My Favorite Jane Austen

As I have mentioned before, Jane Austen in one of my favorite authors ever. And while "Pride and Prejudice" is her most famous, it is not my favorite book. My favorite Jane Austen book is her last book "Persuasion". The story is about Anne Eliot, the middle daughter Sir Walter Eliot. The story opens with, after years of financial mismanagement, the Eliots have decided to rent their family home (rather than retrench or cut back on expenses) to Admiral Croft who has returned home (very wealthy) from the recent Napoleonic Wars (this is on of the few novels of Jane Austen that mentions the wars that occurred during her lifetime). Sir Walter and his favorite daughter Elizabeth(the eldest), both of whom are extremely snobby and concerned about social position, and leaving to live in Bath (and take Mrs. Clay with them, the daughter of Sir Eliot's solicitor and friend of Elizabeth who hopes to marry Sir Eliot) leaving Anne to finish preparing the house for Admiral Croft and his wife before visiting her younger sister Mary (a hypochondric) who lives with her husband and children near her (Mary's) in-laws in a house called Uppercross Hall. Is it here at Uppercross Hall that Anne meets and befriend the Crofts and is reunited with her former finance (who happens to be Mrs. Croft's brother), Captain Fredrick Wentworth, also made wealthy by his involvement in the Napoleonic wars. Eight years before, Anne and Fredrick had been engaged (he was a poor naval officer at the time) and Anne was persuaded (hence the title) by her neighbor (and friend of her mother who had passed away in Bath, causing Anne to dislike spending time in Bath) Lady Russell to refuse Fredrick and break the engagement. I don't want to go to in depth with the plot because I don't want to ruin your enjoyment of the book. The reason I love this book more than something like Pride and Prejudice or Emma is because it incorporates so many recurring themes in the other novels and presents those themes very well. When I took a class about Jane Austen, we often discussed how Austen presented ideals that were common in the evolving middle class, namely marrying for love and not money and determining a person's "internal" worth. I wrote a paper about how the heroine often creates a "family" that personifies these ideals. I think that the family that Anne constructs for herself (specifically because her own family is not very supportive) is one of the best representation of this family with middle class ideals. The dichotomy between the haughty and snobby Eliots (Walter and Elizabeth) and the Crofts (and Fredrick) makes this very clear. On one hand there are the Eliots who are unable or unwilling to change despite that they are destroying their very way of life by refusing to live within their means and on the other the Crofts, who have built their lives based on their own skills. And I think that Anne is the most mature and well drawn Austen heroine. She is aware that she was persuaded wrongly to refuse Fredrick and she remains constant to him even though there may be little hope that he returns her affection. Anne is somewhat of an anomaly because she is oldest of all Austen heroines (at 27) and she is not described as a great beauty or outgoing (like Elizabeth Bennett or Emma Woodhouse), in fact is it often mentioned that Anne has lost her "bloom". And the same is true of Fredrick Wentwoth. He is not extremely handsome or overtly charming (like Darcy, Mr. Bingley, or Henry Tilney), he is much more reserved (like Anne) but as the reader you are never really in doubt of his feelings or motivation. I highly recommend this book to any Austen fan or anyone who enjoys novels set in the 1800s or who enjoys an interesting love story.

This is the first of my weekly book reviews, I will try to review a book every Friday (or during the weekend). I am hoping to do a mix of some of my favorite books and books that I have recently finished. I have recently joined Paperspine (which is like Netflix for books) so hopefully I will get a wide range of books read and reviewed (if you are interesting in starting Paperspine, let me know and I can tell you more about it).