Persuasion by Jane AustenMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I reread it because it’s one of Jane Austen’s novels that I remember least. It has some good classic Austen material: the characters are wryly observed, the resolution of the romance is dramatic. But mostly I was struck by how lame I found Anne. I really just wanted to shake her and start yelling. You don’t get any points for being quietly virtuous!!
View all my reviews
anne is wonderful! she’s literally one of austen’s best heroines morally
maybe not the most sparkling but definitely not the least, either (fanny price??)
haha sorry, obviously your opinion is valid too, I just really like this book…
oh yeah, definitely Fanny Price is worse, we can all agree on that.
I think my problem with Anne is not exactly that she’s not “sparkling” but that she doesn’t have any backbone. I was especially enraged by her speech at the end, where one might expect her to realize something like “maybe my elders are fallible and I shouldn’t listen to them 100% of the time,” and instead she comes up with “I have now, as far as such a sentiment is allowable in human nature, nothing to reproach myself with; and if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman’s portion.”
Just like, being self-sacrificing isn’t inherently good; in fact, it’s inherently bad because it involves someone suffering, and is only worth it if you’re creating more value with your sacrifice than you’re destroying. But sacrificing yourself to please your family that sucks is just stupid, and it bugs me that she maintained up until the end of the book that it was the right thing to do.