“How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!”

“How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!”

I realize that I have reviewed Jane Austen’s Persuasion before but after reading through it again with the boys, I feel the need to add another layer of thought on it. I fear that my altogether-too-cynical-sometimes charges have affected my viewpoints on a number of matters and it may turn out that you readers will wish I had left well enough alone. Grin. I will just say that I am not sure I agree with my interpretation here when I was done but I found it interesting and so I shall leave it as is.

The psychological truth that seems to be manifesting itself upon this latest reading involves the relationship between attraction as an emotional or physiological state and observation. In short the question that arose in the context of my most recent conversations about the novel have to do with whether our observation is as much affected by our attractions as our attractions are affected by our observations? Might it be said, for example, that Anne Elliot is attracted to Captain Wentworth because she observes that he is an honorable man with impeccable integrity? Or, does she see Captain Wentworth as such because she is attracted to him? Similarly, is Captain Wentworth attracted to Anne Elliot because she has a superlative character? Or does he will her to have such a character because he is attracted?

Do Anne and Frederick Wentworth give each other “free passes” on some moral and ethical and character issues because they want the relationship to work out while refusing to give similar quarter to other suitors and debutantes who they are not attracted to? Will they, as it were, “cook the books”? Do the two of them hold to absolutes on some occasions that they quite shamelessly discard when to not do so might jeopardize their prospects with each other?

Some examples may suffice.

Captain Wentworth makes it clear to Louisa that he has no use for people who do not “stick to their guns” and act in accordance with their convictions despite social pressures. "My first wish for all, whom I am interested in, is that they should be firm,” he insists. And yet later, when speaking with Anne about why he remained so distant from her and seemingly committed to Louisa Musgrove, he explains that it was entirely on account of his concern for his reputation as an honorable man in the public. Needless to say, he laces this explanation with numerous references to Anne’s superlativeness among all the women he has ever known and she seems to accept this explanation because it is consistent with her desire to always see him as honorable and herself as irreplaceable.

“Of what he had then written, nothing was to be retracted or qualified. He persisted in having loved none but her. She had never been supplanted. He never even believed himself to see her equal. Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge--that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them. Her character was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself, maintaining the loveliest medium of fortitude and gentleness

In his preceding attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove (the attempts of angry pride), he protested that he had for ever felt it to be impossible; that he had not cared, could not care for Louisa; though, till that day, till the leisure for reflection which followed it, he had not understood the perfect excellence of the mind with which Louisa's could so ill bear a comparison

There, he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way. . . .

From that period his penance had become severe. He had no sooner been free from the horror and remorse attending the first few days of Louisa's accident, no sooner begun to feel himself alive again, than he had begun to feel himself, though alive, not at liberty.

"I found," said he, "that I was considered by Harville an engaged man! That neither Harville nor his wife entertained a doubt of our mutual attachment [speaking of Louisa and Wentworth’s]. I was startled and shocked. To a degree, I could contradict this instantly; but, when I began to reflect that others might have felt the same--her own family, nay, perhaps herself, I was no longer at my own disposal. I was hers in honour if she wished it. I had been unguarded. I had not thought seriously on this subject before. I had not considered that my excessive intimacy must have its danger of ill consequence in many ways; and that I had no right to be trying whether I could attach myself to either of the girls, at the risk of raising even an unpleasant report, were there no other ill effects. I had been grossly wrong, and must abide the consequences."

He found too late, in short, that he had entangled himself; and that precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for Louisa at all, he must regard himself as bound to her, if her sentiments for him were what the Harvilles supposed.”

"You who speak languages," writes Orson Scott Card, "You are such liars." As if to say “I have always loved you Anne, but being an honorable man who would never lead someone on or be perceived to, I would have married Louisa rather than seem inconstant”. One recalls that earlier in the novel, Anne had been precisely concerned that Captain Wentworth might be stringing both Musgrove sisters along in what was perilously close to a shameful manner.  His explanation for all these attentions covered marvelously and she does not seem to mind supporting the effort. “A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman!--He ought not--he does not," she had once said. It simply would not do if the reality was that he really had honestly ever been attracted to Louisa Musgrove. Truly noble men never lose their unflagging devotion to the women they first fall in love with, right? And thus the narrative that allowed for those attentions and attachments to be only a matter of duty resolve the problem perfectly.

It is absolutely true that at one time, Frederick Wentworth thought quite disparagingly of Anne Elliot for the way that she had been so completely influenced by the persuasive abilities of Lady Russell and her father. And yet he later is willing to accept Anne’s explanation that though not proud of what she had done, it should at least be seen in light of character strength and not a weakness.

“I mean,” Anne explains in her defense in the last chapter,

“that I was right in submitting to her [Lady Russell], and that if I had done otherwise, I should have suffered more in continuing the engagement than I did even in giving it up, because I should have suffered in my conscience. I have now, as far as such a sentiment is allowable in human nature, nothing to reproach myself with; and if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman's portion."

In short, “I am sorry that I dumped you because Lady Russell approved but would you mind terribly incorporating what I did into the eulogetic narrative you have constructed of me? Would you, dear Frederick, be willing to see it as some sort of good thing, for my sake?” What is happening here? What is happening is a process by which two people who have determined on being with someone they wish to regard as impeccably honorable, liquidate for each other the obviously reasonable judgments that have against one another’s failings in life.

One clearly sees this in the following rather humorous exchange:

"I was six weeks with Edward," said [Wentworth], "and saw him happy. I could have no other pleasure. I deserved none. He enquired after you very particularly; asked even if you were personally altered, little suspecting that to my eye you could never alter."

Anne smiled, and let it pass. It was too pleasing a blunder for a reproach.”

She knows that his actual comment had been to the effect that she had altered almost beyond recognition. But she prefers the airbrushed version and lets it pass as the official history of his feelings towards her. And this is my point. Being attracted to Captain Wentworth, Anne Elliot will always chose to believe the best of his character, sometimes even to the detriment of accuracy. Not being attracted to her other suitors, Mr. Elliot for example; she is always inclined to suspect them to be worse than they appear and almost content to find out that they are. Other suitors have, as I sometimes say “permission to try but not to succeed” to impress her. Frederick Wentworth on the other hand, has “permission to try but to not succeed” to disillusion her.

And that is how attraction interferes with observation. But perhaps another illustration will help. When Anne considers the possibilities of marrying someone she is not attracted to, the obstacles that are created by differences of temperament, personality, or station are deemed insurmountable. She does not think that anyone should expect her to partner with someone who is obviously incompatible. But the moment that she finds out that Captain Benwick has proposed to Louisa Musgrove, her principle rival for the affections of Captain Wentworth, her core convictions about this matter alter somewhat.

“Captain Benwick and Louisa Musgrove!” she exclaims when she is told the news,

“The high-spirited, joyous, talking Louisa Musgrove, and the dejected, thinking, feeling, reading Captain Benwick, seemed each of them everything that would not suit the other. Their minds most dissimilar!”

But does she plan to go warn the poor Louisa Musgrove of the certain mistake she is making. Oh no! “ . . . He had an affectionate heart. He must love somebody” she says. And then you begin to see the rationalizing heart go to work on the struggling-to-remain-true-to-reason head:

“She saw no reason against their being happy. Louisa had fine naval fervour to begin with, and they would soon grow more alike. He would gain cheerfulness, and she would learn to be an enthusiast for Scott and Lord Byron; nay, that was probably learnt already; of course they had fallen in love over poetry. The idea of Louisa Musgrove turned into a person of literary taste, and sentimental, reflection was amusing, but she had no doubt of its being so.”

In short, her attractions have harnessed up her observations and taken them for a ride. With regard to her own affections, she will assert that no one but her heart’s perfect counterpart will do

“More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much, perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him,--but she had been too dependent on time alone; no aid had been given in change of place, (except in one visit to Bath soon after the rupture,) or in any novelty or enlargement of society.--No one had ever come within the Kellynch circle, who could bear a comparison with Frederick Wentworth, as he stood in her memory. No second attachment, the only thoroughly natural, happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been possible to the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste, in the small limits of the society around them.”

 But when thinking about other people’s romances, she will allow a great deal of slack to be made:

"There is hardly any personal defect," replied Anne, "which an agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one to."

What is perhaps most delightful, is how Jane Austen lets Anne Elliot’s self awareness peek above the surface of consciousness every once in a while. Austen will sometimes let the unconscious emotional self be spotted by her principle character in a way that one suspects she expresses through her characters. The following examples from the novel will have to suffice.

“Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing.”

“But neither Charles Hayter's feelings, nor any body's feelings, could interest her, till she had a little better arranged her own. She was ashamed of herself, quite ashamed of being so nervous, so overcome by such a trifle; but so it was; and it required a long application of solitude and reflection to recover her.”

“She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! alas! she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.”

 “No, it was not regret which made Anne's heart beat in spite of herself, and brought the colour into her cheeks when she thought of Captain Wentworth unshackled and free. She had some feelings which she was ashamed to investigate.”

How she might have felt, had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth.”

It is hard to state my thesis more clearly than this last sentiment expresses it. If we are attracted to someone, it will affect the way that we see others. Our affective selves will color everything that is observed by our reflective selves, or so the theory I am prosing says. I suspect that this is what so many people find so delightfully amusing about Jane Austen’s characters sometimes. They play at the surface of consciousness, knowing and not knowing themselves at the same time and allowing some things to remain unknown for the sake of love and other things to become known for the same reason.

In the introduction to the novel that was written by Jane Austen’s brother Henry Austen, he explains how deft Jane, like Anne Elliot the character, was at being in the know and out at the same time. She had that combination of grace and wit that could intuit precisely what was going on (and had gone on) but that could help maintain the secret even from the conscious self, not to mention others. “Though the frailties, foibles, and follies of others could not escape her immediate detection,” Henry writes of his deceased sister,

“Yet even on their vices did she never trust herself to comment with unkindness. The affectation of candour is not uncommon; but she had no affectation. Faultless herself, as nearly as human nature can be, she always sought, in the faults of others, something to excuse, to forgive or forget. Where extenuation was impossible, she had a sure refuge in silence. She never uttered either a hasty, a silly, or a severe expression. In short, her temper was as polished as her wit. Nor were her manners inferior to her temper.”

If this is so, if we all our observations are distorted by our affectations, how can any of us trust our judgments? One might well ask along with Captain Harville, "But how shall we prove any thing?" To which Anne responds,

"We never shall. We never can expect to prove anything upon such a point. It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof. We each begin probably with a little bias towards our own [position], and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle.”

My hat is off to Jane Austen. She seems to be someone who could look into her own soul or into the lives of others or into the universe itself and find what truths might be helpful to the creation of a happy life . . . and make those observations conscious. Similarly, she seems to have been able to look into her soul or the lives of others or into the universe and when she found that which would bring pain or sorrow, leave what she found in such a way that no one would ever know she had ever found it.

"This," Anne Elliot says to Mr. Elliot, "is nearly the sense, or rather the meaning of the words, for certainly the sense of an Italian love-song must not be talked of.”

As if to say, I can only tell you what is appropriate to say and ask you to understand that there was more.

"But I am getting too near complaint,” she wrote as she was dying, “It has been the appointment of God, however secondary causes may have operated."

She was 42. To the last, affectation, desire, the longing for something, in this case, immortality, was influencing and dare I say persuading observation which, for all intents and purposes, would have left her crying out, “My god, My god, Why have you forsaken me?”

Question for comment: Would it bother you to discover that your emotions and desires affected your observations more than you think they do?