-->
Persuasion is the last novel Jane Austen prepared for
publication before she died, and it was released posthumously. For that reason,
many people have come to regard it as valedictory; and this illusion is aided
by its heroine, Anne Elliot, who, as a lifelong spinster disdained by her
family, appears on the surface to be a stand-in for Austen herself. In granting
Anne Elliot a second chance at love, and with the man she’d foolishly rejected
in her youth, some readers—stupid readers, I think; sentimental and sloppy ones—view
Persuasion as Austen’s attempt to
live vicariously through a fictionalized version of herself; to bring her own
story to a happy resolution before death claimed her. Like Prospero in The Tempest, Anne Elliot becomes the
author taking her leave of her readers, by way of a dramatic stand-in.
You only have to take a look at
the novel Austen was working on when she died to realize that Persuasion is no such thing. Sanditon clearly shows Austen back in
biting social-satire mode, and even extending her palette to include sharp
satiric jabs at commerce and industry. At the end of her life she was expanding her focus, not narrowing it.
Likewise Anne Elliot is, on
closer examination, nothing like Jane Austen. Anne is humble, dignified,
respectable, always correct; whereas Austen was ambitious, proud, irreverent,
and rebellious. Certainly Anne, like her creator, is a spinster who refused an
offer of marriage in her youth; but she has grown to regret deeply that
decision. We can’t know to what extent, if any, Austen ever regretted declining
Harris Bigg-Wither’s proposal (one day after she’d accepted it), but we can be
reasonably certain that any regret would have been tempered by relief, and by a
fierce independence of spirit.
Austen created Anne Elliot for
the same reason she created all of her heroines: because she was a new kind of
character, who presented new tests for her powers. Likewise, Anne Elliot’s
family is vastly more exalted than that of any other Austen heroine. Unlike the
Dashwoods and the Bennets and even the Woodhouses, the Elliots are titled.
Something new. Something to
challenge her.
Persuasion does not, it’s true, employ the same broad comic
strokes we find in her previous novels; but it’s scarcely the elegiac lament
some people make it out to be. It is absolutely and unequivocally a comic
novel, and a very, very funny one. And it leaves the victims of its satiric
gaze every bit as pulverized. It’s pretty much irresistible; and Anne Elliot—far
from being a doppelganger of the author—is as close to an everywoman as Austen
ever created. Everyman, too. Lizzy Bennet and Emma Woodhouse remain
spectacularly popular because they’re idealized figures of identification; they’re
us, the way we’d be if we were perfect (or at least if our faults were
adorable). Anne Elliot is us as we are—at our everyday best; she is the decent
and deserving side of ourselves, and in her striving for a moral and ethical
equilibrium, we recognize our own struggles.
But before we’re introduced to
Anne we meet her father, Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch-hall in Somerset, “a man
who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage,” and
chiefly the page on which his own honors and ancestry are detailed; which
pursuit provides him “occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a
distressed one”. He is, then, not merely a snob, but an anxious snob; he
requires constant reminding that he’s cream-of-the-crop, top-of-the-heap.
But his title isn’t his only
means of validation; he’s got another one he likes almost as well.
Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter
Elliot’s character: vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably
handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women
could think more of their personal appearance than he did; nor could the valet
of any new lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He
considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a
baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant
object of his warmest respect and devotion.
It’s only the second bloody page
of the novel, and we’ve already got a world-class comic monster on our hands.
We can’t wait to see much, much more of him; and—spoilers—he will not
disappoint.
Sir Walter is a widower with
three daughters, “an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath; an awful charge
rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, silly father.”
Fortunately, Lady Elliot is survived by a good friend, Lady Russell, “of steady
age and character,” who has stepped in and acted as surrogate mother to the
extent propriety allows. There was, in fact, an expectation that she and Sir
Walter would marry, but thirteen years later they both remain single. Probably
because the real love of Sir Walter’s life already resides with him at
Kellynch-hall—or more specifically, in the smooth surface of every Kellynch-hall
mirror.
Lady Elliot’s place in the
actual household has been taken by her eldest daughter, Elizabeth; “and being
very handsome, and very like [Sir Walter] himself, her influence had always
been great, and they had gone on together most happily.” The two remaining
daughters, however, are in Sir Walter’s shrewish eyes “of very inferior value.”
Mary had acquired a little artificial importance,
by becoming Mrs. Charles Musgrove; but Anne, with an elegance of mind and
sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real
understanding, was nobody with either father or sister: her word had no weight;
her convenience was always to give way;—she was only Anne.
Lady Russell, however, likes
Anne best; “it was only in Anne that she could fancy the mother to revive
again.” But Lady Russell’s special favor is, as we’ll see, not the
super-specialist thing that could have happened to Anne. As for her father—who
appears to judge her principally by her looks—in his view she might as well
tumble down a well and save him the trouble of clothing and feeding her.
Because with her youthful bloom faded (and never having been all that hot even
at its height), she’s not likely to be taken off his hands by anything
resembling a husband, much less a titled one.
He had never indulged much hope, he had now none,
of ever reading her name in any other page of his favourite work. All equality
of alliance must rest with Elizabeth; for Mary had merely connected herself
with an old country family of respectability and large fortune, and had
therefore given all the honor,
and received none: Elizabeth would, one day or other, marry suitably.
Elizabeth, in her father’s eyes,
is “still the same handsome Miss Elliot that she had begun to be thirteen years
ago;” and Sir Walter is proud—if possibly a little delusional—that he and his
eldest daughter alone are holding onto Total Babe status while everyone else
around them shrivels like prunes. “Anne haggard, Mary coarse, every face in the
neighbourhood worsting; and the rapid increase of the crow’s foot about Lady
Russell’s temples had long been a distress to him.” Sir Walter Elliot is
clearly not only as vain as any drag queen, he’s as unrepentantly bitchy as
well.
Elizabeth, however, isn’t quite
so happy with her seemingly endless run as homecoming queen of Kellynch-hall. “Thirteen
winters’ revolving frosts had seen her opening every ball of credit which a
scanty neighbourhood afforded; and thirteen springs shewn their blossoms, as
she travelled up to London with her father, for a few weeks annual enjoyment of
the great world.” She’s ready for a promotion, is the thing. She’s tired of
being lady of the house in the lower-case-L sense only. Her father may be Sir
Walter; but she’s just plain old Miss Elliot. And if she’s going to bag a
baronet herself, and become Lady Somebody, it had better be soon, because she’s
on the down-slope to thirty, and the toboggan’s picking up speed.
She was fully satisfied of being still quite as
handsome as ever; but she felt her approach to the years of danger, and would
have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet-blood within
the next twelvemonth or two. Then might she again take up the book of books
with as much enjoyment as in her early youth; but now she liked it not. Always
to be presented with the date of her own birth, and see no marriage follow but
that a youngest sister, made the book an evil; and more than once, when her
father had left it open on the table near her, had she closed it, with averted
eyes, and pushed it away.
She’s already missed her best,
most desirable chance at realizing this ambition. In default of a son, Sir Walter’s
heir is his nephew, William Walter Elliot, Esq., and as soon as she realized
her cousin would be the next baronet, Elizabeth decided he was the hubby for
her. Unfortunately he had other ideas, and kept both father and daughter at arm’s
length for years, during which time their overtures grew increasingly frequent
and even a tad desperate. Eventually William married someone else—purchasing
independence by “uniting himself to a rich woman of inferior birth”—and though
that lady has since died, Elizabeth hasn’t renewed her campaign to nab him,
because news has filtered back that he’s trash-talked his titled relations to
anyone who’s cared to listen. (And this being London society, everyone has cared to listen.) Snubbing,
jilting, and disrespecting are enough to dampen even Elizabeth’s Hillary
Clinton-esque ambition; too bad, because there still isn’t “a baronet from A to
Z, whom her feelings could have so willingly acknowledged as an equal.”
Such were Elizabeth Elliot’s sentiments and
sensations; such the cares to alloy, the agitations to vary, the sameness and
the elegance, the prosperity and the nothingness, of her scene of life—such the
feelings to give interest to a long, uneventful residence in one country
circle, to fill the vacancies where there were no habits of utility abroad, no
talents or accomplishments for home, to occupy.
That paragraph right there—hey,
I’m talkin’ to you, Austen “sequel” writers—that right there is why, no matter
how hard you try, you. can’t. touch. her.
Worsening the Scandinavian
bleakness of Elizabeth’s little privileged treadmill is the fact that she’s in
danger of being thrown off it. Her old man’s been gushing money like a geyser,
and his extravagance is beginning to catch up with him. “While Lady Elliot
lived, there had been method, moderation, and economy, which had just kept him
within his income; but with her had died all such right-mindedness”. So that
eventually he has to come clean and admit to his daughter that he’s in a spot
of trouble—which he does by asking her, charmingly, “Can we retrench? does it
occur to you that there is any one article in which we can retrench?”
Elizabeth, eager for any new occupation, is on it like flapjacks on a griddle.
…[Elizabeth] had finally proposed these two
branches of economy: to cut off some unnecessary charities, and to retrain from
new-furnishing the drawing-room; to which expedients she afterwards added the
happy thought of their taking no present down [from London] to Anne, as had
been the usual custom.
Just in case you were feeling
sorry for Elizabeth, that oughtta fix it, right there. So much so that we’re
kind of glad to hear that the great sacrifices she’s proposing don’t make a
goddamn dent in Sir Walter’s hemorrhaging expenses, and she’s left feeling “ill-used
and unfortunate,” as she learns of the true extent of their troubles.
In desperation they turn to Sir
Walter’s accountant, Mr. Shepherd, and to Lady Russell as well; “and both
father and daughter seemed to expect that something should be struck out by one
or the other to remove their embarrassments and reduce their expenditure,
without involving the loss of any indulgence of taste or pride.” Lower people
are so good at that kind of thing, don’t’cha know; so clever. They just move a
decimal point or something, and then everything’s rosy again.
Unfortunately, Mr. Shepherd, “a
civil, cautious lawyer…would rather have the disagreeable prompted by any body else,” and so excuses himself
from offering any advice at all, possibly also crouching behind a Chinese
screen until all of this blows over. Which leaves the whole matter in Lady
Russell’s capable lap, and she, unlike Mr. Shepherd, is “most anxiously zealous
on the subject;” you almost get the feeling she’s been watching Sir Walter for
years, biting her lip and just waiting for the day when she’d be able to sit
him down and tell him everything he’s been doing wrong.
She drew up plans of economy, she made exact
calculations, and she did, what nobody else thought of doing, she consulted
Anne, who never seemed considered by the others as having any interest in the
question…Every emendation of Anne’s had been on the side of honesty against
importance. She wanted more vigorous measures, a more complete reformation, a
quicker release from debt, a much higher tone of indifference for every thing
but justice and equity.
You can imagine how well this
goes over. On being presented with this radical new proposal, Sir Walter lets
out an affronted shriek that sets birds into frightened flight as far north as
Sheffield, if not the Orkneys. For a man who considers himself already on a
subsistence budget because he’s cut his monthly order of hair pomade in half,
the slash-and-hack plan submitted by Lady Russell is “not to be borne.”
“What! Every comfort of life knocked off! Journeys,
London, servants, horses, table,—contractions and restrictions every where. To
live no longer with the decencies even of a private gentleman! No, he would
sooner quit Kellynch-hall at once, than remain in it on such disgraced terms.”
And possibly after this outburst
he throws himself onto a couch, sobs into its pillows, and has a good, long,
kicking-the-air tantrum.
But it’s too late; he’s opened
the Pandora’s box by speaking the words “quit Kellynch-hall.” Mr. Shepherd
clamps onto that phrase like a barnacle, and, since it was in fact Sir Walter
who originally introduced the idea, he has no problem now in pressing for it.
There’s a lot of argument and
ego-petting before the beleaguered nobleman is made to see that by moving to a
smaller house his expenses will be accordingly reduced. Eventually a place in
Bath is settled on, because it would be embarrassing to downsize in the country
(everyone would know why), and Sir
Walter can’t be trusted in London; and also, Lady Russell likes Bath. (We’re
coming to realize that Lady Russell usually gets her way. Possibly in a “just
do as she says and she’ll shut the hell up already” type of scenario).
Anne doesn’t like Bath, but of course that makes about as much
difference as whether or not Anne continues breathing, which is to say, none at
all. Even Lady Russell, who’s ostensibly fond of the kid, does some pretty
fancy rationalizing to make it okay to flout her desires. “Anne had been too
little from home, too little seen. Her spirits were not high. A larger society
would improve them. She wanted her to be more known.” Also, the sea air will
add color to her cheeks and two inches to her height. Plus, lending-libraries!
Living in a smaller house with a
reduced staff, however, is only half the plan. The other half is to rent out
Kellynch, so that there’s money coming in
as well as going out. “This, however, was a profound secret; not to be breathed
beyond their own circle.” Mr. Shepherd “had once mentioned the word, ‘advertise;’—but
never dared approach it again”—ha! How much you want to bet his client’s
reaction involved singed eyebrows? No, Sir Walter, being Sir Walter, prefers to
just sit around and wait for some “unexceptionable applicant” to come forth and
propose himself, presumably having discovered the house is for rent by a
combination of Tarot cards and a keen sense of smell.
This is all rollicking good
stuff. Many comedies since have gotten terrific juice from the set-up of
snooty, despicable aristocrats being knocked down a peg or seventeen, and
certainly we all enjoy a heaping helping of Schadenfreude as much as Austen
herself probably did. But this being a novel, with two hundred-plus pages left
to run, we’ve got to have a few other complications sewn into the weave, and
Austen introduces one now.
It seems that Mr. Shepherd has a
widowed daughter, Mrs. Clay, who’s returned home to live with Pop and, in the
manner of literary widows everywhere, is basically out for whatever she can
get. She’s “a clever young woman, who understood the art of pleasing; the art
of pleasing, at least, at Kellynch-hall,” which basically means she tells
Elizabeth everything Elizabeth wants to hear, which is chiefly how magnificent
a thing it is to be Elizabeth. Flattery, in Mrs. Clay’s case, gets her
everywhere.
From situation, Mrs. Clay was, in Lady Russell’s
estimate, a very unequal, and in her character she believed a very dangerous
companion—and a removal that would leave Mrs. Clay behind, and bring a choice
of more suitable intimates within Miss Elliot’s reach, was therefore an object
of first-rate importance.
Poor, naïve Lady Russell. We
know, as she apparently does not, that when a grifter of Mrs. Clay’s ambition
finally gets a fish on the hook, it’s going to take more than moving that fish
fifty miles away to break the hold. You’d have to relocate it to the Indian
subcontinent, or possibly New Zealand. Or, to be really safe, the planet
Neptune.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clay’s father,
perhaps unaware of these undercurrents, is doing his best to find a tenant for
Kellynch. He observes that the recent defeat of Napoleon “will be turning all
our rich Navy Officers ashore”, and when Sir Walter predictably scoffs at the
idea of some salty dog swanning about the Arcadian splendors of his ancestral
seat, Mr. Shepherd reassures him that it’s really the totally ideal solution.
And he does so in such a
spectacularly long-winded manner, that he instantly vaults to the upper
echelons of Austen’s comic creations. You’re all familiar with that delightful
English habit of not using two words where two hundred will do, right? Well,
here’s Mr. Shepherd telling Sir Walter, in essence, that Navy men are cool, and
he’ll do all the hard work.
“I presume to observe, Sir Walter, that, in the way
of business, gentlemen of the navy are well to deal with. I have had a little
knowledge of their methods of doing business, and I am free to confess that
they have very liberal notions, and are as likely to make desirable tenants as
any set of people one should meet with. Therefore, Sir Walter, what I would
take leave to suggest is, that if in consequence of any rumours getting abroad
of your intention—which must be contemplated as a possible thing, because we
know how difficult it is to keep the actions and designs of one part of the
world from the notice and curiosity of the other,—consequence has its tax—I,
John Shepherd, might conceal any family-matters that I chose, for nobody would
think it worth their while to observe me, but Sir Walter Elliot has eyes upon
him which it may be very difficult to elude—and therefore, thus much I venture
upon, that it will not greatly surprise me if, with all our caution, some
rumour of the truth should get abroad—in the supposition of which, as I was
going to observe, since applications will unquestionably follow, I should think
any from our wealthy naval commanders particularly worth attending to—and beg
leave to add, that two hours will bring me over at any time, to save the
trouble of replying.”
I was basically destroyed by the
end of this. I’d love to have heard Mr. Shepherd’s proposal of marriage to his
wife. Possibly she conceived, carried to term, and weaned the child off her
breast by the time he got to the main point.
Anyway, there’s a general
pile-on as everyone flatters Sir Walter with how lucky some old seaman is going
to be, getting this fabulous pile of bricks, and continually reassuring him
that he needn’t worry about such a tenant abusing the place or anything. Mrs.
Clay says, “I quite agree with my father in thinking a sailor might be a very
desirable tenant. I have known a good deal of the profession”, provoking a
laugh in us modern-types that I’m not a hundred percent sure Austen intended.
(Though I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s quite a scamp.)
Despite this, Sir Walter isn’t
at all sanguine about the idea of the idea of some Regency Popeye and Bluto
types knocking about his hallowed halls, or his grounds either. “I am not fond
of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable; and I should recommend
Miss Elliot to be on her guard with respect to her flower-garden.” So that
ultimately, Anne has to speak up:
“The navy, I think, who have done so much for us,
have at least an equal claim with any other set of men, for all the comforts
and all the privileges which any home can give. Sailors work hard enough for
their comforts, we must all allow.”
We expect this of Anne, because
she’s been introduced as the only right-thinking (actually, as the only
not-functionally-insane) member of the whole clan. But we’ll soon discover she
has a more personal reason for her interest in the welfare of naval types; and
we also get a clue, right about now, of how deep the opposition to that
interest is, when Sir Walter snarks, “The profession has its utility, but I
should be sorry to see any friend of mine belonging to it.”
“…I have two strong grounds of objection to it.
First, as being the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue
distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers
never dreamed of; and secondly, as it cuts up a man’s youth and vigour most
horribly; a sailor grows old sooner than any other man; I have observed it all
my life.”
He then recalls seeing a man in
society—“his face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree,
all lines and wrinkles, nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of
powder on top”—and being told that this is Admiral Baldwin; and when asked to
guess his age, he settles on “Sixty…or perhaps sixty-two” only to be told that
the admiral is in fact only forty.
So there you go. Navy = Bad. Sir
Walter Elliot and his anecdotal evidence has settled it. And he also has a
solution to the problem he now broadly hints at: “It is a pity they are not
knocked on the head at once, before they reach Admiral Baldwin’s age.”
Sir Walter is just a comedy machine in these chapters. He repeatedly
mows us down on page after goddamn page.
Mrs. Clay, seeing an opening to
further ingratiate herself, launches into a tiresome monologue about how all the professions destroy looks and
vitality (“The laywer plods, quite care-worn; the physician is up at all hours”)
and concludes, in a style that could earn her a gold medal in ass-kissing, that
it’s only people who have no
profession, “who can live in a regular way, in the country, choosing their own
hours, following their own pursuits, and living on their own property, without
the torment of trying for more; it is only their
lot, I say, to hold the blessings of health and a good appearance to the
utmost.” She might as well go for broke and add, “And only those whose initials are W.E.”
So Sir Walter is reluctantly
persuaded, and a good thing too, because in no time at all Mr. Shepherd is able
to report that one Admiral Croft has expressed “as strong an inclination for
[Kellynch] as a man who knew it only by description, could feel” and so there
you go: tenant.
But not
so fast: “And who is Admiral Croft?” Sir Walter demands to know, possibly
screwing up his mouth as he speaks the name, like just forming the syllables
produces a salt taste on the tongue. And Mr. Shepherd can’t furnish an answer
beyond a few mere demographic commonplaces…but guess who can? Our gal pal Anne:
“He is a rear admiral of the white. He was in the
Trafalgar action, and has been in the East Indies since; he has been stationed
there, I believe, several years.”
“Then I take it for granted,” observed Sir Walter, “that
his face is about as orange as the cuffs and capes of my livery.”
This is apparently a
deal-breaker for Sir Walter (why, I couldn’t say; you’d think his aesthetic
sense would be pleased by his tenant’s face being color-coordinated to his staff),
which sends Mr. Shepherd into several pages of desperate dithering about what a
really, no kidding, totally super fantastic renter Admiral Croft would be,
seriously, I mean it. This scattershot of testimonials includes such sterling
character traits as “he sometimes took out a gun, but never killed” and that he’s
a married man without children, which is cool because “A lady, without a
family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.”
Then Mr. Shepherd reaches too
far, and boasts that the Admiral’s wife isn’t just a lowly stranger to the ’hood,
but is “sister to a gentleman who did live amongst us once;” which gets him
into trouble because he can’t remember which
gentleman, and spends a page frantically trying to remember, even asking his
daughter what the man’s name was, except she can’t help because she’s too busy
frolicking around Elizabeth’s chair and strewing her with rose petals.
Eventually, by the few clues Mr.
Shepherd is able to provide, Anne—again—comes riding in to the rescue, by
saying, “You mean Mr. Wentworth, I suppose.” It’s always Anne who keeps things
rolling. She’s like a Greek chorus the
dramatis personae can actually sometimes hear.
But alas this magical name does
nothing to impress Sir Walter. You might as well tell him Admiral Croft’s wife
is the sister of the roast squab he had for dinner last Thursday.
“Wentworth? Oh! ay,—Mr. Wentworth, the curate of
Monkford. You misled me by the term gentleman. I thought you were speaking of
some man of property; Mr. Wentworth was nobody, I remember; quite unconnected;
nothing to do with the Strafford family. One wonders how the names of many of
our nobility become so common.”
Still, it’s not like Sir Walter
has a lot of choice in the matter. He’s got to resign himself to accepting the
admiral’s tenancy, or risk his finances totally bottoming out. And his vanity—which,
remember, is basically his superpower—manages to come up with a little silver
lining to the whole transaction.
“I have let my house to Admiral Croft,” would sound
extremely well; very much better than to any mere Mr. ——; a Mr. (save, perhaps, some half dozen in the nation,) always needs a note of
explanation. An admiral speaks his own consequence, and, at the same time, can never
make a baronet look small. In all their dealings and intercourse, Sir Walter
Elliot must ever have the precedence.
Reading this, we wonder whether
the “half dozen in the nation” who might be “Mr.” with impunity, would include
Fitzwilliam Darcy; and the fact that we do
have to wonder shows us how far up the social ladder Austen has projected her
imagination this time. The fact that this Olympus, from what we’ve seen of it
so far, is peopled by characters every bit as ghastly and objectionable as any
Austen has ever shown us, is wonderfully comforting; in fact, in our grubby
little democratic hearts, we want them to be even worse.
The exception being Anne, who,
as our heroine, is sort of contractually obligated to be a pussycat…and who’s
turning out to be a champion charmer, despite very little push from her
creator. (Austen obviously learned her lesson about trying too hard, by the
visceral way we reacted to her flogging us with Fanny Price’s virtues.) We
leave this chapter, in fact, with Anne escaping the room to “seek the comfort
of cool air for her flushed cheeks”, without an accompanying explanation of why
they should be flushed after
something as relatively dry as a conference on the letting of the family estate
to a naval officer. But we do get a pretty big freakin’ clue, as she “walked
along a favourite grove, [and] said, with a gentle sigh, ‘a few months more,
and he, perhaps, may be walking here.’
”
Fortunately, for us, it’ll be
quite a bit sooner than a few months. And he
would turn out to be worth the wait, even if it were.
~
For the remainder of my analysis
of Persuasion, see Bitch In a Bonnet Volume 2, which you can purchase from Amazon
and other fine sites.
