Persuasion (Penguin Classics) by Jane Austen
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.99 You Save: $3.01 (50%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Persuasion (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: A very lovely novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Jane Austen's last completed novel, which was published posthumously was Persuasion and the story starts with Anne Elliot, an upper-class girl at the age of 19, falling in love with Captain Frederick Wentworth. They get engaged but her mother's great friend and her own trusted friend, the widow Lady Russell, persuased Anne to break the engagement with him. The reason for this is, that the young officer possesses no connections to the upper-class and is therefor not worth to be with Anne according to Lady Russel.
But after eight years, Anne, who truly loved Frederick Wentworth, is still unmarried and destined for spinsterhood. Until her mother has lived there was no problem with the income at the Elliot family, but according to the fact that her father wasn't careful with the money, they are now facing the situation that the family estate is gone to Admiral Croft, Wentworth's brother-in-law and the Elliots (Anne's father Sir Walter Elliot, her elder sister Elizabeth) need to move from Kellynch hall to Bath.
Before Anne moves to Bath she spends some time with her younger sister Mary and her husband Charles Musgrove, as well as his sisters Louisa and Henrietta at Uppercross. Captain Wenthworth so far had success in the wars, which brought him a considerable fortune and now he is looking for a wife to get settled ashore. He and Anne meet again at Mary's and Charles house, but though Anne still has feelings for him she tries not to show them clearly. And furthermore Louisa`s and Henrietta`s trials to flirt with Frederick Wentworth and get him attracted, makes it more difficult for Anne to be in the focus.
But on a day-walk at Lyme Regis it came to an accident when Louisa falls from a cliff thinking that Captain Wentworth catches her, which he didn't. The only person being calm and starting to organize the necessary steps to be taken after this accident was Anne. This inititates that Captain Wentworth's feelings for Anne came back. But when they slowly start their relationship again, there is another admirer of Anne, her cousin William Elliot, who seperates them again by spreading rumours that he and Anne are going to marry soon...
This is a wonderful heart-moving novel and the letter at the end written by Frederick Wentworth to Anne is absolutely romantic. But this novel is also full of irony, for example when Mary wants to follow her husband for a dinner while here son is ill and she makes recommends about men and women, or when it is spoken about Bath (a place Jane Austen hated herself much): But still, there certainly were a dreadful multitude of ugly women in Bath; and as for the men! They were infinitely worse. Such scarecrows as the streets were full of!"
Book Review: Persuasion is a short novel which will persuade you that Jane Austen is worthy of the highest rank in English fiction!
Summary: 5 Stars
Jane Austen's shortest and last novel is Persuasion. Austen had only 11 months to live when she completed it in 1816. Austen is the best writer in the language at taking a few upper-middle class rural families, a few love stories and arch social commentary into the heady mix that is her literary genius! Her observations of the social mores and balls, clothing style, music, literature, architecture and daily life of Regency England
(1811-1820-the Prince Regent George IV assumed responsibility while his father George III became insane). is superb in its comic prose.
The tale's main theme is how humans are persuaded to perform and also avoid moral actions which will determine how they live their lives. Eight years prior to the novel's opening we learn that Anne Eliot had earlier rejected the proposal of British naval officer Frederick Wentworth. She was persuaded to pursue this action due to the advice of her of a well meaning wealthy woman.
Now Anne's impecunious and fatuously highfaultin baronet of a father has to lease his home due to pay his many debts. Her older sister Elizabeth is a hypocritcal prig who has to be one of the most odious creatures in Austen's work. Captain Wentworth returns to the village of Kellynch since his sister and her husband have rented the Eliot home. (they have departed for the watering hole of Bath). Eventually Anne and her Wentworth met, reconcile and are wed. Along the way we meet such characters as Anne's idiotic sister Mary and her husband who spends most of his time hunting. There are also a few subsidary love stories featuring Anne's siblings and the Musgrave girls. The fall of Lousia Mulgrave off the cob at Lyme is famous at is shows Anne that Wentworth still has feelings of love for her.
The novel is lighter and less complex than such tomes as "Pride and Prejudice", "Mansfield Park" and "Emma." It was published in four volumes along with Jane's early work "Northanger Abbey" following her early death.
One is left to wonder how many more small but elegant literary gems would have been produced by Miss Austen. Her books take us back over 150 years to a relatively stable and staid society. If one would be allowed b by the literary gods to invite three authors to dinner this reviewer would choose: Samuel Johnson, Oscar Wilde and Jane Austen. "Persuasion"
will be broadcast on the BBC production to be shown on Masterpiece Theatre this autumn. Hopefully viewers of the series will turn to the real McCoy and enjoy the many pages of the preacher's kid named Jane!
Book Review: "There could have been no two hearts so open, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved."
Summary: 5 Stars
Would you let someone persuade you to leave the one you love? That is what Anne Elliot does. Frederick Wentworth is a dashing naval officer, but well beneath Anne's station. She is, after all, the daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, baronet and master of Kellynch Hall. Not only is Wentworth a penniless officer, he is also ambitious and confident. According to Anne's particular friend Lady Russell, those qualities are unbecoming in a man. And so, out of safety, Anne severs her engagement to Wentworth. Fast-forward eight years. Anne is now twenty-seven, still single, still disinclined to marry. Her father has little money and is now forced to let Kellynch Hall to a well-respected admiral. Among the admiral's society is Anne's former fiancé, now Captain Wentworth, well respected and very rich. Anne's love for Wentworth reemerges, but is it too late? Is his indifference so big that he won't even speak to her? Could she somehow persuade him to give their love another try?
This is Jane Austen's final finished work. It was published in 1818, one year after her death. Persuasion is a masterpiece and my second favorite Austen (after Pride and Prejudice). This novel contains Austen's signature comedy of manners, but it's not her funniest effort. It is, however, her most romantic. Whose heart doesn't break when Anne watches Wentworth court both the Musgrove sisters, and listens to her sister and brother-in-law argue over who Wentworth should choose to be his bride? Who hasn't choked up with The Letter? (Persuasion fans know what I'm talking about.) This is the third -- or is it the fourth? -- time I read this book, and I still tear up when I read that bit! Persuasion is a wonderful novel, but it isn't perfect. Various secondary characters are either one-dimensional or underdeveloped, and I would have liked the scenes in Lyme to be expanded, for those are my favorite scenes. Alas, if you're an Austen fan, there is plenty of her signature stuff here: the pretentious gentry, the unscrupulous opportunists, the parties and get-togethers and courtships and descriptions of the countryside. I like that this novel is partly set in Bath, giving it the genuine Regency setting that makes Jane Austen unique. If you've never read Persuasion, I cannot persuade you to read this enough! And if you've read this and are a fan, may I perhaps persuade you to read it again?
Book Review: Persuasion...
Summary: 5 Stars
is Austen's novel which begins with Anne Elliot thinking about a lost love instead of a future love.
Beautifully written, it is a novel that makes readers wonder if there is going to be the "characters meet and finally get married" ending that is so typical in Austen novels. Anne Elliot is 27, unmarried, and living at home with her father and older unmarried sister who are concerned about appearing more wealthy than they actually are. When the family is convinced by Lady Russell to rent out their home and move to a more economical space, Anne ends up going to care for her younger sister Mary Musgrove.
Anne's visit with her sister's family becomes uncomfortable once Captain Wentworth becomes a frequent visitor there. Wentworth is the love that Anne regretfully let slip away, having been influenced by her good friend Lady Russell that his social status was inferior to Anne's. Wentworth and Anne are both convinced that their relationship is over and their communication with one another is formal, yet limited.
Anne is not sure what to make of Captain Wentworth's interest with Louisa and Henrietta (Charles Musgrove's sisters), and more than one gentleman takes a romantic interest in Anne. Both Anne and Wentworth distance themselves from each other in an attempt to forget that they ever loved each other.
It is when Anne is away from Wentworth, and at home with her father and sister that she begins to realize how much she loves Wentworth. She wonders if she is too late, if the chance for love has really passed. Even though she loves Wentworth, Anne is still concerned about what her father and Lady Russell will think of him.
Readers can only speculate as to the ending of the novel, which appears to be more uncertain than the endings in Austen's other novels. The art of persuasion, as well as social status, and the contrasting views of the elders and the youth, makes this novel one of Jane Austen's best.
Book Review: " I am half agony, half hope . . ."
Summary: 5 Stars
PERSUASION, the last novel that Jane Austen completed before her death in 1818, tells the story of one Anne Elliot, the second daughter of a baronet who has spent his waythrough his fortune and has nothing but his title to lean on.
When she was 21 years old, Anne fell in love with and was engaged to Frederick Wentworth, a young captain in the Navy. Her belated mother's best friend, Lady Russell, dissapproves of the match as being below Anne, due to Anne's claim to nobility, and Anne cancels the engagement, much to her and and Captain Wentworth's grief.
Nearly eight year's have passed since she broke off her engagement to Captain Wentworth when she, Lady Russell, and a Mr. Shepherd, a friend of her father's, are forced to pose and intervention and tell her father that he must quit his estate and find someone to lease it to, or he will be sent tot he poorhouse. Her father, his only pride being in his social position and personal appearance, relents, but only if they can find suitable tenants - which they do in Admiral Croft and his wife, the sister of Captain Wentworth.
Anne thinks that her broken heart has mended, until she sees him again. unfortunately, he is now attached to another . . . and yet Anne sees clues in his behavior that he may be hers once again. Anne and Wentworth must negotiate their past, their different social classes, and proper behavior to find their way back to one another.
What sets PERSUASION appart from Austens' other novels is how modern it seems in comparison. Austen takes more liberty with point of view in this novel, the characters have much richer inner lives than the Bennet's or Dashwood's ever did.
This novel is highly recommended to anyone who would enjoy Jane Austen. Though the ending is predictable, it does not always seem so, and therefore the novel was a very suspenseful read.