Reading group: Jane Austen's Persuasion is July's book | Books
Persuasion has won our popular vote and will be the subject of this month’s Jane Austen reading group.
Initially, I was surprised that Persuasion beat novels such as Pride and Prejudice and Emma. But then I read the comments that accompanied the votes, and it quickly started to make sense. Persuasion seems to be the Jane Austen novel that has most touched our readers’ hearts. “Even thinking about it has tears pricking in my eyes,†wrote barmierhensnob. “Persuasion, of course,†said themeda, “all about second chances, and loving the longest, when all hope is gone.†Nordicanna2014, meanwhile, identified with Austen’s most mature protagonist, Anne Elliott: “Such a well-portrayed, sympathetic character.†Like many a scholar before, Nordicanna2014 also wondered whether Jane Austen “represented some of her own personality in Anne?â€
This question has intrigued commentators for almost two centuries. Was the last novel Jane Austen completed her most personal? Did she know that she was dying when she wrote it during 1815 and 1816, and did she make it accordingly valedictory? Was this her attempt to write herself a happy ending? Was it perhaps a commentary on a love affair that she herself had been persuaded to give up, and could now consummate in her fiction? Was that why she arranged for it to be published more than a year after she finished it, perhaps knowing she would not be around to witness its reception?
It is possible to believe that Austen wanted to leave behind a coded message about her own life â€" but it’s just as easy to credit this master artist with a desire to write a story for its own sake, to want to fill it with characters independent of herself, and to have allowed them their own lives on the page. It’s also worth remembering (as this excellent recent BBC radio documentary from Sarah Dillon pointed out) that Persuasion wasn’t the last book Austen worked on. When she died, she was 12 chapters in to a book called Sanditon, a fascinating departure from her more domestic novels. Perhaps Persuasion was a staging post for a new kind of writing, as much as a last word.
Talking of last words, Persuasion is unique among Jane Austen novels in that we have original manuscript chapters; better still, ones that contain an alternative ending. We’ll hopefully discuss the relative merits of both versions later on in the month. But for now, let’s stick with the beginning. How’s this for an opening sentence?
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed.
They don’t make them like that any more. Just look at all those semicolons! What it must be to be able to arrange our unwieldy English language into such order and balance. It’s as if she’s trained an elephant to dance over a tightrope, then made it tell a joke as it pirouettes off the end. Better still, there are hundreds of pages of this stuff. We’re in the presence of a master â€" it’s going to be an excellent month.
All thoughts on Persuasion, whether we should consider the death of its author (or The Death of the Author), and about other potential topics for discussion will be welcomed below.
And thanks to Penguin, we have five copies of the novel to give to the first five people from the UK to post “I want a copy pleaseâ€, along with a nice, constructive suggestion in the comments section below. If you’re lucky enough to be one of the first to comment, email Phill Langhorne with your address (phill.langhorne@theguardian.com) â€" we can’t track you down ourselves. Be nice to him, too.
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