My First Steps into the Worlds of Austen by Ross

Spoilers for Persuasion by Jane Austen ahead.

I can no longer burden the bookseller shame; it is time to come clean. I have never read anything by Jane Austen, or at least I hadn’t until the beginning of this year. Boo and hiss I hear you cry, and I am firmly on your side, but instead of writing my letter of resignation, marking my immediate retreat from the world of literature with naïve tail between my legs, I have instead decided to write my blog this month about the experience and try my best to redeem myself.

This attempt at a redemption arc seems well fated, temporally at least, since this year marks the passing of a quarter millennia since Jane Austen was born and stands as a celebratory period for her enduring legacy on literature and culture. Readings, lectures and costume balls around the country show the admiration and respect she still commands down the centuries, with the continuously refreshed media adaptations further spotlighting the relevance and inspiration still to be found in her words and worlds. Austen and her semiquincentennial jubilee reflect my personal view of classical literature and the grounding ethos behind our Classics Book Club, that is just because a text was written one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago, does not inherently mean it has lost any relevance or enjoyability compared to contemporary works. The cultural touch stones may have changed, and the language evolved, but shining at the heart of what we consider to be classics are universal themes of love, loss, hope and struggle, themes that bind us in our humanity and, as such, are always worth exploring.

My first experience of Austen’s writing came with January’s Classics Book Club, where I found myself the proud owner of a pastel green Penguin Clothbound edition of Persuasion. I wasn’t sure what to expect, with the TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice my only Austen reference point. Clueless as I was, I truly wasn’t expecting my reading of Persuasion to be so funny. I’m certainly preaching to the converted here, but I was shocked at how much humour was stuffed into the plot and characters of Persuasion. Capricious and totally oblivious, I felt fully immersed in the drama of these characters’ lives, interwoven with Georgian and Regency pomp.

I’ll admit, it wasn’t an entirely easy read. I did have the scribble down a complicated cats-cradle of a family tree to really understand who was related to who and exactly which Charles was talking, but I consider this absolutely worth it. The more I worked, the more I found, underneath the witty dissection of upper-class flaws, a deep reflectiveness resonating at the core of Persuasion. By the end, the novel had taken the shape of a moral dilemma: how ethical is it to persuade someone to do, or not do, something? To what extent do these ethics change when that same convincing comes from a place of love and protection? Whose to blame when persuasion fails and who should bear the consequences?

Austen herself persuaded her niece not to marry a man before he went into the navy, for fear he couldn’t provide her the life Austen thought, or knew, she deserved. Persuasion then, for me, feels like a novel-long thought experiment, as Austen takes from her lived experience and works to understand the cosmic balance of her actions. The story is dappled with examples of persuasion bringing about happiness, like Anne’s subtle influence over her sister Mary in the realms of motherhood, but each pro of cajolery is always challenged, countered by Austen, as characters live with the consequences of their coercion; Louisa falls from the cobb and is changed, severing an entire potential branch from the tree of life. In this loss though, Austen doesn’t slip into hopelessness as Louisa does end up married and happy with Captain Benwick, which, as with most of Austen’s novels, is the highest goal. In this way, Austen never lands on a direct answer to the question of persuasion, but acknowledges the nuance and relativism we all must confront.

Persuasion was the last novel Austen completed before her death at the age of 41. Sanditon had been started but not finished, leaving a somewhat macabre sense of finality hanging over Persuasion. Though I cannot say for certain, having not read her earlier works, I do get the sense that, at the end of her life, Austen used her writing of Persuasion as an attempt to make peace with herself and the world she occupied and so keenly observed. She may have been successful in this. I hope she was. What is certain, however, is Persuasion’s passing on of a reflective mindset, from Austen to me, in the way I experienced this book. I feel grateful to have finally crossed the border in Austen-land and look forward to my upcoming adventures within its landscapes.