Alicia Méndez Badallo

PERSUASION
The novel reflects the high society. Not the richest or powerful families, but the well-off classes.
In this social class the money or the power that you have is not as important as the one that
seems that you have. The appearance is the most important factor in order to be respected. A
character that represents this situation is Sir Walter Elliot, who is ruined, with lots of debts, and
instead of decreasing the spending on whims that made him look rich, he decided to rent the
house and to move to another place. In that way, he could continue spending money in
ridiculous and non-necessary things that make him seems to be richer.

Because of the society values, Anne could not marry Frederick. He was not exactly of the same
social group and it would be considered and offense to the family. Frederick was a captain and
that means that, originally, he belonged to a low social class. People, such a Sir Walter and
Shepherd does not like the idea of being able to change of social class.

As a consequence of the important of appearances, the reader feels more sympathy with the
family of her sister Mary and of Harville. In those families, the vanity and the envy it is not
present in their daily lives because they have to deal with problems such us illness or child
raising. That contributes to empathise with those families, which are more real.

Women in the novel represents the women situation of the epoque. Throughout the novel,
comments about what women should do or not are constantly made. For example, Lady Russell
was not a good example for the society because she was not married, and anyone takes Anne
seriously when she tries to help his father with the debts. Another thing that women should not
do is sailing, because they are too delicate for it and they would be afraid.

The perfect women should be beautiful, nice and her main occupations should be to raise the
children that she must have, establish a friend relationship with women of the same social group
and take care of the house, because as Shepherd says, “a house is never well cared of without a
Lady”
In some aspects, Anne breaks the role model that was imposed to women. Anne is the only
women in the novel that has some general knowledge. She was well educated; she gives better
advises about economy that the men of the family. She has a wide range of Knowledge that was
considered more appropriate to men. Her conversations with Benwick about literature show that
both have the same knowledge. This could be a revindication for an equal education. She proves
that both genders should learn and know about literature.
For Anne, the ideal life would be to be able to make the important decisions of her life by her
own. I think that she wants to marry the man she loves and to live a peaceful live in which she
opinions would be considered as much as the ones from her husband.

In fact, Anne takes her own decisions about marriage. She finally marries the man she has been
loving for years in spite of the opinion of the family, For the contemporary criticism the novel
teaches women to marry according to what they feel without taking into account the social
differences. However, I do not think so. It is true that Anne marries a man with whom she could
not marry in the past because of the social differences, but when they finally marry, those social
differences had decreased. The captain is richer and has a higher position in the society. Now he
shares more or less the social class with Anne.

The question is that if there would have been the same love story if the captain would not have
become richer or if he were even poorer, or , could we have the same story with a happy ending
if Anne have felt in love with a farmer that works for his father?

To sum up, I think that it is worth reading Persuasion nowadays because it is a way to learn
how was the British society and also, I find interesting that the novel was something new for the
epoque.