Persuasion: The Years Between Them

A review of Persuasion by Jane Austen

By H.R. Zimmerer

Spoiler warning: This review discusses the complete novel and its ending.

There is a small moment in Persuasion when Captain Wentworth removes Anne Elliot’s troublesome young nephew from her back.

Anne has been trying to manage the child while attending to his injured brother. Wentworth sees the difficulty and quietly intervenes.

Their history makes the gesture almost unbearable.

He has scarcely allowed himself to speak to her with warmth, yet he cannot entirely stop noticing when she needs help. Austen gives the moment very little outward ceremony. Anne feels enough for both of them.

That is how this novel works on me. A practical kindness, a change in a voice, or the placement of a chair can carry the weight of years.

THE BOOK

Persuasion

Author
Jane Austen

First publication
1817, posthumously (title page dated 1818)

Rating
5/5

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Anne is twenty-seven when the story begins. Eight years earlier, she accepted Frederick Wentworth and then broke the engagement under the influence of Lady Russell, the family friend who had become a maternal figure after Anne’s mother died.

He was young, ambitious, and without a secure fortune. Lady Russell considered the match imprudent. Anne’s father had his own objections, rooted in the vanity and social pretension that govern most of his judgements.

Wentworth left wounded. Anne remained among people who relied on her usefulness without much interest in her happiness.

I find Austen’s treatment of that earlier decision unusually generous. Lady Russell’s advice proves damaging, but it does not arise from a simple wish to control Anne. She cares for her and fears for her future. Her affection coexists with limited judgement and an excessive regard for social standing.

Anne’s mistake, if we choose to call it that, cannot be separated from her youth, her conscience, and her trust in someone who occupied a parent’s place.

The novel’s present begins to change when Sir Walter’s extravagance makes retrenchment necessary. Kellynch Hall is rented to Admiral and Mrs Croft. Mrs Croft is Wentworth’s sister, bringing him back into Anne’s circle as a successful and wealthy captain.

He can now satisfy the objections that once separated them.

That does not mean he has forgiven her.

His initial coldness is painful because Anne has no reason to assume it conceals enduring attachment. He gives his attention to the Musgrove sisters, especially Louisa, while Anne is left to observe the ease he can offer almost everybody else.

Wentworth’s resentment also distorts his judgement. He admires Louisa’s firmness partly because he believes Anne lacked it. He has turned a complicated decision into a defect of character, then looked for its opposite in another woman.

The accident at Lyme exposes the weakness of that distinction.

Louisa insists on jumping from the steps of the Cobb into his arms, falls, and suffers a serious injury. Anne responds with composure and practical judgement while the others struggle to act.

Wentworth has to reconsider what steadiness actually looks like.

I appreciate that the novel does not reserve all the necessary growth for Anne. She is not required to prove herself worthy of the man she once rejected while he remains perfectly correct about everything. He must recognise the harm in his angry attempts to forget her, including the expectations he has encouraged in Louisa.

Her eventual engagement to Captain Benwick releases him from the obligation he fears his attentions may have created. It also unsettles the book’s discussion of constancy, since Benwick has been grieving the death of his former fiancée.

Austen permits affection to have more than one history. Anne’s enduring love is central to the novel, but it does not become a rule by which every other attachment must be condemned.

In Bath, Anne also has to judge Mr Elliot, the polished heir whose attentions offer a socially approved alternative to Wentworth. Information from her old friend Mrs Smith exposes his mercenary conduct and gives Anne further reason to distrust a man whose manners have impressed her relations.

Anne’s friendship with Mrs Smith matters in its own right. She chooses to visit a poor, ill woman despite her father’s disdain, exercising a judgement independent of his obsession with rank.

The contrast with the Crofts is equally telling. They have companionship, shared experience, and an ease together that Sir Walter’s social ambitions cannot provide. Austen gives Anne a glimpse of married life organised around something more substantial than appearances.

Then, of course, there is the letter.

Wentworth overhears Anne discussing constancy with Captain Harville. Her words give him reason to hope that he has misunderstood her feelings. While she speaks, he writes:

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.”

The force of the letter comes from everything that has preceded it. Austen has made us attend to indirect speech and interrupted opportunities for so long that plain declaration feels almost overwhelming.

But I would not trade the conversation afterwards for the letter alone.

Anne and Wentworth revisit the past and explain what they have failed to understand about each other. She does not simply agree that her younger self was foolish. She maintains that respecting Lady Russell’s guidance was consistent with her conscience then, even though she would not now give another young woman the same advice.

Wentworth acknowledges the pride that kept him from trying again.

They recover the possibility of a shared future by becoming more truthful about the years they have lost.

That distinction gives the ending its depth. Those years are not returned to them. Nor does marriage remove every future uncertainty; Anne will live with the anxieties attached to Wentworth’s naval profession.

Austen nevertheless allows her a happiness expansive enough to change her experience of the same rooms and people.

She remains Anne: thoughtful, capable, and attentive to others. What changes is that her own wishes can finally be expressed and answered.

I love the letter. I love the reunion.

But the pleasure that stays with me is seeing a woman who has spent so much of the novel making herself useful become openly, unmistakably happy.

Read the primary text of Persuasion