Jane Austen, Persuasion, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Loading...
Date
2006-04
Authors
Tarlson, Claire Eileen
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Lethbridge Undergraduate Research Journal
Abstract
This paper argues that there is a Romantic shift in the feminist and
individualistic ideology of Jane Austen's work as her career progresses,
and Austen begins to admire different cognitive qualities in her heroines. At
the end of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth's confessed love for Darcy is a
carefully reasoned one - Darcy has righted the wrongs cited in Elizabeth's
original refusal and Elizabeth can justify her own acceptance of him by
objective standards. Anne Elliot of Persuasion, by contrast, accepts
Wentworth ultimately not on the basis of anything he has done differently,but merely by the realization of her own original emotions and
motives as valid. Throughout the novel, Anne develops as this individual
on her own, and by the time she finally marries Wentworth at the end of the
novel, the marriage is not needed to complete her because she has
already made her emotional transformation independent of the marriage
proposal. The contextual frameworks for both of Jane Austen's novels
Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion are so similar that they demand sideby-
side comparison, but the heroines of these novels show a very different
approach to characterizing the admirable woman. The evocation of
Elizabeth by means of Anne's character serves to elucidate and cement
this shift in Austen's tone and feminist worldview. The similarities
juxtaposed with a discernible shift in the qualities of the heroine strongly
suggest that Anne Elliot is a reworking of Elizabeth Bennet, and that the
purpose of Persuasion is to reinvent Pride and Prejudice in a way shows
Austen's reconsideration of the value and motives of marriage and gives
even more intellectual and emotional credit to Persuasion's heroine. There
exists a carefully crafted language of allusion in Austen's works, and
especially between these two bookends of her career, which seem to serve
almost as a privatized discourse for Austen's own benefit. In this way,
Austen is showing her own shift into Romanticism, valuing the emotional
over the reasonable, and how this shift should play out into the lives of
women. Elizabeth is representative of women being capable and worthy to
reason in the world of men, whereas Anne's individualism gives women
something even more important in Austen's assertion of the validity and
worth of female emotions.
Description
Keywords
Austen, Jane, 1775-1817
Citation
Tarlson, Claire E. (2006). Jane Austen, Persuasion, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Lethbridge Undergraduate Research Journal, 1(1).