Art v Life in Persuasion
In this month’s Musing, our guest writer and expert tour guide Dr Moira Rudolf attempts to get into the mind of the great novelist and the themes which run through her last complete work.
Persuasion was Jane’s last complete work, published (simultaneously with Northanger Abbey) in 1818, shortly after her death, and the prevailing atmosphere is, I think, that of an autumnal novel. There are many references to and musings on autumn, recollections of wet weather, nostalgia for a lost rural life and the suggestion of missed opportunities. Not that I am suggesting that Jane – who had an optimistic nature – knew that she was dying. Far from it! In a letter written from Chawton to her niece, Fanny Knight, dated 23-25 March 1817, she wrote: ‘I certainly have not been well for many weeks, & about a week ago I was very poorly, (…) but am considerably better now & recovering my Looks a little, which have been bad enough, black & white & every wrong colour.’ Even in her last weeks in Winchester with her beloved sister, Cassandra she was sure that she would recover, describing herself as ‘really a very genteel, portable sort of Invalid’ and, as late as May 1817, rallied. She made significant revisions to Persuasion, substituting the ‘Cancelled Chapter’ (see Everyman Edition, 2007, pages 206-214) with the present-day Chapters 22 and 23, before embarking on its light-hearted successor, the fragment, Sanditon.
Jane’s optimism can be felt in the novel’s references to second chances and spring-like new beginnings, In the opening pages, we are told the heroine Anne Elliot has ‘an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding’ although to her father and sister ‘was nobody (…): her word had no weight, her convenience was always to give way; – she was only Anne’. In terms of her looks, Austen describes her as ‘…an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling.’ However, having been persuaded to break off her engagement to Captain Wentworth, Anne has lost her youthful bloom, becoming ‘faded and thin’.
It took some years, but Anne does regain her looks, upon which she – relaxing in Lyme Regis – unwittingly attracts the admiring glance of Cousin Elliot:
‘When they came to the steps, leading upwards from the beach, a gentleman at the same moment preparing to come down, politely drew back, and stopped to give them way. They ascended and passed him, and as they passed, Anne’s face caught his eye, and he looked at her with a degree of earnest admiration, which she could not be insensible of. She was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features, having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of the eye which it had also produced. It was evident that the gentleman, [completely a gentleman in manner] admired her exceedingly.’
I have often wondered if – while Jane was writing this – she was thinking of the ‘mystery suitor’ (a clergyman, never definitively identified) whom she met in Sidmouth in 1801, but who died suddenly before they could be introduced to their respective families. I do not believe, as is occasionally speculated, that this man was Dr Samuel Blackwell – the likely model for Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Collins – provided as a consolation prize by Jane’s friend, Anne Lefroy (the model, I think, for Lady Russell ) after she had put an end to Jane’s serious flirtation with her nephew, Tom Lefroy.
Jane’s – deeply resented – move to Bath, is also mirrored in Persuasion; Anne’s distress at the move from her beloved country home, Kellynch as against that of 26-year-old Jane, who fainted when the news was abruptly announced. She had no choice but to say farewell to Steventon with its familiar routines, scenes, friends and neighbours. For both Jane and Anne, it must have felt like exile; a cruel break with all that was predictable and settled. Although Jane had enjoyed Bath as a tourist in 1799, staying as a guest of her wealthy elder brother Edward while he enjoyed a fashionable cure, she had never intended to take up permanent residence in the city.
Anne, about to leave Uppercross and ‘dreading the possible heats of September in all the white glare of Bath, and grieving to forget all the influences so sweet and so sad of the autumnal months in the country’ eventually travels ‘on a dark November day’ with ‘a small thick rain almost blotting out the very few objects ever to be discerned from the windows’. Lady Russell is only too happy to enter Bath ‘on a wet afternoon’ as, on hearing all the familiar sounds of the city – bawling tradesmen, horses/carriages, ladies’ clinking (platform) pattens, lifting their skirts from the mess of the streets – she could only think of ‘the winter pleasures’ awaiting her. Anne, though, seeing Bath in similar conditions and desperately missing Kellynch, continued in ‘a very determined, though very silent disinclination for Bath; caught the first view of the extensive buildings, smoking in rain without any wish of seeing them better’.
Jane’s first impressions of Bath are detailed in in a letter to Cassandra dated 5-6 May: ‘The first view of Bath in fine weather does not answer my expectations; I think I see more distinctly thro’ Rain. – The Sun was got behind everything, and the appearance of the place from the top of Kingsdown, was all vapour, shadow, smoke & confusion.’
Other themes spring to mind such as Jane’s characters inspired by their real-life counterparts, and little-changed locations still recognisable today – I will return to those in a later Musing. Or join me in Bath for a guided tour and discover the connections between life and art first hand!
