Justice, indeed, hath fair play with Mrs. Norris. May we not whisper—Poor Maria!
Persuasion, Miss Austen’s last work and perhaps her finest, reveals maturity in other ways. No longer than Northanger Abbey, it has neither the complexity nor the crowded canvas distinguishing others of the second group. It is written throughout in a minor key, without one outstanding comic “character.” But, on the other hand, its construction is singularly compact, its emotions have a new depth, sincerity, and tenderness. Anne Elliot can never rival Elizabeth or Emma; though she is no less “superior” to her own family, and has in reality more character. Here our appreciation and our sympathies are emotional rather than intellectual. We feel with her far more than with them. Though never recognised in her own circle, as were all Miss Austen’s heroines save Fanny Price, she dominates the story more than any. Persuasion, in fact, is a study in character, such as its authoress had never before attempted. No more, if indeed actually less, sensational than its predecessors, the whole scheme moves below the surface. It holds us more by feeling and atmosphere than by incident. We experience a similar delight in the perfectly turned phrases, the finished dialogue, and the neat characterisation; but here are no figures of fun, no animated social functions, no clash of types. We may smile, indeed, at Sir Walter Elliot or at the family of Uppercross; but the humour, however subtle and permeating, does not anywhere prevail over deeper emotion.
Certainly we note that Miss Austen still seeks out no new material, depends on no more startling situation. Anne’s happiness and misery alike arise, as did Jane’s and Elizabeth’s, from a refinement to which every other member of her family was absolutely blind. The natural understanding between two sisters is destroyed, as between Julia and Maria, by rivalry for the one eligible visitor to the neighbourhood; though here with no permanently disastrous results. The naïvely conceived villain of the first group has become—again as in Mansfield Park—an accomplished man of the world, with no sister indeed to further his perfectly honourable designs on the heroine, but, in the last event, not lacking a female accomplice. Its most striking effect in local colour, the glowing picture of naval types, was foreshadowed in William Price: though Admiral and Mrs. Croft admittedly stand high in Miss Austen’s gallery of character-studies. Society, as in Northanger Abbey, is located at Bath.
Yet nowhere has she attempted, with any approach to a like depth of feeling or earnestness, so much philosophy on life, so searching an analysis of human nature, as in the remarkable conversation on faithfulness, as severally exhibited by men and women, which artistically produces a permanent understanding between hero and heroine.
“Oh!” cried Anne eagerly to Captain Harville, “I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures. I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression—so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.”
This is the text of the whole novel, woven with subtlety into its very fabric, inspiring each thought, each word, though never obtruding. Persuasion is neither a sermon nor a pamphlet. Its author assuredly holds no brief for woman, brings no charge against man. Yet here she speaks for her sex. Of what she has seen and felt it would appear that she could no longer remain silent.
Jane Austen reveals herself in her last message to posterity.
Sense and Sensibility, 1811.
Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
Mansfield Park, 1814.
Emma, 1816.
Northanger Abbey, 1818.
Persuasion, 1818.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Both passages are quoted on [page 129].