The Limitations of Love in Jane Austen's "Persuasion"

Emily Trace

December 6th, 2011

Silence and Sincerity: The Limitations of Love in Jane Austen's "Persuasion"

In an age when honesty, directness and individualism are the most popularly advocated methods of finding love, a modern reading of Jane Austen’s Persuasion might yield criticism of the main characters’ modes of expression. However, it is not necessarily paradoxical to claim that self-control, a sense of duty, and indirect exchanges of affection can bespeak the most sincere feelings. Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth circle one another in a careful second courtship that is ultimately far more rewarding than their first might have been. Rather than a paradox, the limitations Anne and Captain Wentworth impose and overcome seem to imply that there is a symmetry in the chronology of their relationship, a discernable evolution from being separated by their boundaries to eventually being reunited by them. As her character evolves throughout the novel, the limitations and boundaries that inhibit Anne from expressing her feelings and divide her consciousness undergo a parallel evolution, and are reciprocally responsible for her eventual reconciliation with Captain Wentworth and its profundity. This evolution can be discerned from how Anne exercises control over her emotions, how the dictates of duty and conscience weigh upon her, and how the indirect modes of communication she and Wentworth share all change and develop according to the places she visits, from Uppercross, to Lyme, and finally to Bath.

Throughout the novel, one can see how Anne’s consciousness is divided by the part of her that feels and the part that reasons, and how the very boundaries that initially make these disparate sides distinct from one another exercises, in turn, an esemplastic influence over them. This influence is glimpsed at Kellynch Hall, scene of the regret which has prompted such a division in her consciousness, and examined in more depth at Uppercross, where Anne, learning she may come in direct contact with the object of her regret, resolves to inure herself to the emotions it may expose her to, to “teach herself to be insensible on such points” (46). During her stay at Uppercross, she treats emotion as a dangerous property, seeking an insensible numbness somewhere between the states of happiness and despair. Anne processes the pain of her memories and prepares for anticipated pain by fracturing her consciousness and alienating herself from the present and from her emotions. However, Austen’s style of describing the scene in which Anne is once again in the same room as Captain Wentworth shows how he alone can force her to exist in the present moment, and how he challenges the boundaries that she tries to place on her emotions. The scene is told in two of the longest run-on sentences in the whole novel, punctuated breathlessly by commas, colons, semi-colons but only one period:

Her eye half met Captain Wentworth’s; a bow, a curtsey passed; she heard his voice—he talked to Mary, said all that was right; said something to the Miss Musgroves, enough to mark an easy footing: the room seemed full—full of persons and voices—but a few minutes ended it. Charles showed himself at the window, all was ready, their visitor had bowed and was gone; the Miss Musgroves were gone too, suddenly resolving to walk to the end of the village with the sportsmen: the room was cleared, and Anne might finish her breakfast as she could.” (52)

 The pacing of this passage reads faster than the regular beating of one’s heart and seems to suggest the rapid beating of Anne’s. And after Wentworth departs, Anne’s emotional state is described in short, simple sentences, such as “…she could not attend. She had seen him. They had met,” (53), as if Anne is catching her breath and struggling to return to a state of rational coherency. After recovering, she scolds herself, thinking that is it “absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an interval had banished into distance and indistinctness!” (53). This self-rebuke shows how Anne divides her faculties of feeling from her faculties of reason, so that the latter can reprimand the former in an effort to control it. However, being compelled to handle her emotions as she feels them is an ordeal Anne will have to repeat throughout the novel, but with each incidence, she becomes more equal to it. For instance, when Mary insensitively relays a remark Captain Wentworth made about Anne’s altered appearance she is understandably mortified (53), but the way she limits and constrains her emotions allows her to be grateful for the otherwise disquieting words, because “they were of sobering tendency; they allayed agitation; they composed, and consequently must make her happier” (54). Here, Anne transforms the cause of potentially overwhelming emotions and into a means of controlling them, of even providing happiness. Such self-regulation and reshaping of experiences should not be criticized as repressive sublimation; rather, it indicates a psychological resourcefulness that has allowed her to endure eight years of regret and isolation and now gives her the strength to be in Wentworth’s presence while holding true to the merits which made him initially fall in love with her. This ability to dextrously transmute what could be most damaging to her into what can be most fortifying is a key condition of Anne’s subjectivity, and there is a clear arbitration between her feelings and her reason that preserves her inner self and displays her outer self to its best example. 

While her sensibility and her reason are divided early in the novel as a survival technique, they are allowed to knit as her emotional boundaries inure her to damaging despair. One way that she inures herself to such despair is by being dutiful or useful. The boundaries imposed by duty once separated her from Captain Wentworth, the pleasure Anne takes in useful employment begins to restore the spirits and qualities which once made her so attractive to him. While her own family at Kellynch Hall treats her as useless, being needed by the Musgroves restores Anne’s spirits because she has “an object of interest, amusement, and wholesome exertion” (39). Her usefulness during little Charles’ accident displays both how she controls her emotions and how she uses a sense of duty to process disappointment and maintain optimism. Knowing herself to be useful to her nephew “she was left with as many sensations of comfort, as were, ever likely to be hers” (51). Whether this is done out of fear of seeing Captain Wentworth again or out of a genuine sense of duty does not negate how Anne uses duty to limit her expression of emotion during her time at Uppercross.  Another example of this self-induced limitation is when she offers her services on the piano so the Miss Musgroves can dance with Wentworth. Though she frequently holds tears at bay, her emotional faculties are not insensible to the painful arrangement; “she was extremely glad to be employed, and desired nothing in return but to be unobserved” (61). As well as using employment to distract herself, it is clear that in this stage of her reunion with Wentworth Anne uses duty to avoid interaction with him, almost as if the observance of duty eight years ago still echoes in her mode of expression. However, while it once separated them and now allows her to avoid him at Uppercross, Anne’s particular ability to be useful and dutiful will be instrumental in the development of their relationship in Lyme. 

Such development is also very dependent on how her control of emotion and adherence to duty affect the modes of indirect communication she and Wentworth practice with each other during their stay at Uppercross. Unlike Austen’s other novels, where discourse is the primary means of falling in love, “Persuasion” depicts two people who have already been in love and have already gotten to know one another very well through direct communication. The reawakening of their love cannot be achieved by conventional methods because of all that already lies between them at the outset of the novel. Although communicating indirectly might be seen as counterproductive to their reconciliation, it challenges their feelings to find ways around the fear, resentment, guilt, and pride which divide them. Anne limits her communication with Captain Wentworth while at Uppercross, but despite both their best efforts, their feelings find indirect and even involuntary ways to manifest in glances, touches, and poorly concealed acts of kindness. Following one wordless act of kindness, wherein he lifts Anne’s nephew Walter off her back and leaves her to wonder at his silent ambiguity, Wentworth’s affection for her is shown by the effect of a hushed comment made to his sister that results in a fatigued Anne riding home with her instead of walking (77). His kindness bespeaks a concern for her, and the nonverbal, concealed nature of it indicates feelings powerful enough to require concealment. He might do the same for a Miss Musgrove, but an indifferent heart would not need the guises that a conflicted one does, and the wordless tension between the Wentworth’s performance of indifference and an insuppressible concern for her prompts Anne to reflect on its meaning more than she might if words were used to make it clearer. For if he spoke, his “cold politeness, his ceremonious grace” (62) might inhibit Anne from feeling the stirrings of hope that eventually enable her to reach out to him more directly. Such silence also forces her to analyze the act with reason rather than to resort to an emotional assumption of his indifference, thereby beginning to unify her disparate modes of consciousness. During their time at Uppercross, Austen shows that like a levee which cannot entirely restrain an overwhelming wave, the boundaries that Anne and Captain Wentworth erect serve to show just how insuppressible their feelings really are.

Transitioning from Uppercross to Lyme, Anne is put in a position where her command of her emotions not only saves the day, but is also exercised to the gratitude and admiration of Captain Wentworth. As when her nephew was injured, Anne must minister to another reckless Musgrove while the rest of her party succumbs to shock (92). As a result Wentworth later insists that Anne is the most capable nurse for Louisa, the “strength and zeal, and thought” (92) that she displays overpower his resentment, forcing him to remember and openly acknowledge the virtues he once admired. The boundaries that Anne regulates her emotions with, while once inhibiting her happiness, are now responsible for Captain Wentworth “speaking with a glow, and yet a gentleness, which seemed almost restoring the past” (95). He also defers to her judgment soon thereafter, and this “proof of friendship” gives her great happiness. Anne’s control of her emotions has been instrumental in her relationship with Wentworth developing from estrangement to friendship, and will help it move further beyond even that.  Though he extols her ability indirectly, its effect on Anne is not lessoned but rather heightened by its guileless nature, uttered in spite of his former resentment. Furthermore, between her stay at Lyme and her journey to Bath, Anne learns through Mrs. Croft that Wentworth has enquired after her, asking how her exertions has affected her and “spoken of those exertions as great,” which provides Anne with “more pleasure than almost anything else could have done” (103). Now Anne and Wentworth have moved from touches, glances, and wordless acts of kindness to unintentionally relaying their true feelings through the voices of others, with the lack of design indicating its sincerity. The crisis at Lyme and its resolution are both examples of how indirect communication fortifies Anne’s hope, and how her sense of duty has endeared her to Wentworth, though it once inspired contempt in him. This brief but concentrated interlude between the rural, domestic sphere of Uppercross and the urban, public landscape of Bath is key in showing how the boundaries and limitations that once drove them apart and could potentially keep them asunder evolve and become the very means of their reconciliation. 

Bath witnesses a shift in the power dynamic between Anne and Captain Wentworth which spurs their limitations and boundaries to evolve into a symmetrical resolution of their former detrimental nature. This shift of power occurs when Anne’s control of her emotions allows her to have the advantage over Captain Wentworth during a surprise meeting. Though she scolds herself for the feelings he arouses, and suspects herself of calling herself disingenuous motives in looking out the window, she is now aware of her own duality, and wishes that “one half of her should not always be so much wiser than the other half, or always suspecting the other of being worse than it was” (142). This suspicion and scolding once again characterize how Anne’s consciousness is divided by her habitual self-preservation and her awakening hope, but the few moments in which she has to compose herself set a change in motion. By reigning in her emotions, Anne is more prepared for their subsequent meeting and discerns that for the first time that she is betraying less emotion than he (142). Her control of emotion has given her the opportunity to see behind Wentworth’s own defences, and in observing that he cannot perform the indifference they employed at Uppercross and Lyme (142), she has reasons to hope that can hold their ground against her reasons to doubt. These reasons provide her with the confidence to take the initiative at the following concert, and begin to balance out her uneven duality. Anne’s control of her emotion here marks a dramatic shift in how she engages with Wentworth and how she sees herself in relation to him. At the aforementioned concert, their mode of communication is still indirect but coming ever closer to openness. Where they once communicated with glances, and then through other people speaking for them, they now speak directly to one another, but diffuse their directness with metaphors. Wentworth relates how a thinking man like Captain Benwick “does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman”, and Anne blushingly explains that even though Lyme is stigmatized with a bad memory, her overall impression of it is very agreeable (148). He displaces ownership of his feelings by using Benwick’s situation to express them, and she uses Lyme to express her feelings about him; though they have evolved to using words with one another, they still skirt directness. It is a mark of how well they are learning to read one another that implicit cues have such a marked effect on their behaviour, such as when Wentworth displays jealousy of Mr. Elliot. At this point, the ambiguity is fading and Anne’s knowledge of Wentworth forces her to abandon the modest, self-rebuking response she might have had at Uppercross. To her intense pleasure, she discerns instantly that the only “intelligible motive” behind his behaviour is jealousy of her affection, something she could not have believed prior to their conversation (154). This realization shows a confluence between her reason and her feeling beginning to develop. Both are responsible for her realization, and are now working together instead of competing for dominance of her consciousness. The limitations that she has put on her mode of communication with him have both provoked a gratifying result, and made themselves unnecessary in the process. This is an example for how her control over emotion and its expression has trained her to be independent of her boundaries should she have cause to be. 

The one major element that might complicate Anne’s use of boundaries as healthy self-regulation is how she feels about Mr. Elliot. She distrusts him because he never shows “any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others”, and extends this to an iteration of the qualities Anne admires in a person’s manner of expression: 

She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped. (131)

Though this opinion might seem to expose Anne to hypocrisy, being that she is generally quite careful with her expression of feeling, it actually validates her limitations by contrast of motivation. Where Anne regulates a sincere and emotional inner self to maintain a composed exterior, Mr. Elliot regulates his external self to mask an insufficiency of sincerity or feeling. It shows the subtle but significant difference between performing for the sake of manipulating others, and distilling one’s inner emotions in order to preserve the self. Austen uses Mr. Elliot to characterize true dishonest expression, so that no one can ever accuse Anne of genuine insincerity. Furthermore, this opinion Anne expresses on the value of openness and even carelessness shows that she admires it in others, such as Mrs. Croft, and while she is still in the transitory stage of healing her divided consciousness, it shows that she is striving towards accepting openness in her own manner.

Finally, the communication that Anne and Wentworth share marks a significant evolution in her sense of duty, and desire to be needed. After realizing that Wentworth must love her, “Anne saw nothing, thought nothing of the brilliance of the room. Her happiness was from within” (150). As Anne begins to learn the difference between being needed and being wanted, the divide between her inner world and external world is closing as she evolves from needing external validation of her usefulness to finding happiness within herself. Rather than supplanting her sense of duty, this new awareness balances out her limitations with a new liberality. She is more forgiving of herself, more attentive to her own needs as well as the needs of others, such when she reads Captain Wentworth’s letter and cannot oblige the Musgroves with her usual pretence of seeming like herself despite overwhelming inner agitation or happiness (191), but when she and Wentworth meet minutes later in the street, they still observe public propriety and celebrate their understand of one another with “smiles reigned in and spirits dancing in private rapture” (193). This privacy of emotion is distinct from the first time Anne seeks the privacy of “cool air for her flushed cheeks” while still at Kellynch Hall (26), in that now she is sharing private feelings with Wentworth, and is no longer alone inside her own boundaries. So after the concert that sets this reconciliation in motion, when Anne walks from Camden-place to Westgate Buildings, freely entertaining a higher concentration of emotion than she has the whole novel, there is a sense that she has earned this indulgence, been trained by her own limitations to process such “musings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy” without shame or self-doubt (155). Her emotion is grounded in reality, in what her powers of observation and reasoning have confirmed, and the limitations she has placed on herself have allowed her to fully indulge in her love for Wentworth. The boundaries she imposes do not just try to contain her love, they also challenge it, try to destroy it, but end up confirming its strength and sincerity. This passage also marks her acceptance of her feelings for Captain Wentworth as a cohesive part of her identity, and not something that can be rationalized away by her reason. When Anne recognizes that whether “the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his forever”, the divide in her consciousness is finally mended, having healed slowly over the course of the narrative (155). Austen shows, through a long evolution of emotional control, how Anne has achieved a level of self-knowledge that allows her to experience her feelings without alienating herself from them. 

In this novel Austen shows how the circuitous path to love can be the most worthwhile, and how the very things that divide one’s consciousness can help repair it. After their final reconciliation, Anne acknowledges the importance of the limitations she struggled under and does not regret her choices. In regards to duty, she asserts that submitting to Lady Russell’s persuasion was that right thing to do because her conscience would have suffered otherwise, and that “a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman’s portion” (198). She also sees the value of their arduous, uncertain journey, recognizing that the struggle has rendered them “more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their reunion, than when it had been first happy… more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other’s character, truth, and attachment” (194). The struggle to work around their boundaries instead of abandoning them gives dimension to their feelings; it demonstrates how much they mean to one another that they will dance this intricate and ambiguous courtship dance in order to honour one another’s feelings.  Jane Austen earnestly but gently shows how even the most hopeless of lots can be altered by an elasticity of mind, and how the most sincere expression of love eludes simple honesty. 

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Persuasion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Print.