Book Review: Persuasion is Jane Austen's final novel, which was published (along with Northanger Abbey) posthumously. I don't know if Austen chose the title, but alternate titles could have been Pride & Persuasion, or Persuasion & Appearance. Once again the theme of being too proud to give in to love rears its ugly head in an Austen novel, but even more so, the subject of appearances is threaded throughout the book. The protagonist's appearance, her father's, inheritances, appearing appropriate for marriage, keeping up appearances ... actually just about every page has something related to appearances, as this was a major concern for the landed gentry of the early 19th Century. Which comes back full circle to the title, and characters being "persuaded" whether another "appears" appropriate for them. Our characters are so strongly and unfairly subject to others' views and society's opinion. So much weight is placed on wealth and how people appear, more so than their actual qualities, character, or worth (as human beings, not their pocket book). I also think this may be Austen's most autobiographical novel. Other than the recurring element, Persuasion is full of Austen's eternal manifest and myriad skills: her humor, satire, sharp eye, and careful writing are all as strong as ever. Vanity is winningly mocked. The book is replete with the usual types and "characters." She describes two friends talking about books as being, "as unable as any other two readers, to think exactly alike of the merits of" authors. She quietly notes social issues, as when a new occupant of the manor house assures "the poor of the best attention and relief." In a marriage, Austen notes that the "husband had not been what he ought, and the wife had been led among that part of mankind which made her think worse of the world," softly putting what Anne Bronte developed in cinematic detail in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. This is a softer, calmer, more subtly developed book, but it is so quietly good that any reader who enjoyed any of Austen's other novels is sure to enjoy this as well. The characters are subtly shaded and well developed, no one entirely good or bad. But beneath the gentle waves of the story in Persuasion, lies the treasure of Jane Austen's writing, as good as it ever was. [4★]
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