by Fanny Burney (1752-1840); the heroine seats herself when attending performances so as to talk to those she wants to cultivate.

21 (p. 205) youth ... many years: Charles will temporarily fill the position for a clergyman who has been promised to the parish by a patron but is not yet old enough to be ordained.

22 (p. 216) head: This is a reference to the collection of tales called The Arabian Nights or The Thousand and One Nights. The conceit is that a legendary king of Samarkand killed each of his wives the morning following their wedding night until he married Scheherazade, who remained alive by promising to tell him a new tale every night.

Inspired by Persuasion

FILM

In 1995 four of Jane Austen’s novels were made into films: Clueless, a modernization of Emma; Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility; Simon Langton’s four-and-a-half-hour miniseries Pride and Prejudice; and the BBC’s lavish production of Persuasion.

Persuasion, Austen’s final and probably most autobiographical novel, is perhaps the most challenging to adapt into film, as it deals primarily with an unspoken psychology of love, courting, and courting again. Screenwriter Nick Dear (The Gambler) and director Roger Michell (Notting Hill), both veterans of the Royal Shakespeare Company, proved up to the task. Michell’s debut film, Persuasion is a faithful parade of Austen’s world—darkened drawing rooms, the absurdity of rigid, scripted social conventions, the comedy of fatuous relations, and the romance of patience. Like the novel, Michell’s film is set in England in 1814, following war with France. While Persuasion boasts glossy production values, and beautiful costumes and sets, it is not merely a period piece. The production’s crown jewel is Amanda Root, who turns in a brilliant performance, playing the fiercely intelligent, regretful, and frustrated Anne Elliot with subtlety and nuance. The life of Anne, on the brink of spinsterhood, is thrown into tumult when Frederick Wentworth (Ciaran Hinds), a suitor she had been persuaded eight years earlier to reject on financial grounds, reemerges as a valiant and wealthy navy officer.

Root and Hinds are skilled at portraying the emotions of the central pair with little more than facial expressions, as numerous siblings and cousins chatter idly and prevent Anne and Frederick from talking about their future. Indeed, everything is implied, and almost nothing said. The typical Austen social milieu, including a full complement of fops and twits, including a silly Sir Walter Elliot played by Corin Redgrave, intensifies sympathies for the honest and straightforward pair of would-be soul mates. The pace is slow and measured, and the tension created by the many frustrated attempts at communication between its principal players is remarkable.

LITERATURE

Rudyard Kipling’s short story “The Janeites,” published in its final form in 1926, describes the experiences of the shell-shocked veteran Humberstall, who recalls his induction into a secret Jane Austen society while in the trenches in France during World War I. The world of card games and dances described by Austen represents to these soldiers—who are scarcely aware of the tone or even the plot of the novels—the imperiled English civilization for which they are fighting. Real-life Janeites have populated the world of letters since the publication of Austen’s novels. The brilliant novelist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is preeminent among later writers who explored nuances of personality as their characters played out their roles in society.

Comments & Questions

In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Jane Austen’s Persuasion through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.

COMMENTS

SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE

A friend of mine, Miss Ursula Mayow, being on a visit at a country house in the Austen district, was taken to an afternoon party by her friends. Whilst there, some of the guests began to talk of Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Cranford,’ then just published, and a voice was heard in the distance saying this: ‘Yes, I like it very much; it reminds me of my Aunt Jane.’ To Miss Mayow, a devoted Austenite, there could be no doubt who was meant by ‘my Aunt Jane,’ and accordingly she went as soon as she could and introduced herself to the speaker. This was the story told her, and if it be true, why Mr. Austen Leigh