Anne Elliot, the eldest daughter of an English Nobleman has had the misfortune of remaining unmarried and unattached to the advanced age of (collective ghasp) Twenty-SEVEN Years Old!
It's not like Anne hasn't had her chances, though. When she was 19 she fell in love with this guy named Wentworth and their relationship got really, really serious: He even asked her to marry him, and she was gonna say yes! Then Anne, being a little nervous and uncertain, confided in her best friend/mother figure who convinced her break off with him.
The reason she shouldn't marry him? He's got no money, and he's not a nobleman. Making their relationship public would ostracize her from her whole family, she would go from a Baron's standard of living to complete destitution.
Lady Russell: Do you really wanna open that can of worms, Anne?
The answer, to 19 year old Anne Elliot, is no.
So the break up, and poor young Wentworth takes it hard.
And with all his angst and pent up sexual frustration...
he enlists in the Navy!
Fast Forward 8 years and Colonel Frederick Wentworth has traveled across the world, seen all sorts of things his old girl-friend back home has probably never dreamed of, had all sorts of sea-faring adventures and harrowing experiences. He's become confident, he's made a name for himself, and (most importantly) he's become independently RICH!!
The years have been less kind to Anne. She did, presumably, have a few other suitors after she dumped Wentworth (one of them even ended up married to her little sister) but the whole marriage thing never really worked out. Now she's an adult (Twenty-Seven-Year-Old ) woman, still living with her father, in a household that is rapidly becoming bankrupt by her father's failed schemes, surrounded by a family that treats her like a doormat.
Most of the story deals with Anne in this state. Not in a "Oh-you-should-totally-feel-sorry-for-me" way, but we as readers really have to live in her situation: with petty, histrionic relatives who don't give a shit about you, but are ready to unload all of their garbage the minute you walk in the door. People who dominate your time because they assume you've got nothing to do. Really, that's the bit that made it hardest to read for me.
Into this mess, walks Anne's old flame. At this point Anne is pretty much a spinster, no one wants her because she's old. But just like today, guys only get hotter with age. (And it's totally acceptable for a girl in British Regency society to marry some one significantly older than she is; older-male just acts as a sugar-daddy until his much-younger female companion magically transforms into a humble housewife. Also you can marry your cousin, but we'll get to that later.)
Wentworth is a Babe!! And he starts prominently hitting on all the younger, available girls in Anne's immediate vicinity. Pays absolutely no attention to Anne, and later on lets this slip to one of his side-chicks:
Wentworth: Wait, that was Anne?
Anne Elliot?
Whoa! She got OLD!
If it were me I don't know how I'd feel about this whole situation, but Anne feels a weird combination of guilt and curiosity. Interested to see what Wentworth has made of himself, and regret that she didn't choose a relationship with him over her family.
To me, the most fascinating part of this book is how it deals with this regret. I think almost everyone who goes through life is gonna have a similar experience at some point. Despite what she feels now, she knows that the decision she made at the time was a sound one. Nineteen-year-old (-ish) Wentworth could have ended up a complete deadbeat husband who felt entitled and cheated that his wife's family wouldn't give up the dowry she was owed. It is also quite reasonable that the 19-year-old Baroness-in-waiting would have gotten fed up with what she'd traded her then-comparatively luxurious life for. Neither of them could have foreseen what life had in store for them. Anne cant even blame Lady Russell for giving her what turned out to be the crappiest advice of her life, because she knew it was sound council and given in good faith.
Anne doesn't blame anyone, but that doesn't stop her from wishing she could go back in time and persuade 19-year-old-Anne to make a different choice.
For me, this is among the most profound of Jane Austen's Life Lessons:
(^^And no, that is not a direct Austen quote, but it does sum it up nicely.)
You can't change what you did in the past, you can only chose what you do now.
Luckily, Anne is more than what other people think about her. She's intelligent assertive, she has nerves of steel, and can keep cool in stressful situations like nobody's business. She also has complete control of her emotional faculties, which is one reason it takes so long for the whole situation with Wentworth to come to a boil.
Some people seem to act like Wentworth's behavior in most of the book is kind of testing the waters to see if Anne is still interested in him. But in his mind, he's showing her how completely OVER her he really is.
Kinda like:
(^^Look at me now, Anne. I'm so hawt now...Love me Anne plz!)
Eventually, it's neither his behavior, nor her longing that brings them back together. It's a conversation Anne has with a mutual friend about his sister who died, and his brother-in-law (his sister's widow) get's re-married right after. They talk about bereavement and how people deal with it in different ways. And Wentworth (who is listening in on this whole conversation he's got nothing to do with) goes, "Oh, crap! She thinks I'm really over her. CRAP I'M NOT OVER HER!!"
Then he writes her the most romantically charged love letter about how after all these years and everything he's done and accomplished with his life, all those angsty teenage feelings of 19-Year-Old-Fred are still in there, only simmered with 8 years of repressed sexual tension.
Really though, as a book it's not the most romantic. Most of the story deals with Anne's super dysfunctional (and not in an endearing way) family. It's only at the end you can appreciate the unresolved sexual tension.
No comments:
Post a Comment