Persuasion

6e Jane Austen. Modern Reprint.

Notes

Persuasion centers on Anne Elliot, a fiercely intelligent, quiet, and deeply empathetic twenty-seven-year-old woman who is widely considered Austen's most mature heroine. Eight years prior to the events of the novel, Anne was unhappily persuaded by her snobbish family and her maternal mentor, Lady Russell, to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a penniless but deeply devoted young naval officer. The plot expertly unfolds when a newly wealthy, highly decorated, and still-resentful Captain Wentworth returns from the Napoleonic Wars to find the vain Elliot family facing financial ruin, setting off a quiet, emotionally tense social dance filled with unexpressed longing, silent jealousy, and missed connections. Utilizing a groundbreaking, fluid command of free indirect discourse that gave readers unprecedented psychological access to a heroine’s internal grief and growth, Austen dismantled the rigid aristocratic expectations of her era. Beneath its sparkling veneer of provincial drawing-room comedy, the novel delivers a brilliant, enduring defense of second chances, emotional constancy, and the rising, self-made naval meritocracy over a decaying, titled aristocracy that traps individuals in the cold calculations of financial marriage contracts.

Description 

Modern Reprint