4 posts tagged “persuasion”

“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?

Want to scare yourself silly. Watch this documentary PERSUADERS about how people in your world, right now, are sitting around tables and focus group rooms with one way mirrors paying millions of dollars to figure out how to sell stuff to your reptilian brain.

For the last hour I have had an insatiable urge to eat flies.

"Rhetoric," Plato says, “has no need to know the truth about things but merely to discover a technique of persuasion, so as to appear among the ignorant to have more knowledge than the expert.”

For example, if you call a tax an inheritance tax, people think you are just taxing wealthy people with estates. Call it a "death tax" and they realize that you must be taxing them and people like them because everyone dies. Of course the tax may still only people rich enough to die with estates but a death tax sounds like it is only a matter of time before every peasant will get the same treatment. Who can vote against a "No Child Left Behind Act"? Who could vote FOR a "No NEA Union Member Unemployed Act"? Its all about wording. I would suggest that this documentary or things like it was the source code for the plotline in the book, FEED.

As Hitler writes in Mein Kampf,

"Here the art of propaganda consists in putting a matter so clearly and forcibly before the minds of the people as to create a general conviction regarding the reality of a certain fact, the necessity of certain things and the just character of something that is essential. . . All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. Thus its purely intellectual level will have to be that of the lowest mental common denominator among the public it is desired to reach."

I would write more but my lizard brain is going ape for flies right now. Must have flies. Must have flies. Only $99.95

"Who shall setting a limit to the influence of a human being?" Ralph Waldo Emerson

The keynote adress by Dr. Bains the other day and the literature work I am doing on Iago's character in Othello has got me to thinking about the "science and art of influence". So I picked up a book on the subject at the Library today entitled Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson et. al.

The book cites numerous examples of influence and those who wield it. One study by Albert Bandura video-documents the responss of children exposed to violence. SEE HERE. The author cites work by Dr. Wiwat Rojanapithayakorn that suggests the importance of identifying vital behaviors that you want to change before trying to influence change. "It is not enough to do your best," said Edward Demming. "Yo must know what to do and THEN do your best."

Another sociological term I picked up from the book had to do with the study of "positive deviance" - that is the study of the rare case in a data set of bad news that goes right. Essentially, if you want to solve the problem of the Guinea Worm disease, find out which villags SHOULD have it but don't. And watch what they do differently.

"The methods for uncovering vital behaviors are available to everyone. Start by examining the exact population and the setting  you are interested in changing. Next look for people who are experiencing the problem but aren't. Then discover the unique behaviors that separate them from the rest."

 "There are three kinds of men," Will Rogers once said, "ons that learn by reading, a few who learn by observation, and the rest of them who have to pee on the electric fence themselves."

The authors talk about the vital importance of creating vicarious exprience for people who will not try something themselves until their constructs of reality change but will not change their concepts of reality without experience. Th problem with people is that if you use words, they do not hear the words you say but the words they hear. This is why good storytellers are powerful communicators.

"But why? Why do even the most educated people tend to set aside their well honed criticism and critical nature when listening to a story?  Because stories help individuals transport themselves away from the role of a listener who is rigorously applying rules of logic, analysis, and criticism and into the story itself. . . . Concrete and vivid stories exert extraordinary influence because they transport people out of the role of critic and into the role of participants. . . . Stories don't merely tromp verbal persuasion by disproving counter arguments; stories keep the listener from offering counter arguments in the first place." p. 61

In the chapter about motivation, the authors talk about the multiple sources of human motivation. Human beings need to know that they can do something and they need to know that it's worth it. "The most powerful incentive known to humankind," they write, "is our own evaluation of our behavior and accomplishments.  When people are able to meet their personal standards, they feel validated and for films.  They also feel as if they are living up to the image of who they want to be."

One of the more fascinating propositions in this book has to do with control. Often people believe that more control will give them more influence. Researcher William Miller and Ginger Graham have "learned that you can influence even a resistance group of people if you are willing to surrender control.  When you surrender control, you win the possibility of influencing even addictive and highly entrenched behaviors.  And you gain access to one of the most powerful human motivations -- the power of a committed heart."

I suppose the New Testament could have told them that.

I also found the author's discussion of the "hot and go" systems of the brain and the "cool and know" systems fascinating. "As terrific as it is to have two very different operating systems, each perfectly suited to its own unique tasks, you have two of anything, you always run the risk of employing the wrong one given your circumstances." p. 130

Question for Comment: who do you know that has the greatest powers of influence?  Is it you  

Tonights movie SHOULD have been watched with a group. And I probably would have enjoyed it more if i had read all the Jane Austen novels. I think I have read two; Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion.

I will supply a few quotes and comments below for any readers out there who wonder if I am good for nothing besides history documentaries. First of all, everyone should have a character they can relate to in a Jane Austen novel. Here is mine.

“There  we differ, Mary,” said Anne, “I think Lady Russell would like him and I think she would be so much pleased with his mind, that she would very soon see no deficiency in his manner.”

 “So do I, Anne,” said Charles. “I am sure Lady Russell would like him.  He is just Lady Russell’s sort.  Give him a book, and he will read all day long.”

The fact is that Jane Austen's novels reveal a significant amount of relational social meditation. This relational “half-time show” analysis that women do with each other (And as a rather full time dad who has spent many an hour at the local rec. center pond overhearing it, I know) has the ultimate effect of giving women real time satellite and AWACS vision of the field of relational play while men are busily attempting to cob together a periscope out of duct tape and toilet paper tubes.

“All the little variations of the last week are gone through; and of yesterday and today there could scarcely be an end.”

 An apt description of a Jane Austen novel if there ever was one (assuming that Persuasion is typical. ;-)

She sat in the hour with me on Monday evening, and gave me the whole history.

“The whole history!”  Repeated Anne, laughing.  “She could not make a very long history, I think, of one such little article of unfounded news.”

Perhaps an analogy here will suffice. Did you know that it is possible for there to be up to 105 different hockey games in a Stanley Cup Playoff? 16 teams narrow down to 8 teams and then to 4 and then 2; With each series capable of being played to seven games. That’s 15 different 7-game series, played over the course of a month or two. To a non-hockey-loving wife of a hockey fan, it might seem endless. All those periods! All that time watching as this little black piece of rubber moves from corner to point to corner to slot to corner to point. God! For a fast forward button! Sometimes, teams will go for periods at a time without scoring. And just when you think the game is over – There is a clock after all, it will go into overtime – double overtime – triple overtime. When will the series end?

Perhaps I can carry the analogy further. Imagine a wife dutifully trying to watch a series with her man. Taking a cue from Van Auken’s Severe Mercy, there is something he enjoys in it. There MUST be something enjoyable. It must be terribly difficult for her to imagine why it matters that the Flyers win and not the Flames (Those are Professional Hockey teams by the way). To a guy, I suspect that reading a Jane Austen novel is akin to this. There is SO much “passing the puck” in a novel like this! So much meandering dialog! After a while, I imagine he finds himself wishing that Mr. Elliot and Anne elope, or that Frederick would drown, or that The Miss Musgroves would come out of the closet and declare themselves lovers on the Jerry Springer show. If only to have the damn novel over already!

Now, mind you, I say “to a guy” because there are some of us out here who are willing to make their way entirely through a novel like this just to get some kernel of insight into the women we love. We do not find ourselves intrigued ourselves but the fact is that this is, by Jane’s own admission a novel ABOUT women FOR women.

“But let me observe that all histories are against you, all stories, prose and verse.  If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you 50 quotations in a moment on my side of the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon a woman’s inconstancy.  Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness.  But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.

 “Perhaps I shall.  – yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books.  Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story.  Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.  I will not allow books to prove anything.”

[no comment.] Grin.

Poor Wentworth. He thinks himself superior to most men in that HE, more than any, knows what he is looking for in a wife. Grin. Listen to him!

“A strong mind, with sweetness of manner, this is the woman I want” said he.  “Something a little inferior shall of course put up with, but it must not be much.  If I am a fool, I shall be a fool indeed, for I have thought on the subject more than most men.”

“A strong mind with sweetness of manner, This is the woman I want.” Of COURSE he is confused throughout the whole saga. Several million women fit his criteria, including the Musgrove sistahs. Imagine the millions of poor blokes who have NOT taken the time that Frederick has. He has TWO character qualities in his list. Most men have only one!

 But I am being too hard on him. Even armed with his two character qualities, he was capable of identifying Anne from their first acquaintance. HE knew what he wanted. She had what he wanted. He was convinced. Note well that he didn’t go looking to some Mr. Russell for confirmation or sophisticated analysis. His criteria being simple, his task was simple. Her criteria being complex, she depended on the help of other women in accomplishing it … and thereby made her self vulnerable to loosing sight of herself.

“I am no matchmaker, as you will know” said the Lady Russell, “being much too well aware of the uncertainty of all human events and calculations.  I only meant that if Mr. Elliott should sometime hence pay his addresses to you, and if you should be disposed to accept them, I think there would be every possibility of your being happy together.  A most suitable connection everybody must consider it – but I think it might be a very happy one.”

All women can be fooled. Not all women admit it to themselves. Mrs. Russell demonstrates herself to be wrong twice in the book and – dare I say it, it is only as Anne learns to “think like a man” – i.e. to trust herself that her LESS sophisticated nineteen year old understanding of a situation may be the more reliable one in spite of the wisdom of a Mrs. Russell, that she makes a right choice. (Note well that Wentworth was never dissuaded by her) Nothing is dummer than a  nineteen year old man by the way. They have thought so little about anything! But they don’t let that dissuade them from doing just exactly what they know they want.

The Roman scoundrel-poet Ovid once  knavishly suggested to men on the prowl that they should make every effort to seduce women as though women thought in groups, not as individuals:

The maid can rouse her, when she combs her hair in the morning,
and add her oar to the work of your sails . . .
Then she should speak of you, and add persuasive words,
and swear you’re dying, crazed with love.

I don’t know, maybe this is a blessed curse of being a woman? This predisposition to think in group – indeed to cycle in pairs or tandems! So predisposed to defer to the collective mind what is known from the start individually!
 

But just now she could think only of Capt. Wentworth.  She could not understand his present feelings, whether he were really suffering from much disappointment or not; Until that point were settled, she could not be quite herself.

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

 Eight years earlier, she had KNOWN that it was a mistake to let Mrs. Russell’s influence carry as much weight as she had:

 She was persuaded that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every anxiety attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays and disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in maintaining the engagement, then she had been in the sacrifice of it;

 … And in another place …

 He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill; deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shown a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure.  She had given him up to oblige others.  It had been the effect of over-persuasion.  It had been weakness and timidity.

 The effect of over-persuasion. She had been susceptible to it. He had not. It is much more difficult to confuse a person who is working from a  simple argument. He wanted a woman. Wanted a woman with a strong mind. Wanted a woman with a sweet manner. What was there to argue about? I wonder if … if perhaps women are simply more vulnerable to paying the cost of mistakes than men are? I wonder if this is why they are prone to think in packs more? Women will raise children and thus they cannot be so simplistic as men in deciding whose children they will raise:

 “So! you and I are left to shift by ourselves, with this poor sick child – and not a creature coming near us all the evening!  I knew how it would be.  This is always my luck! If there is anything disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it, in Charles is as bad as any of them.  Very unfeeling!  . . . nursing does not belong to a man, it is not his province.  A sick child is always the mother’s property, her own feelings generally make it so.”

One woman in the story I think serves as a foil to the others in the story in this regard:

 “If I love a man, as she loves the Admiral, I would always want to be with him, nothing should ever separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him, then driven safely by anyone else.”

 It may well be that it is this concern for safety, for not being “overturned” while caring for children that is responsible for the way that early 19^th century women guarded each other from risks and allowed themselves to be guarded. Just a hypothesis. Men like Frederick were willing to take risks. Women like Anne, were not so prone to do so. Not without the approval of their sisterhood. Maybe this is because when they ARE forced to care for children when the husbands do not, they MUST rely on each other to do it. (We see this interdependence of women as childcare providers throughout the novel). Anne herself pinch hits for mothers in crisis. No wonder she does not want to get herself ina  situation where she must parent with no men (They being off to sea) and no women (They being offended that they were not consulted about the mate selection before the children were born?)

 If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once , remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk.  When I yielded, I thought it was to duty; but no duty could be called in aid here.  In marrying a man in indifferent to me, all risk would  been incurred, and all duty violated.”

 Why does Anne eventually decide to ere on the side of risk? One wonders if she does really. By the time Wentworth returns, he is no longer a risk in anyone’s point of view. The picture of Anne’s mother that Austen draws is rather remarkable really in light of the whole plot:

 “She had humored, or softened or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for 17 years; and though not the very happiest being in the world herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, her children, to attach her to life, and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to quit them.”

 The epitaph for the life of a woman who had taken no risks herself. How sad that Anne came so close, under the watchful guidance of Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Smith, both of whom place a stamp of approval on her chances with Mr. Wm. Elliot, to finding herself in precisely the same marriage!

 Look how close she came to “settling”!

 “She was fully satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever; but she felt her approach to the years in danger, and would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet blood within the next 12 months or so”

 Indeed, one is left to speculate that had not Anne ever met a Frederick Wentworth – someone who advocated the life of heart-following RISK – she might well have found herself in just exactly the same situation as her mother had!

 “How she might have felt, had there been no Capt. Wentworth in the case, was not worth inquiry; for there was a Capt. Wentworth: and be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his forever.  Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men., then their final separation.”

 OK. I am too tired to write more here. Two final quotes and I shall have to suffice it at that.

 “Oh!  Dear Mrs. Croft,” cried Mrs. Musgrove, unable to let her finish her speech, “there is nothing I so abominate for young people as a long engagement.  It is what I always and protested against for my children.  It is all very well, I used to say, for young people to be engaged, if there is a certainty of their being able to marry in six months, or even in 12, but a long engagement!”

 “Yes dear ma’am,” said Mrs. Croft, “or an uncertain engagement; an engagement which may be long.  To begin without knowing that at such a time there will be the means of marrying, I hold to be very unsafe and unwise, and what, I think, all parents should prevent as far as they can.”

 Amen to that!! ;-) And finally, this one. I love this one!

 “Towards the close of the first act, in the interval succeeding an Italian song, she explained the words of the song to Mr. Elliott.  – they had a concert bill between them

 This, she said, 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.”

 Truer words were never said.

 Utque viro furtiva venus, sic grata puellae:               
     Vir male dissimulat: tectius illa cupit.
Conveniat maribus, nequam nos ante rogemus,
     Femina iam partes victa rogantis agat.

Question for Comment: Most of my comments about women in this analysis relate to my impressions of women in Jane Austen's day, not today. Do you think that women today would agree that they are different than the women in Jane Austen novels?

P.S. If you have any interest in talking about Jane Austen novels, I think I have about ten pages of quotes typed out from Pride and Prejudice I could add to the soup. Grin.