For several years now, I've been convinced that Persuasion is JA's best work. This is the novel in which her genius for creating real, believable characters shine. Sir Walter is an ass and an idiot, but he's no Mr. Woodhouse or Collins. Elizabeth's manners and improprieties may make us cringe for Anne's sake, but she's no Lydia or even Mary Bennet. Sister Mary  is, I admit what one might call a "comic relief" character, but since I've been working with her identical twin sister for many months now, I cannot bring myself to see her as the burlesque Mrs. Bennet is. Each character has a recognizable motivation for his/her actions... there are no Iago-like villains of the Crawford of Wickham variety, making mischief for mischief's sake.

It's true that the action scene of Louisa's accident is unclear. Not unbelievable, mind you, but certainly it could have been written better. (Whether this is because JA didn't want to be accused of "sensationalism" or whether these accidents were so common they didn't need further explanation, I don't pretend to know.) Still, I don't find the reaction of Captains Benwick and Wentworth so very out of character. Let's face it, at sea, especially in battle, they would have shaken the  injured sailor's shoulder a couple of times, then kicked his body overboard and never thought about him again. Nor do I find the injury itself much of a puzzlement. (Don't think of a swan dive, think of a skateboard injury.)

Perhaps the most unbelievable action in the entire novel is Captain Wentworth conquering his pride and embarrassment to make a second proposal.  But maybe Captain Benwick's grief, and delivery from it, are reasons enough. And do we really want to quibble over what is arguably the most romantic ending in all of literature????
Cheryl

Dear Cheryl,

Amen to your judgment on the ending to Persuasion. I have heard that Jane Austen was in her final decline and then revived enough to rewrite that ending that affects you and me in the same way. But, what do you think? Was the divine Jane making her last artistic flourish or was something else on her mind in those last dreadful weeks? You can't possibly answer that question, no one can; but, do you have a sense of things? Perhaps the question is unimportant - to everyone except me.

You and Bruce seem to have a problem with the fall at Lyme; film makers seem to have a problem as well. I have seen two filmed versions (1971, and 1995); both companies filmed at the same location on the Cobb; and, both companies botched the scene. I don't see the difficulty - Louisa only has to slip a bit on the step or on the landing to fall back on her head and the injury would have occurred in spite of where Wentworth positioned himself. Perhaps you agree and this is what you meant by a "skateboard injury". Remember, the sea is near at hand so we should expect slippery footing (more irrefutable Jane-Austen logic). The art in all this is the way Jane Austen sets up this schoolgirl form of audacious flirtation in the earlier scenes. It is all so natural and everything is so inevitable - how Jane Austen could write! (By the bye, I love Louisa.)

I can't agree with the category in which you place Mr. Woodhouse. He was a sweet old man living in an age when a sore throat often sounded a hoarse death knell. His primary concerns were for his family, acquaintance, servants, and horses - and then himself. It is said that both Thackeray and Hardy were called, affectionately, "Mr. Woodhouse" by their daughters. In fact, Thackeray said that he made it a point to reread Emma annually "in order to refresh his style". And what of Mr. Collins? - Can you not honor him for his intention to make some amends for the entailment by marrying one of the Bennet daughters? And as for Mrs. Bennet, all her energy and focus was on finding suitable situations for her daughters - more for her, says I. We can be as embarrassed for her as was Elizabeth, but we should honor her as much as Elizabeth did as well. Darcy could see very clearly what she was doing and warned Bingley about it; but, you might agree that, after the end of the novel, Darcy would have become Mrs. Bennet's greatest ally, far more useful than that lethargic, snotty husband of hers.

I know that Park Honan would have us understand that all wounded sailors were summarily tossed overboard, but I don't believe him. I suspect that Honan was operating on an anecdote true enough, but that is different from standard operating procedure. I admit that no human mind can invent an atrocity that has not actually happened in war, but I know men as well. I should think that an naval officer who made such a practice would soon be drowned himself, and without the benefit of a wound. I see Wentworth's panic as a natural outcome of his concern for Louisa, his self recrimination, and the sudden realization that he had been acting the fool in front of Anne - poor bastard.

Dear Ashton,

I'm happy when anyone out there admits any merit to Persuasion. It seems as if the only people to treat Anne Elliot with less respect than her family are her readers. A death reminiscent of JA's would be Flannery O'Connor, though it was lupus rather than Addison's disease for her. FO'C had started writing a letter to a friend the morning she slipped into a coma.

I don't really have a problem with the fall at Lyme, but even we Persuasion die hards use "could have been" or "might have happened" when we speak about the accident. (I was thinking of how, when a skater falls, after the body contacts the head still bounces once or twice like a ball.) As I said, it's believable, just not very clear.

Mr. Woodhouse may be a dear old man, and Mr. Collins may have good intentions, but they are still larger than life exaggerations, and I'll wager no one here would want to be their constant companions.  As for Mrs. Bennet, I believe tolerate is a more accurate word than honor.

If such things as men being dumped overboard did happen, I doubt that it was thought of as anything more than Christian duty. (And not without reason...would you rather drown quickly or wait for the gangrene or pneumonia to carry you off?)

Meister: I suspect that a man in combat doesn't have much
stomach for euthanasia, and has no more taste for throwing a
wounded comrade overboard than he would had the casualty
been his wife, brother, or child.

One question about the end of Persuasion has nagged me for a couple of years now. Is the scene where Anne and Captain Wentworth meet at the party (after Wentworth's proposal) a deliberate attempt at eroticism??
Cheryl

Meister: I don't read any such thing in the novel. Perhaps you are
referring to the recent filmed version in which a very strange party
scene was shown us; Wentworth's behavior is outlandish in that scene,
most un-Jane-like. In the book, Anne provides her vindication of Lady
Russell at that party, but I can't guess the purpose in the film-maker's
mind. Eroticism you say? Yumm, I shall study it!

Dear Ash,

I was glad to see the recent posts about Persuasion as I am going to need some help in defending Sir Walter Elliot. Why, you probably want to know, would anyone feel called upon to defend the biggest jerk in all of Jane Austen.

It all has to do with the aforementioned trip I am making to England this summer to go on my Jane Austen pilgrimage and attend the Elderhostel class. Being both a male and a southerner, it seems to fall my lot to play the role of Archie Bunker in any group with which I travel. Also it has been my experience that I will be greatly outnumbered by women in the group (when I went on a bicycle tour of The Netherlands two years ago I was the lone male among fourteen women and last year on a walking tour of the Lake District I was out numbered eight to one).

Since, for some reason, all the women on these Elderhostel trips seem to be from the north, they expect a certain level of charming ignorance from a man from the furthermost reaches of rural Georgia. Far be it from me to disappoint them  So I have decided to go prepared to defend all of Jane Austen’s male characters no matter how unworthy they might be. I think I can bull my way past all of the characters except Sir Walter. I am going to need some real help with him.

Does this man have any redeeming characteristics? Until I hear from someone on this point, I will set nary foot (an example of how I talk while on these trips) on any airplane. I am already very hesitant about going thanks to your advice [3/2/98] to the effect that I should not look at any English women, even those that wear tweed. I will, of course, abide by your advice but all bets are off if I catch a glimpse of Jane Seymour.

Speaking of women in tweed, I caught a whiff of such women in Laurie’s post asking for help in finding examples of irony in the writings of Jane Austen. Come on now, admit it, you know that some woman in tweed gave her that assignment. For generations women in tweed have been giving assignments like that, thereby negating the pleasure of reading Jane Austen. A plague on them and their tweed.
Best Wishes
Ray

I have one suggestion for Ray to use, if he wants to take a pro Sir Walter stance (it's the best I can come up with, I'm afraid): though he is clearly, at the time of the novel, the archetypal English upper-class prat, there must have been a time when he had a little more to offer: the time during which he was able to recognise, and be attracted to, a woman of the merit of the late Lady Elliot. Maybe he suffered a fall from his horse and banged his head, or something similar, so that what is his obvious mental disability in middle life should excite our pity, rather than our amused contempt.

One thing I do suspect is that he may have had a LITTLE more sense than he receives credit for. We have discussed his possible marriage to Mrs Clay. On reading the novel carefully, however, it would seem that his possibility was thought about by his friends, family and acquaintance (and hoped for by Mrs Clay), but not really indicated by the manners of Sir Walter himself. He had got no further than not seeing her freckles any more. I wonder whether Mrs Clay eventually ran off with Sir William (which shows what a fool she really is!), because she became tired of trying to tickle the old Baronet along, with so little result?
Julie

Dear Mr. Mitchell,

Sir, as a northern woman who spent some time in the south, may I suggest that if you were to simply refrain from spitting in public, a social nicety unknown to the majority of your southern brothers, you would go far in acquitting yourself as both a gentleman and an American. Attempting to defend Sir Walter would be a surfeit of charm. Though a brave man might suggest that Sir Walter is a victim of low self-esteem due to his dead wife's unreasonable expectations and shrewish nature those many years ago.

Dear Ray,

I want you to be forewarned, not comatose. Still, you make my point; Jane Seymour might be easy to avoid, but there must be about a zillion other Englishwomen who will affect you in the same way. Be careful.

I can't help you at all with Sir Walter, I find him unworthy. So, I advise you to just make something up, anything should do. Sir Walter was at his worst when describing how he sat and counted over a hundred Englishwomen pass by before seeing an attractive one.

Ah yes, the tweedy, controlling, form of the American woman - the fearsome subculture. Still, we must never allow them to manage our thoughts, not even in reaction - that, finally, would be their great triumph over us.

I want to be very careful and not tar all American teachers and librarians with the same brush. Actually, I am, in retrospect, impressed with the majority of my teachers. They were remarkably well educated, competent, and dedicated. However, there was that eleventh-grade English teacher who would try to control my thoughts as well as my manners. After that class, it would be ten years before I could develop any interest whatsoever in Shakespeare. I am deeply grateful that she did not decide to cover Jane Austen that year (actually, maybe she did for all I know - I was disinvited to her class less than half-way through the school year). I want to praise my first grade teacher, Miss McDonald, for whom my love has not diminished over the years. I believe she liked me as well and even was impressed with me; I say that because I was asked to sit at the highly prestigious Bunny Table (I will never forget my first day there, looking about at the other proud bunnies while thinking "whoa, this is a class act!"). I also want to single out my eleventh-grade, US History teacher, Mrs. Jewell. I was in an all-boy class; it was clear what the administration had done - they had put all the bad apples into Mrs. Jewell's single basket (no more Bunny Table for me). During the year one of my classmates was required to leave because of his running gun battle with the police - firing at them from his speeding car. That sort of thing was frowned upon in those days. I didn't say much in that class because I didn't want the other guys to notice me. Early on, the others started smarting off to Mrs. Jewell but soon learned that she had a quicker wit than any of them. She gave the clear impression that she liked boys and knew exactly how to deal with them - she relished her basket of apples. It was weird; she looked a thousand years old to a fifteen-year old, but she had the spirit and sense of humor of a teenaged boy together with the sense and good taste of a woman. The entire class fell in love and cooperated for the rest of the year. I read history now, and I owe that to Mrs. Jewell - God bless you Mrs. Jewell - and Miss McDonald - and Jane Seymour.

Dear Mr. Mitchell,

Sir Walter Elliot has few, if any, redeeming qualities. However, you should be able to use him to your advantage on your Elder Hostel tour.  Here are some tactics:

1) "Of course you don't like Sir Walter when you read about him, and see him through Anne's eyes. But face the facts - if you met him in person, all of you would go ga-ga over the guy. He a Baronet, and he's better looking than Paul Newman. You ladies would be swarming around him like flies around a stable." (They'll hate you forever for this one, even though it's probably true, and with your Georgia background, you can probably improve on the "flies around a stable.")
2) "I admit Sir Walter is no saint, but at least he's not as much of a wet blanket as Colonel Brandon..."  (Sure to get any woman's goat.  For some bizarre reason, perhaps having to do with the movie, they all like him.)
3) "Sir Walter! There was a man! Sure, he'd lost a bit (though not his looks) by the time of the novel, but I'll warrant he was quite the bon vivant in younger days..."  (Run on and on about how great you bet Sir Walter was in his youth and then begin to tell endless stories about your own youthful adventures. Intersperse the stories with: "Of course Sir Walter must be pushing 60 by the time of the novel, so we can't really expect too from him, can we?")

Your other option, and it's a good one, is instead of taking a position in favor of Austen men, be against all of them. My experience is that if you say, "Austen was a great writer, but, after all, her heroes are hardly a manly lot, are they?" You will be met with deafening caterwalling.

Dear Sir and Bruce,

I haven't answered before, because, to tell the truth, 'I was too cross to write'.  But Bruce has illustrated the point I wanted to make perfectly, and used Jane Austen's own brevity to do so.  I don't know who it is that says that Jane Austen does not describe, but as far as I see it, that is nonsense.  Her trick, and her genius, is that she does not describe in paragraphs or in tracts of dissertation.  People who know her novels know her characters, and the world in which they lived, intimately, but would have difficulty in finding the section of the novel that gave them this knowledge.  That is because Jane Austen, writing in her epigrammatic style that I have only ever seen elsewhere in the work of the metaphysical poets, uses turns of phrase, small clauses, and the occasional sentence, to identify, fix and develop her characters. Yes, of course, we see Captain Benwick after reading that passage.  All of her characters are developed in a similar way.  We feel we know them, as we do, but if challenged to find the passage that develops them, we're stuck.  Look at Mrs Bennet - well known, surely to us all.  And why?  Because 'she was a woman of little information and mean understanding.  The business of her life was to get her daughters married, its solace was visiting and news.'  There you have her.  No need to spend a chapter exploring the vicissitudes of her early life, her drunken mother, or whatever. Jane Austen presents us with people as they are during the action of the novel, and then gives small but most perceptive clues as to why they are so. I wish I could be so succinct!

As to her description of place and scene: I find both utterly vivid, and can see Mansfield Park, Lyme Regis, the Cobb (I have photographs of the spot from which Louisa fell, and I reckon she's lucky to have survived!), and Donwell Farm as well as I can see my own front paddock. Jane Austen's deep love of her own country, the strength one feels she gained from being in 'the country, and her own beloved country' give, to me, a picture that no screenplay ever could.

I can see the Great House of the Musgroves, with its 'small windows', its formal portraits, its polished floors and the glaring additions imposed upon it by the Miss Musgroves.  How can we not see the 'fine family piece' that Jane Austen describes in her Christmas scene at that house? 'The tables groaning under the weight of mince pies'  Mrs Musgrove, knee-deep in noisy children, commenting on the fact that 'a little quiet cheerfulness does one good', while the childless Lady Russell, ageing and finding comfort in routine, raises her eyebrows?  We all know of such family gatherings.

I can see the Harvilles in their small, neat, poor lodgings, nevertheless, by dint of their kindness, good manners and efficiency, making a comfortable home for Louisa while she recovered from her injury.  I can see them, 'almost hurt', that Captain Wentworth should bring a party of friends to Lyme, without considering it a matter of course that they would stay at the Harville's home.

Come to that, I can see the hazelnut hedgerow, and Charles Musgrove's half-trained dog that ruined the gentlemen's sport, too .... maybe I'm the one with the problem!

Meister: I don't care what you say about Charlotte
Bronte, but I warn you that I very much liked that dog!

In our age of voluminous communication, of which I have just provided an embarrassing example, let us not lose the capactity to appreciate the exquisite discipline used by Jane Austen, when she describes so beautifully those scenes of English rural life that form the backdrop to her novels.

Oh, and by the way, Persuasion is a terrific love story. I'll get to that, presently.
Julie

Meister: And will you get to Bruce's intriguing point?
Namely, we know so much about Jane Austen's locals
because of the impact on the characters.

Dear Meister,

I remember the scenes of Lyme as being dramatic and affecting. So, as you suggested, I visited those chapters of Persuasion in which Lyme is described in an attempt to find examples of Jane Austen's brilliant use of scenery and weather to foreshadow mood.  Unfortunately, I discovered that the critics were right.  Austen couldn't (or at least didn't) describe things, as Conrad recommended, "above all, to make you see."  Let's look at some examples.

"They went to the sands, to watch the flowing of the tide, which a fine south-easterly breeze was bringing in with all the grandeur which so flat a shore admitted. They praised the morning, gloried in the sea, sympathized in the delight of the fresh-feeling breeze - and were silent till Henrietta suddenly began again with. ..."

This is typical of  Austen's descriptive writing.  The use of words like "grandeur" are not particularly descriptive of the scenery; they describe the feeling imbued by the scenery on Anne and Henrietta.  This short section does create a mood - a mood flecked with spray and sea air - but it creates that mood THROUGH the participants in the scene, not through the scenery. Another example:

"The scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more, its sweet, retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among the sands, make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation  the woody varieties of the cheerful village of Up Lyme  and, above all, Pinny, with its green chasms between romantic rocks, where the scattered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth, declare that many a generation must have passed away since the first partial falling of the cliff prepared the ground for such a state, where a scene so wonderful and so lovely is exhibited..."

Again, Austen concentrates on the EFFECT of the scenery, not on the natural setting itself. "The happiest spot for watching..." Is typical of Austen's descriptions of nature.  The pictorial writer would not use terms like, "romantic rocks".  He would describe the rocks so that the reader could see them, and feel the romance of them for himself.  Nor would the pictorial writer need to say, "where a scene so wonderful and so lovely...".

The action sequence in Lyme exhibits Austen's lack of pictorial talent.  I simply couldn't picture how Louisa fell and knocked herself out.  Having seen the movie, I get a better idea of how steep and potentially dangerous the stairs are, but from reading the book, I just couldn't create a mental picture.

Having said this, allow me to add that the whole mood of the trip to Lyme is so well established, that it misses pictorial talent not one jot. We Austen fans are constantly coming across new evidence of Austen's genius, and in rereading the Lyme chapters I came across this description of Captain Benwick:

"For, though shy, he did not seem reserved  it had rather the appearance of feelings glad to burst their usual restraints and having talked of poetry... he showed himself so intimately acquainted with all the tenderest songs of the one poet, and all the impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony of the other  he repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood..."

We Austen readers may never get a true picture of the Cobb, but in the last ten words of the above quote Captain Benwick is exposed forever.

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