In her extreme obedience to her own egotism, Mary belongs to those who are “romantic” in their suffering—that is, self-indulgently dramatizing and thinking highly of the importance of their own feelings. In contrast with her two selfish sisters, Anne is praised for her “elegant and cultivated mind” (my italics; p. 39). Anne’s visit to Uppercross, home of Mary’s in-laws, the Musgroves, is a corrective to the Elliot pride, a lesson to Anne “in the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle”(p. 40). Yet all those at Uppercross are also in the “self-delusion” of egoism, barely listening to any concerns but their own. Where the Elliots are cold and unfeeling, the Musgroves are feeling but dim.

Captain Wentworth’s relatives, the Crofts, by contrast, one of the number of “three or four families” that Jane Austen acknowledged she liked to write about in each novel, are the rare happy couple in Austen’s works. Their mutual devotion is based on companionship and “open, easy and decided” manners—they are neither cultivated nor proud but frank and honest. Mrs. Croft, Captain Wentworth’s sister, is Mary’s opposite number, cheerful and hardy where Mary is self-indulgent and whining. Mrs. Croft castigates Captain Wentworth because he speaks of women as if they “were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures [who don‘t] expect to be in smooth water all our days”(p. 66). She is a woman willing to exert herself and bear discomfort rather than aim for the social status of the privileged fine lady. In this she repudiates the fixed hierarchical idea of women as weak vessels who are unreasonable, delicate, and docile by nature.

Austen draws together both emotion and prudence, “agitation” and “composure,” in relation to Anne’s first meeting with Wentworth since their engagement was dissolved, in which Anne struggles to check her feeling. During the walk, Captain Wentworth admires Louisa Musgrove’s self-description as “not easily persuaded,” firm of mind, the nut that endures autumn with its hard shell. This implies that Anne is too weak and passive, lacking what he calls “powers of mind.” Yet the accident that is the climax of the novel occurs because self-will triumphs over reason, motivated by feeling: Louisa, in an effort to flirt with Captain Wentworth and show off the resoluteness that he has claimed to value, stubbornly acts against prudence and has a near-fatal blow to the head when she falls from the Cobb on a pleasure trip to Lyme. Captain Wentworth must learn to temper his feelings with “justness” as Anne must learn to temper reason with legitimate desire.

But neither feeling nor reason is depicted as simple or easy to discern as values to rely on: Thus even socially conservative, rational, and “prudent” Lady Russell is motivated by antisocial, narcissistic feelings of “angry pleasure” and “pleased contempt” (p. 116). An important character who illustrates the anti-romantic point of view is Captain Wentworth’s melancholy friend Captain Benwick, whose love of romantic poetry and showy sincerity is belied by his falling too quickly in love with a less than worthy object after a romantic pining for his lost love. Anne briskly recommends he read less poetry and more prose. Strong emotion, it seems, is a value only when tempered and managed. Yet at the same time the irony is directed at Anne as well as at Captain Benwick: Anne is conscious (and we are made conscious of the fact that the author is conscious) of her own hypocrisy in preaching patience and resignation, since she is growing more and more aware that she is still in love and suffering by the knowledge of her desire.

Since we the readers are in the privileged position of knowing that Captain Wentworth is also increasingly attracted to Anne, we spend much of this novel watching unacknowledged worth in the process of being discovered, the neglected cared for, the invisible made visible. This is a notion of love based on friendship, the modern idea of loving for “character” (or personality, as we would say). The Crofts admit they married quickly, she for his character (meaning manly virtue) and he for her beauty. “And what were we to wait for besides?” they say, emphasizing the naturalness that is implied by the simplicity of it. This view of romance as friendship represents the avoidance of both cold alliance for social privilege and the moral risks of passion.

By contrast, Mr. Elliot, heir to her father’s estate and name and Anne’s suitor, assumes that “rank is rank” and argues for the happiness that results from “due