Review: Persuasion – One of Jane Austen’s Most Underrated Books. (Spoilers)

Last Christmas, one of the books I received was Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which, as the title says, is possibly one of her most underrated books. While we have all heard of Pride and Prejudice, and maybe some of her other stories such as Sense and Sensibility or Emma, most of us probably aren’t familiar with Persuasion, despite it being one of the most heart-wrenchingly written romances Jane Austen ever put to paper.

Set in Regency-era England, Persuasion follows Anne Elliot, the daughter of a wealthy aristocrat whose poor spending habits have landed the family deep in debt. In an attempt to get out of debt, the Elliot family is forced to rent out their estate to some wealthy tenants and move to their new home in Bath. However, the guy renting their estate isn’t just a random guy, but is actually Admiral Croft, who is married to the sister of Anne’s former suitor Captain Fredrick Wentworth, the man whom she was persuaded to break up with 8 years prior to the events of the book. Thus, Anne and Wentworth are forced to reconnect and confront their lingering feelings for each other through a series of misunderstandings.

With that description alone, it is understandable why Persuasion holds such a special place in the hearts of Jane Austen fans everywhere. Whereas most of Austen’s books center around young women falling in love for the first time, Persuasion focuses on an older heroine (Anne is 27) who has despaired of ever finding a husband and believes that Wentworth would never again want her after she rejected him. Thus, instead of the story necessarily focusing on finding a husband (though that’s a big part of it), it focuses more on forgiveness and the rekindling of the relationship between the two, and Anne’s rediscovery of hope and joy after being mired in despair for so long.

Besides that, Persuasion also feels different compared to some of Jane Austen’s other novels in the sense that Austen was in a similar situation to Anne. While her family wasn’t deep in debt and weren’t high-up aristocrats, Austen never married, despite having an attraction to a young man named Tom Lefroy (though the jury is out on whether this was a fling or if she actually liked him), being engaged to a guy named Harris Bigg-Wither (which she ended the morning after he proposed), and supposedly having a romance with a young clergyman in Bath who tragically died shortly after their infatuation began. Whether she actually loved any of these men is a topic of debate, but within Persuasion, it feels as though she wrote from personal experience. The pain that Anne feels at being single and losing her shot feels as though it came from Jane’s own sadness. Though heartbreak appears in several of Austen’s books (i.e. Sense and Sensibility), here, it feels deeper and more cutting, like Jane was writing about something closer to home.

Because of that, the end of the book feels so much more deserved. Yes, the heroines of other works like Sense and Sensibility who go through heartbreak also get endings that feel consistent with their journeys and are well-earned, but because Persuasion is largely about overcoming heartbreak and rediscovering love, the end is that much better. It’s more satisfying to know that Anne has become the person she used to be – hopeful, in love, and beautiful again – instead of despairing.

For the hopeless romantics, Persuasion is a book that expresses romantic longing better than many of Jane Austen’s other works.

Until next time,

M.J.