down a marriage proposal from Mr. Collins, a ridiculous but well-off vicar. But she is shocked when her close friend, Charlotte, a woman somewhat older and nearer-her- marriage-expiration-date, agrees to marry this absurd little man. The truth is, Charlotte marries for money and a home.

Perhaps Elizabeth could afford to turn down Mr. Collins because the beaux just keep courting her. But Austen is satirical about the love of money and we certainly praise Elizabeth for turning down two suitors with money. But in their village society, every income and/or estate is analyzed down to the last penny. Mrs. Bennet is joyous when Mr. Bingley, a well-to-do young man, rents Netherfield and brings a small party, among them his best friend Darcy and his own two sisters. Mrs. Bennet hopes fantastically to marry off one of her daughters to Bingley. And how about Darcy, the rudest, handsomest rich man ever? Lizzie despises him and yet…

Most people read this as pure romance. But to me, the most romantic of Austen’s novels is Persuasion. The price tag dominates the Elliot family values as well, but the quiet heroine, Anne Elliot, suffers silently until in her late 20s she expresses her personal views.

Dead or Alive: What Makes a Good Reading Year?


Was 2024 a good reading year?

Every year is a good reading year because I am picky-picky-picky. I don’t finish a book unless it is (a) fascinating, (b) well-written, and (c) works some kind of spell on me. You know, Girls just want to have fun! But we also are earnest. I don’t care if it is the Book of the Year, I don’t care if if it wins every award, I’m blasé about reviews in the mainstream presses – but I seem to be able to pick the books that are right for me.

Every century is different. The twentieth century was different. So many voices and styles characterize an era. One minute you’re enchanted by Jean Stafford’s Pulitzer Prize winning short stories, next you’re reading Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Booker Prize-winning Heat and Dust, then you’re taking a break with Sue Grafton’s mysteries, then you are lost in Frank Herbert’s Dune, and then you discover the brilliant Margaret Drabble.

The New Yorker had a great influence on everybody. We were mad about the minimalist stories of Raymond Carver. And I remember going to bookstores all over town to find Bobbie Ann Mason’s books, though it might have been Harper’s or The Atlantic that drove me.

So why have I returned to the classics and the dead? It is partly due to a long illness. Once, when I was extremely ill in the hospital, I finally recovered enough to read a little. I chose Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Yes, I realized what I needed was the highest quality. And the doctor decided I was ready to leave the hospital when he found me reading Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). The doctor loved foreign languages and was impressed to meet a soulmate. The nurses informed me he knew eight languages.

Perhaps Jane Austen and Lucretius kept me alive. (Well, there was also medicine.) But there is no doubting the magic of literature. Fate brought these books to me when I needed them most.

Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”:  Pride and Passivity 

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.