Persuasion: Dutiful Mistakes and Superstitious Security

Persuasion explores the power dynamics of relationships; it reveals how arbitrary predictions, advice, and a sense of security really are in the changing world or wars and pretty prairies. The dots only connect when you look back, not when you look ahead. One cannot safely rely on the words of anyone, even if a strong sense of allegiance is involved. For Ann Elliot, doing things “right” does not guarantee anything except for personal sacrifice and self-doubt. Persuasion will invade from all sides. Whether a loving mother figure or an impulsive lover, the “right side” can only be determined through the luck of time, not on fixed moral grounds.

     How one reacts to persuasion builds one’s moral character however. Listening to Lady Russell, Ann follows on the “right side” of duty. This path makes her suffer and therefore “grow”; it does not offer immediate gratification. Her second chance with Wentworth almost seems providential then. Indeed, when Ann looks back at her actions, she tells Wentworth: “I must believe that I was right, much as I suffered from it… To me, she was in the place of a parent… I am not saying that she did not err in her advice. It was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides; and for myself, I certainly never should, in any circumstance of tolerable similarity, give such advice. But I mean, that I was right in submitting to her… and I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is not bad part of a woman’s portion” (2.11, p.230-231). Ann learns that advice, pride and prejudice, are nothing more than superstitions, guaranteeing a security that is unaffordable in the unpredictable state of nature. Yet, as a nineteen-year-old girl, she had a loving obligation to obey Lady Russell, her surrogate mother; she will sacrifice herself first before jumping into temptation. Nothing in haste, even when this means missing out on what one is meant to have… For, although Wentworth loves Ann enduringly, he carries trademarks of gambler characters like Frank Churchill or Willoughby: idealistic as a young man,  he is adventurous, passionate, and still plays courting games to get attention. So, time was a good test for a character such as his. It would have been a gamble eight and a half years ago to accept his proposal. Ann therefore explains that she is a better, stronger, and humbled woman today; she can look back without the regret of having betrayed her young conscience. She can now be happy with Wentworth without any moral compromise. Everything in its own time then. Second chances do come around for those who don’t yet trust themselves. Is it important to suffer then, to be persuaded by the careful yet “erring” side? Is it important to make mistakes, as long as they obey the right hierarchy of intentions, those of safe parental figures?

    Yet, I do not think Austen is preaching here either. She seems rather to show that everything is contingent. Even the happy ending of this marriage plot, with she details more than in her other novels, carries a doubled edged sword; not so much ironic, as melancholic. We read both into the essentialism of “meant to be” second chances and into the arbitrary transience of human security. No matter how much Ann pierces Wentworth’s soul, no matter how long they waited to be with each other, and how many lessons they had to learn, nothing protects them from total loss at any time. This is the frustration of human existence; we dedicate our lives to creating “rightful” meaning but we never have control. Things flow out of our grasp, even when our fingers are tightly clenched. 

     For better of for worse, the novel fixates upon the unchangeable past, almost like an impulsive defense mechanism against the ever changing present. We feel Ann’s constant anxiety around all the possibilities and uncertainties that keep arising in real time.  From the moment Wentworth’s name is mentioned, the regrets of the painful yet pleasuring past consume Ann. Memories become her secure sanctuary as Wentworth comes in and collides against everything, disturbing the steadiness of her future.  Hopes and fears appear and disappear from one moment to the next, based on his sudden presences or absences. As Ann will tell Wentworth, she still looks fondly upon Lyme, even if the last few hours were so upsetting: “… when the pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes pleasure. One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering – which was by no means the case at Lyme” (2. 8, p.173). The past, for all its pain, offers the beauty of stillness and patterns; the traces of our own decisions over a fate we think we can never control. It is a pretty picture, with its light and darkness, of something forever out of reach, something like heaven. The novel appropriately ends then with an uncertain omen as it looks to the future: “the dread of a future war was all that could dim her sunshine. She gloried in being a sailor’s wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtues than in its national importance” (2.12, p.236).  The happy ending then brings out the theme of new beginnings, albeit darker ones here; the future is full of fears so Ann must feast upon her life now. Time both builds and kills love just as the sailor profession makes Wentworth a great husband to Ann and yet, can remove him from her at any time.