Oh Persuasion, you liar! Jane Austen’s final and “most mature” novel is a work of gilded yearning. Anne Elliot (a spinster at a mere 27!) has spent her life missing the lost connection of her first love, Captain Wentworth. I think it was a true testament to recovery that I was able to read this after the third (and final) gut-wrenching breakup with my first love (and at the time, believed love of my life). Jane Austen's novels often offer a hiatus to hopeless romantics about misjudgment of character, the endearment of a headstrong character, or of how friendship is the best basis of a partnership. Persuasion, though I love it, is invalidating to every brick built of moving on. Anne is paralyzed in a failure to launch after losing her first engagement, only for them to (200 years late spoiler alert) end up together. BFFR!!! There’s no world where my growth will be stunted, my value diluted, and in the end result is getting my ex-boyfriend back, just as in love, and having it be a healthy relationship? This rings absolutely false in an era of stalking social media pages, drunk texts, rampant infidelity, and most of all the dreaded sitationship. This today reads as a fan fiction of your most delusional, lover-girl, best friend. So in this ode to Jane Austen, we learn from our own experiences and celebrate (with more knowledge) the path that worked out for Anne in this FICTIONAL novel.
Page 4
Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character; vanity of person and of situation.
Sir Walter Elliot may not have been the love interest in this, but to be noted - a man who cares about the hottest club, who name drops, or puts on a front is not a man to surround yourself with, Same goes for ourselves. Recently, I’ve notices my social media reflects myself in a different financial and mental state than the one I’m in even if they’re my lived experiences. Remember real life is different than how you’re percieved.
Miss Emma Chamberlain is a PRIME example of addressing the disparity between a desirable lifestyle and the realistic life of a 20-something year old. Yeah, her life in LA in her mansion with every luxury accounted for doesn’t look half bad but her vlogs and podcast share insight into the loneliness life offers those aware of it. Don’t let celebrity distract yourself - keep focus on your life rather than title or circumstances.
Page 14
It is singularity which often makes the worst part of our suffering, as it always does our conduct.
No because repeat this back to yourself- you delete your dating apps because you had a really good date? Don’t think he didn’t go home and keep swiping even if he also had a great time. You nail an interview? So did all the other final round candidates, because anyone who made it that far is qualified. Putting all your eggs in one basket will never work. The best time to be dating, applying to a job, etc is when you have multiple prospects. It allows you to weigh your options against each other and make the best call for yourself.
Page 25
A house was never taken good care of, Mr Shephard observed, without a lady.
Page 29
Half of the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly any body to love; but the encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail. They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love. It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest; she, in receiving his declations and proposals, on him in having them accepted.
I’ll give her this - any relationship should be built in partnership. Loving to be loved in return. Reciprocal appreciation.
Page 31
Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than her own, she could hardly have given him up. - The belief of being prudent, and self-denying principally for his advantage, was her chief consolation, under the misery of a parting.
Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth; and an early loss of blood and spirits had been their lasting effect
Page 33
She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older.
Page 38
To be claimed as a good, though in an improper style, is at least better than being rejected as no good at all.
Page 42
While well, and happy, and properly attended to, she had great good humor and excellent spirits, but any indisposition sunk her completely, she had no resources for solitude.
An interested creature is in turn, exceptionally interesting.
Page 49
A woman of real understanding might have given more consequence to his character, and more usefulness, rationality, and elegance to his habits and pursuits.
Page 72
There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was perpetual estrangement.
This very well may be the hardest quote I have ever had to read. Jane Austen why did you write this except to break the hearts of every ex girlfriend. The hardest part of my break up was not that we weren’t dating anymore. It was the absence of him forever- that Succession would air its finale and we’d never discuss it. That we’d take vacations separately and sleep in beds with other people. That he’d keep laughing and I wouldn’t be there to hear it, there to cause it. He will continue to be a friend in other people’s lives. I remember wishing we were old and divorced with children and assets that required us to check in. Our memories are a graveyard, no longer a garden.
Page 82
Anne did not wish for more of such looks and speeches. His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.
Page 115
She thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings that could alone estimate it truly were the very feeling which aught to taste it but sparingly.
Fiona Apple, my darling, I have to learn to reserve your unwaivering solidarity to my heartbreak for only moments I need it best. Too much indulgence in suffering is not good for a youthful spirit and age cannot be relived.
Page 144
One man’s ways may be as good as any others, but we all like our own best.
Page 173
[Their love] would never be remembered with indifference.
Page 183
She distrusted the past, if not the present.
Page 209
A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman
Some advice I recieved to mend my broken heart after a forced hand of a break up- men will never get over the girl who ends things first. Unfortunately, I hadn’t learned that walking away was only half the battle, and the intregal move was truly to stay away and leave memory and nostalgia to do the dirty work.
Page 231
“I wish nature had made hearts as yours more common”
Page 267
“Men have every advantage of us in telling their own story.”
Page 270
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope”
“I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight and a half years ago”
“I have loved none but you”
Page 271
“For you alone I think and plan”
In regard to the quotes from both page 270 and 271 - for all of my cynacism, Jane Austen writes a declaration of love unparalleled to anything I could ever hope to read.
Page 274
There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy perhaps, in their re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in knowledge of each other’s character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting.
Page 277
It is something for a woman to be assured, in her eight-and-twentieth year, that she had lost not one charm of earlier youth.
Page 280
Glowing and lovely in sensibility, and more generally admired than she thought about or cared for, she had cheerful or forbearing feelings for every creature around her.
Look, even a twisted, rotten heart like mine appreciates Austen. Yearning is reserved for her words alone. This novel stands out for me as particularly heart-wrenching but in a modern context, riddled with false hope. Life is not about stagnancy and neither is romance! As a work of fiction, it’s phenomenal but I’ll remain rooted in reality.