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| - Shortly after the narrator relates Anne's and Captain Wentworth's history, we learn that Anne (unsurprisingly) regretted breaking off their engagement and would never advise anyone to do the same, right? Yet when she and Captain Wentworth finally get the chance to discuss it, she never apologizes for (what we were earlier told she herself saw as) her mistake (like, for example, Elizabeth Bennett did to Mr. Darcy) but defends her decision. Huh?
* She doesn't see herself as having made a mistake -- she was given bad advice, but her conclusion is that she was right to defer to her older friend, who was acting as a mother-surrogate. (She does, however, make very sure that Wentworth knows she now thinks of the advice as bad.) Besides which, she *hasn't* done anything to apologise for in the sense that Elizabeth Bennet did -- she is not deliberately out to hurt Wentworth by her refusal, and she never has any misconceptions of him that need to be disabused. Wentworth himself concedes that he's as much to blame as she is, for irrationally sulking over her refusal instead of trying to understand, and renew his suit once the objections as to his wealth and position had been overcome.
* So, he concedes that he was an unnacceptable husband until he was rich enough? Well, so much for this book's supposed defense of the Self-Made Man. Men, money is everything, and a girl who listens to advice to turn you down because you're not rich enough is completely justified! If she admits she would have suffered more being engaged to you, accept it; she should be perfect enough to be able to make such a priggish declaration of her own perfection without anybody questioning her right to do so.
* Why shouldn't a woman (or a man for that matter) have the right to turn anybody down at any time for any reason?
* The point of the novel isn't that Wentworth needed to be rich, but that he needed to be in a position where he could actually support a wife. That's why his reference to the Year 8, when he had some cash and the captaincy of the Laconia and didn't renew his suit to Anne is so important. She would have accepted him, because at that point, while no where near wealthy, he would have been in a much stronger position. As she points out, Lady Russell, however misguidedly, was trying to keep Anne safe, and as charming and handsome as Wentworth was, there were genuine dangers to the engagement. If he had died at sea, or been injured (as Fanny Price's father was), Anne could very easily (given that her father would have refused to help her) been left in a situation like Mrs Smith and Mrs Clay. Lady Russell's prejudices did play a role, but she was still keeping Anne from a situation that even Wentworth's sister acknowledges was dangerous. Wentworth had a career and other prospects - Anne didn't. Her marriage was her life, and if she chose badly, her life could have been ruined. Austen's point is that passionate love is important, but you have to be able to live as well - and it's Wentworth failure to understand that Anne's rejection wasn't about his lack of wealth at all but about the need to know that he could at least support her in addition to himself, that keeps them seperated for so long.
* Too bad Anne doesn't see it that way; her justification in the final chapter isn't that it would have been unreasonable for them to marry under the circumstances 8 years ago (she says absolutely nothing about that) but specifically that she was right to take a friend's advice purely because it was a friend's advice - period. That's her justification: that it's a proper woman's duty to yield to persuasion. If such an unreasonable excuse was unnecessary due to other circumstances surrounding the engagement, that makes it all the more Anvilicious. Plus, the reasonable response in such a situation is to tell someone to wait until it's more practical for the two of you to marry, not break the engagement; when Anne was 19, she didn't tell Wentworth they needed to wait until they were better off financially but unequivocally ended the engagement. The fact that Wentworth didn't come back two years later simply means that (like Mr. Darcy and Colonel Brandon) he knows how to take "No" for an answer. What, was he supposed to adopt Mr. Collins' translation of female behavior and not take a "No" seriously? How would it not be egotistical to assume his suit would be perfectly welcome an indefinite number of years in the future? Did women still expect men to be mind readers 200 years ago?
* Except Anne never says 'it's a woman's duty to yield to persuasion'. What she says is '...a strong sense of duty is no bad thing in a woman.' That it may have been a misplaced sense of duty, she doesn't deny- neither does she say that all women need one ('no bad thing' is a lot milder than that). Her 'duty' wasn't in doing as she was told by some big bad parental authority, faceless and ungendered, but in owing more to her mother-figure than to her boyfriend, or herself (that may seem dispassionate to you, but wasn't too far from what Jane Austen felt she had to do in real life.)
* And the big thing is that the ADVICE was wrong. But listening to such advice wasn't. The person who gave the advice should have, by all accounts, been right. The engagement was, by all logical conclusions, a REALLY bad one for Anne. He was poor, going into a dangerous job, and could die at any time, leaving her all alone. Luck alone made it everything he, and Anne, could hope for. While Anne's and Wentworth's love was true, how would her mother-figure know that? Anne was young, and it's implied this was her first real offer. It's less, women should keep their head down and listen, but more, there are more points of view than your own, and an intelligent woman will listen to those points, especially when they're given by loving and caring friends who can, yes, be wrong. When making life decisions it's better to be cautious.
* How does the plot itself illustrate this? It doesn't, so why is this novel so popular in spite of the Anvilicious handling of that moral?
* It probably doesn't have to, for its original audience. Viewers Are Geniuses, or rather, viewers do not live in a radically different society to the writer.
* What about Louisa's accident, anyway? The jump goes well enough the first time- the time that it goes wrong is when she fails to perform a reality-check. Ergo, not 'do as you're told', but 'romance has to take place within the real world. It's not an appeal to the superego, it's an appeal to engage ego- which is totally within character for Jane Austen.
* I still think you're insisting on reading the novel as something it isn't- that is, that it's supposed to be an instructional text that is to teach us something. Why should it be? While it's not explicitly said in this novel 'this book doesn't teach us anything serious so don't go looking for it' the Lemony Narrator of other books has given her opinion of such abuses of fiction, and she hasn't changed much. Breaking the engagement was wrong both from the passionate and moral points of view. From a passionate point of view, it's foolish not to marry someone just because it would mean a decrease in luxury; Wentworth wasn't penniless 8 years ago, just not wealthy. Anne wouldn't have been in the position of, say, Henry James' Maggie by marrying him! From a moral point of view, it's wrong to reject someone just because of a difference in class and rank and the displeasure of a friend, and those were the only obstacles.** Firstly, I think you're wildly misunderstanding the objections to Wentworth that were laid out in Chapter 4. His 'class' isn't a problem, because he and Anne are from the same 'class'- the Gentry. Baronettes are members of the gentry. So are officers of the Royal Navy. Wentworth's brother and father are clergymen. He's a gentleman. Secondly, his 'rank' isn't a problem because of the snob value of a bauble. It's rather more important- Navel officers who were not Commanders lived on base (on their ships, in fact), and couldn't take their wives to sea with them. They could be separated for months, years if Wentworth was posted overseas. That would be the 'dependence' that horrified Lady Russel- the dependence of having a husband who- unless he made big money and could buy his own house- she wouldn't be able to live with.
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* Wentworth's finances, while obviously it's part of the motivation to break up the relationship, actually don't figure in the means of persuasion used to break Anne. Here it is in the actual text:
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* She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing- indiscreet,improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it. But it was not a merely selfish caution, under which she acted, in putting an end to it. Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than her own, she could hardly have given him up.- The belief of being prudent, and self-denying principally for his advantage, was her chief consolation, under the misery of a parting... And that's it.
* So the chief means of persuasion was- it's implied- partly that it was immoral for them to marry, but partly that the marriage would have screwed up his career (might even have been true- lieutenants were expected to be single and one having a wife would have been a nuisance, and a man who's a nuisance with his personal life doesn't get promoted...) Does this satisfy your passion, morals, or whatever it is one is supposed to be making decisions with?
* Leaving it a few years to marry may seem 'reasonable' to you, (would to me too, for that matter) but it wouldn't be treated that way in Regency England. (Look at the scandal a long engagement causes in Emma, and in Sense and Sensibility.) Engagements among the gentry were supposed to be made good of in weeks, not years; hanging around for long periods would be viewed publicly with extreme suspicion. (Why? Why anything? Why do politicians have to be married? It just was that way.) More importantly, it wasn't a case of 'when' Wentworth was better off. Most lieutenants never became commanders, still less Post Captains. (It's not quite 'We'll get married when his band gets a recording contract', but it's in that ballpark.) If Anne learned from her mistake (oh, sorry, Lady Russell's mistake - a distinction Anne makes very clear) like 4 of Austen's other heroines, it would have been admirable and romantic, but she only learns never to doubt her own perfection. Anne and Austen both blame Lady Russell and Captain Wentworth and go out of their way to acquit Anne. It's like Austen couldn't bear to make her heroine take responsibility for anything.
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* More like she learns... oh, see the bottom of the next answer.
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* Besides, above all you've said all over this Wiki, I've looked at Wentworth's last speech, every which way, and I can't see an 'apology' in it. He's realised he could have stopped their unhappiness sooner than he did, and that Anne wasn't quite as shallow as he took her for, but it's not an 'apology'. He doesn't say 'sorry' or 'forgive me'; he implies that he should have maybe not have been as self-pitying as he was, but that's about it. Any 'apology' in that speech is an extremely subjective reading.
* But he admits he was wrong for not taking Anne's "No" seriously and coming back as soon as he made some money. Anne never had to admit she was wrong about anything. The reconciliation is ridiculiusly one-sided; it's all Anne saying I Regret Nothing and Wentworth saying he does regret things.
* Well, this isn't the reconciliation itself, is it? That's one of the scenes- which happen in all of Austen's novels- that she always leaves out. This is some days after that.
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