Persuasion by Jane Austen

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Defining the novel is a challenging prospect because the act of naming means to circumscribe a genre that defies rigid codes. The novel's elasticity and readiness to incorporate other genres makes it slippery and untidy; nevertheless, the novelness of a text allows us to recognize a novel and distinguish it from other genres. As readers, we approach the novel with the expectation that it will possess novelistic attributes and judge the novel on its ability to master these. With this focus in mind, this essay explores how the following features in Jane Austen's Persuasion contribute to (or persuade us as to) the novelness of the text: the extensive treatment of its characters, a sense of cohesion and continuity present in a work of long prose fiction, and a vivid portrayal of the social order on the micro-level of the domestic scenes of everyday.

The heroine, Anne Elliot, is a 27-year-old "old maid," who devotes her life to caring for the needs of her family and friends. In the bloom of youth, her sense of duty to her mentor Lady Russell and her family compel her to decline marriage to Frederick Wentworth, the man she loves. Although an officer in the British Navy, Wentworth lacks the wealth and rank in society that is highly esteemed by Anne's associates. Austen's novelistic treatment of her characters means that as readers, we get to know them. The length of the novel allows for pacing. Austin can fully develop her characters and show them in many circumstances, in different contexts over time, a method that helps to flesh out the characters. For example, we observe Anne Elliot, dwarfed by the selfish concerns of her father and sister Elizabeth while at Kellynch Hall and Anne's lack of crit...

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...ry, but her details about this particular segment of society should be accurate (as accurate as can be made by an observer, and a woman sequestered from male-dominated world). If this were not so, we would not try to read novels as a reflection of society. And cultural criticism using novels for analysis would be useless.

The thorough development of characters, the novel's structure and cohesion, and the portrayal of the social order are qualities that loom essential in my mind as I read Persuasion. These attributes are by no means exhaustive. But I focused on qualities that are necessary for the novel's success, that not only are present in the novel, but also distinguish it from other genres.

Bibliography:

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Persuasion. 1817. New York: Norton, 1995.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: U of California P, 1957.