Academic Review 2024

22 ST EDWARD’S, OXFORD 3 .

To what extent is it frustrating or disappointing that Austen’s heroine in Persuasion becomes emotionally fulfilled by marrying the man she loves? By Anastasia Elliott To start, it is worth remembering Austen’s own reading predilections. She grew up immersing herself in the romantic works of Edgeworth, Burney, Radcliffe, Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne, (of course Shakespeare too), not to mention the hugely popular love poetry of writers such as Cowper, Byron, Wordsworth, and Scott. As a teenager she began her own fictional experiments, delighting in writing parodies of wild romances and gothic escapades. The literature she loved naturally influenced her own writing style. As she matured through practice, she did not discard the genre but made it her own through her acutely realised portraits of the emotional journeys of her heroines.

Introduction

Wentworth does feel like a rewarding ending to the novel and this is because Anne merits being loved with her great capacity for kindness and tolerance, and the great cruelty with which her own family treats her.

So, let us look at Anne in Persuasion . Why is it acceptable and right that her emotional fulfilment is achieved through her ‘glory[ing] in being a sailor’s wife’? Why could Austen not have allowed her to be sufficiently contented without a partner? Anne’s finding love again with