Academic Review 2024

23 ACADEMIC REVIEW 2024

Anne is not a static character who stubbornly clings to her past, painful and defining as it is. In fact, her striking contrast with her father on this count (the narrative affirms her ‘elegance of mind and sweetness of character’ in the very opening chapter) presents her as most inclined to develop, adapt and blossom which the novel certainly charts. Sir Walter Elliot is the embodiment of rigidity, fixatedly studying only one book, The Baronetage , to stare at his own family’s entry. The book is effectively another kind of mirror for him, one that complements the vast ‘number of looking-glasses’ in his dressing room that Admiral Croft finds so amusing. The Admiral confesses to Anne: ‘there was no getting away from oneself,’ admitting to her that he had to have the mirrors removed. Sir Walter is entirely unable to comprehend or accept how individuals of ‘obscure birth’ may climb society’s ladder; he would like only the ‘earliest patents’ to exist (this despite his country being saved from invasion by Lord Nelson, the son of a humble country curate). He is unremittingly narrow-minded, vain, and superficial. Anne, by contrast, despite wretched heartache and acute loneliness in this unloving home, is open minded, thoughtful, and reflective. I would like to argue that it is these qualities that ensure her happiness by the end of the novel. From the beginning of the novel we witness Anne practising the art of self-reflection, when she has absolutely no inkling that any kind of existence, other than coping, is an option for her. In other words, it is not the promise of romance that stirs her into mental action (because it is not until the penultimate chapter that she learns of Wentworth’s love for her); it is innate in Anne’s character. Anne’s ability to analyse her feelings and thoughts with a robustness, honesty and degree of humour ensures she is a character who will thrive. My point is if she were mentally stultified by the painful experiences of her youth (the death of her mother, the break-up with Wentworth), or presented as living in a kind of torpor due to her position in her family and in society, then Wentworth’s asking for her hand in marriage for a second time at the end of the novel would be a kind of ”rescuing”. You could imagine the headline: “Damsel waits for Knight to Return and Save her from her Ghastly Family and Boring Life.” This would indeed make her passive and render the romance of the novel dissatisfying (and antifeminist to a modern reader).

The novel begins with the reader learning of what the narrator describes as Anne’s ‘little history of sorrowful interest’ that occurred over seven years previously. Chapter 4 is devoted to revealing Anne’s teenage falling in love with Wentworth, not a captain at the time, and how she was persuaded to turn down his offer of marriage, despite being deeply in love with him – and he with her. At the start of the novel, we are presented with a twenty seven-year-old Anne, who is ‘faded and thin’. We appreciate that her ‘bloom and spirits’ are lost due to her rejecting her love. But her forlorn appearance is also due to the oppressively cold atmosphere of her family home, Kellynch Hall, where she is entirely overlooked: she ‘was nobody with either father or sister; her word had no weight; her convenience was always to give way; – she was only Anne.’ As the critic Bharat Tandon asserts, Anne starts the novel living under erasure, as “nothing”, existing almost outside the narrative as someone who “had been” but whose eyes have “nothing in them now”; she becomes identified with the blank dash “–” a notation of absence, of aposiopesis, of being prematurely cut off at twenty-seven. For a character to survive with so little emotional nourishment takes strength. Lady Russell offers her loyalty and affection, but it is critical that it was Lady Russell, Anne’s godmother, who was most instrumental in persuading Anne to refuse Wentworth, so their friendship is tainted by this memory. Anne shows great strength of character, and part of her strength is in her ability, or willingness, to grow.

“ For a character to survive with so little emotional nourishment takes strength. ”