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.