Please join us in June when we discuss "Persuasion" by Jane Austen
Image above: Jane Austen
Location: ZOOM. If you are signed up for this meeting, the link to this event is found by scrolling down to the bottom right-hand side of this webpage. The correct link will not appear until RSVPs are closed.
We are now meeting once a month, almost always the last Tuesday of the month, online via Zoom. [On occasion we might have a meeting at an accessible restaurant in Oakland, probably on a Saturday afternoon.]
The discussion will start at the normal 6:30 PM time. Please sign in 5 minutes early so that we are all ready to start promptly on time. If you have not used Zoom before, it is suggested you download it sometime before the meeting starts.
From the Introduction, by Robert Morrison, to an Annotated Edition of Persuasion:
Underwritten by the principal events of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, as well as by a wide range of literary sources and biographical experience, the novel tells the story of the isolated and unloved Anne Elliot, whose sense of duty to others does not prevent her from wishing to take control of her own fate, and whose thoughts and actions repeatedly highlight the ways in which the lives of those around her are blunted by spurious societal conventions, from the dictates of “feminine” behavior to the prescriptions designed to safeguard the distinctions of rank. Anne and her former fiancé, Captain Frederick Wentworth, share a sorrowful past that at once divides and unites them, and when circumstances bring them back together again, their confusion and interest in others continually thwart their attempts to understand both themselves and each other. “Persuasion” is Austen’s last published novel, and a moving love story of despair, anticipation, missed opportunities, and second chances.
Anne’s devotion to Wentworth sustains and haunts her through years of sorrow, while her shimmering sense of her own integrity enables her to rise above the insensitivity and superciliousness of those around her, as her frequent disregard for the injunctions of rank and gender allow her a more unfettered pursuit of her own happiness. Her second chance with Wentworth is perplexed by miscalculations and by attractions to others, as his is with her. But while these forces separate them for several months, the strength of their initial love and their ability to remain committed to it at the deepest levels, even as they entertain the possibility of relationships with other people, enact a peculiarly modern distress: amid whirling cultural changes and vast shifts in political and social landscape, our best alternative is to devote our most vital energies to an intense personal relationship such as Anne has with Wentworth, a relationship that structures and redeems our lives even as it concentrates them in ways that leave us dreadfully vulnerable. “Persuasion” is Austen’s saddest and most impassioned novel, and in its blend of the public and the personal it explores both the anguish of silence and the value of hope.