{"id":10360,"date":"2024-11-17T04:47:50","date_gmt":"2024-11-17T04:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=10360"},"modified":"2024-11-17T04:47:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-17T04:47:54","slug":"not-wise-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/17\/not-wise-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Wise Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Not Wise Yet: Revisiting Austen\u2019s Persuasion<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Unfortunately, sometimes you really do understand things a little better when you\u2019re older.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Whitney Rio-Ross<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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When I saw that Netflix was adapting Jane Austen\u2019s Persuasion <\/em>in 2022, I smiled\u2014not because I was looking forward to the film but because I knew it would be bad. Persuasion <\/em>is an internal novel with minimal action or interesting dialogue. Previous attempts to bring it to screen had, understandably, fallen flat for me. The only way to make Persuasion <\/em>an interesting movie was to make it unrecognizable. Based on the Netflix trailer, the filmmakers had decided to do just that.<\/p>

I also smiled because I didn\u2019t care. Persuasion <\/em>was my least favorite Austen novel, and I would not grieve its destruction. Persuasion <\/em>lacked the wit and biting social commentary that drew me to Austen\u2019s writing. It was merely a love story, and a shamelessly romantic one at that. To summarize:<\/p>

Anne Eliot and Captain Wentworth, once engaged, run into each other nearly a decade later. She regrets having broken the engagement after a family friend persuaded her to do so. He\u2019s still angry with her for giving him up so easily. After months of silent yearning, Captain Wentworth writes Anne a love letter. She is so elated that she must go find him immediately, wherever he is, as if they won\u2019t see each other again that very evening. (I credit Austen with cinematic lovers needlessly running through airports.)<\/p>

I had read the book three times by the end of college, and every time I finished, I thought, \u201cThat was\u2026 sweet.\u201d I could admit there were some interesting philosophical passages, but I found the philosophy in Sense and Sensibility <\/em>equally compelling and more entertaining. I could also recognize that Austen was doing something revolutionary with her narration of Anne\u2019s internal dialogue throughout the book. But the earnestness of the love letter and pages of quiet longing made me squirm.<\/p>

As I smirked through the Netflix film\u2019s terrible reviews, though, I felt Austen jab me with her pen. Any time one of her heroines feels morally or intellectually superior to others, it\u2019s time for her to learn a lesson by re-examining her values, actions, and prejudices. I knew I needed to reread Persuasion<\/em>. Now that I was a decade older and had been in love myself, it was time I returned to Austen\u2019s final novel.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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There had to be a word for what was missing, but I hadn\u2019t learned it yet.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Growing up, I didn\u2019t plan to get married. I wasn\u2019t set against it, but I didn\u2019t find the general idea particularly appealing. Unlike a Jane Austen heroine, I didn\u2019t need marriage for financial security, and the attitude toward spinsters has improved slightly over the last three centuries. I agreed with Elizabeth Bennet when she said, \u201cI am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony.\u201d If that deepest love didn\u2019t come, I\u2019d survive\u2014even thrive.<\/p>

In college and grad school, I was surprised to find that this perspective on marriage drew me suitors. Some classmates saw my attitude as a challenge they were meant to overcome. (This egoism took them out of the running.) Others believed that my indifference to future romance indicated a lack of standards or distaste for commitment. (These were the guys who enjoyed saying that the idea of \u201csoulmates\u201d was a misunderstanding of Plato and then asked if I had seen Before Sunrise<\/em>.) Yet I found that not seeking a perfect spouse who checked all the boxes on my nonexistent list raised<\/em> my standards for a life partner. It was going to take someone remarkable to make me want marriage when the arrangement itself wasn\u2019t enticing. If someone who doesn\u2019t enjoy pets adopts a puppy, that must be one outstanding canine.<\/p>

I was willing to fall in love at some point and dated with that possibility in mind. Yet even when I cared profoundly about a partner, even when I would say I loved them, I wasn\u2019t excited to marry them one day. When I tried to imagine our future, I felt only a hazy loneliness that I couldn\u2019t articulate. There had to be a word for what was missing, but I hadn\u2019t learned it yet.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Most humans desire companionship, and plenty are worthy of our affection.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Anne is older than Austen\u2019s other heroines (a certified spinster at age twenty-seven) and wiser in her understanding of both world and self. She is also practically perfect\u2014caring, pragmatic, poised. (Anne\u2019s saintliness remains my chief disappointment with the novel.) We see almost no character development, because she has already matured by the time we meet her, thereby skipping over the years that transformed her from a pliable, timid girl to a woman who knows and trusts her own mind. And apart from this development, Anne was already a beacon of virtue when she broke off her engagement at nineteen.<\/p>

At the beginning of Persuasion<\/em>, Austen sums up Anne\u2019s past in a sentence: \u201cShe had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.\u201d This line had never struck me before, but this time, it pierced. When we meet her, Anne has not simply matured into someone who makes her own decisions. Her maturity also allows her to comprehend that the chance she had to marry for love was a rare privilege she won\u2019t come by again. It also ruins her chances of marrying anyone else, including the kind gentleman who would become her brother-in-law. There was nothing wrong with him, but now that she had known love, she couldn\u2019t marry someone for whom she felt only mild affection.<\/p>

Anne\u2019s story (and mine) isn\u2019t about changing from a cynic to a romantic. It\u2019s about learning the meaning of romance only after falling in love. Austen never married, but she watched many marriages age. At the point when she wrote Persuasion<\/em>, her social circle was no longer girls playing the marriage market but women living with the consequences\u2014good or bad\u2014of the choices made in youth. Perhaps this aging was necessary for Austen to write a love story like Persuasion<\/em>, which is not so much a marriage plot as a lovers\u2019 reunion and a meditation on the possibility that some loves cannot be rivaled.<\/p>

I long thought of \u201cThe One\u201d as a juvenile fantasy. Most humans desire companionship, and plenty are worthy of our affection. I still don\u2019t believe in the general idea of romantic soulmates. But as someone who couldn\u2019t want marriage until I desperately wanted to marry a particular person, I\u2019m embarrassed to say that perhaps some couples, like Anne and Wentworth, seem meant-to-be\u2014or are at least unable-to-be with anyone else.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve ever been more horrified by the end of a movie.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Two months after we got married, Joshua (my husband) and I watched La La Land<\/em>. The trailers had promised dancing, humor, and romance. No one warned me that it would give me a mild panic attack and nightmares for years to come.<\/p>

At the end of the movie, we find out that the protagonists don\u2019t end up together, but they both achieve their career goals. That might be sad, but the filmmakers weren\u2019t satisfied with sad; they wanted devastation. Years after the relationship has ended, the heroine stumbles upon a jazz club, which happens to be owned by her ex. She watches her gorgeous former lover perform the song he wrote for her. Next to her sits her clueless husband, who is decidedly less attractive than Ryan Gosling. As the music swells, we watch an alternate timeline play out, one where the charming pianist puts the relationship before his dream. The two have an adorable child and are still successful in their careers. But alas, the heroine is now married to someone else.<\/p>

I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve ever been more horrified by the end of a movie. The idea of running into Joshua after marrying someone else is my personal hell. I imagine myself watching him speak at a conference. (Joshua doesn\u2019t play piano.) Next to me sits my husband, and while he is usually adequate, he becomes as interesting and attractive as a potato when compared to Joshua. This scene is the anti-Persuasion<\/em>. \u201cYou pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope…. I have loved none but you,\u201d writes Captain Wentworth. In my imaginary conference room, I am all agony, trapped in regret, wondering how I could have married someone else while Joshua still walked the earth.<\/p>

That night, I had a nightmare that has recurred countless times over the last seven years. A man I once dated is proposing, and I am paralyzed with uncertainty. Yes, I enjoy this person, and he would be a good husband. But I know I\u2019m not in love with him; there is something lacking, like a key ingredient missing from a familiar dish. I\u2019ve tasted it before, and my mind races to find the name, going through a rolodex of everyone I\u2019ve been involved with romantically. Then I remember Joshua. I can\u2019t marry this guy when I know that I have been so in love with someone else, someone who is still out there. Breathless but relieved, I wake up.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Though I try to avoid making assumptions about dead writers\u2019 love lives, it\u2019s impossible not to read Austen\u2019s personal experience onto her final novel.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Despite writing the world\u2019s most popular marriage plots, Jane Austen had remarkably little romantic experience of her own. She never married and left no evidence of a torrid love affair, despite what a few imaginative biopics might suggest. She was once engaged\u2014for a day. The morning after accepting the proposal, she changed her mind. Thanks to Persuasion<\/em>, Austen\u2019s readers have managed to turn this morsel of romantic intrigue into a juicy drama. Though I try to avoid making assumptions about dead writers\u2019 love lives, it\u2019s impossible not to read Austen\u2019s personal experience onto her final novel, written when she was well beyond marriage prospects. As Anne looks back at her broken engagement with acute regret, how are we supposed to forget Austen\u2019s proposal? How can we not suspect that her last novel is her personal fan fiction?<\/p>

Whether Austen strongly identified with Anne or not, the novel is a story of regret, despite its happy ending. I first read Persuasion <\/em>when I was sixteen. My biggest regret at that point was every outfit I had worn between 2001 and 2003. I hadn\u2019t been allowed to make life-changing choices yet. Try as I might, I could not identify with Anne\u2019s regret, especially one so long-lasting. Austen\u2019s other young heroines wouldn\u2019t have understood, either. Though I, thankfully, still don\u2019t have major regrets that render me sleepless, that terrible nightmare persists for a reason. I am haunted because I could have been Anne Eliot.<\/p>

I nearly missed my chance with Joshua, and not because I wasn\u2019t interested. We had fallen in love the year before while seeing other people, but we continued those doomed relationships out of guilt and stubbornness. We even decided we should stay away from each other because we knew other relationships wouldn\u2019t stand a chance if we were in close contact. (A word of advice to the unwed: When you know you would break up with your partner for another person you\u2019re close to, break up with your partner. Stop wasting everyone\u2019s time.)<\/p>

Then, a couple of months before graduating from divinity school and living at least a thousand miles apart, we were both single and wondering what was next in our lives. While on a jog, I stumbled to a halt when I realized that I might never see Joshua again after graduation. A life without him seemed impossible. Thankfully, in the eleventh hour, Joshua told me he wanted to be in a relationship\u2014a serious one. I told him I needed a few days to think. (Very romantic, I know.) When I showed up to give him an answer, I didn\u2019t have one and instead asked him for an explanation. Why now, when I was moving back to Tennessee and we might go months without seeing each other? We were almost free of \u201cWill They or Won\u2019t They?\u201d He offered several reasons, including that we couldn\u2019t seem to stay away from each other. Then he brought out the real issue: \u201cI don\u2019t want to always wonder.\u201d<\/p>

I knew I would always wonder. I knew that the faintest possibility of this relationship would haunt me. I also knew that if I dated Joshua, even if we broke up, I wasn\u2019t going to marry anyone else. It was him or no one, and that thought mortified me. Did I believe in soulmates now? Did I think we were meant-to-be? It was all so embarrassing. But love bears and overcomes all things, even humility and philosophical panic. \u201cOk,\u201d I said, and in a huff of humiliation, walked away. I saved the cinematic first kiss for a time when I wasn\u2019t so upset.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I needed to grow up to appreciate Persuasion <\/em>and take the romance seriously.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I\u2019ve always felt a need to defend my love of Jane Austen, which sounds ridiculous given that she is one of the most universally acclaimed authors in the English language. But I must defend why <\/em>I love her. I fear someone might think I love chick lit, that I read for the romance. (Lord, forgive me for the ways I have internalized misogyny.) I explain that she\u2019s hilarious, especially if you know anything about the Regency era. I point out passages that criticize sexism, mock social standards, and offer religious insight. Truly, these are the parts of Austen I love most, but I avoid admitting that she writes stellar love stories. Whose heart doesn\u2019t pound when Edward Ferrars shows up at Elinor\u2019s house or when Mr. Knightley says, \u201cIf I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more\u201d? Persuasion <\/em>is all about the desire displayed in these passages. It begins years before the first pages and steadily grows until Wentworth\u2019s killer confession of \u201chalf agony, half hope.\u201d<\/p>

I no longer blush at Persuasion <\/em>because it betrays a particularly feminine desire for romance. Yet I still blush because it is shamelessly earnest in a way no other Austen novel is. What is more embarrassing than desiring another person so intensely that you write a letter like Wentworth\u2019s or chase after your long-time crush like Anne does? I still find the idea of making such romantic gestures mortifying.<\/p>

That\u2019s why I lied about my dream. I don\u2019t wake up after I remember Joshua exists. I turn away from the guy proposing and run to find Joshua. That\u2019s why I\u2019m breathless when I wake up; I\u2019ve been running at full speed. The very first time I had this nightmare, I knew the last part came straight out of Persuasion <\/em>and was amazed that a novel I didn\u2019t particularly like had somehow branded itself on my subconscious. This time, when I read Anne react to Captain Wentworth\u2019s love letter, a new understanding unlocked. Of course she can\u2019t wait until after dinner to see him. As said in When Harry Met Sally <\/em>(whose ending should credit Austen), \u201cWhen you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>

In college, it was impossible for me to hear \u201cYou\u2019ll understand when you\u2019re older\u201d as anything but an insult, especially when it involved literature. But I needed to grow up to appreciate Persuasion <\/em>and take the romance seriously. It\u2019s still my least favorite Austen novel. I still find the heroine boringly perfect and wish we saw more of Anne and Captain Wentworth in the act of falling in love rather than their vague reminiscence of that missing chapter. (Nothing is as sexy to me as mutual character growth; that\u2019s why Pride and Prejudice <\/em>works so well.) But that is all more an issue of personal preference than quality of writing. I appreciate the narrative far more than I did before I had been in love or was even old enough to regret anything I had done a decade ago.<\/p>

When I reread Persuasion <\/em>this time, I also reread myself. I found myself more open to what I would have called a fairytale a decade ago, and not simply because of my own experience with love. Maturity shouldn\u2019t only mean understanding the parts of the world we have now experienced. It means allowing for the possibility of stories we would have never imagined before and delighting in what we do not yet know. Next time I pick up a book to reread, I will remember a line from Persuasion<\/em>, when Anne finds out she will be near her love again: \u201cShe hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! alas! she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Whitney Rio-Ross<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0holds a Master\u2019s in Religion and Literature from Yale Divinity School. Her writing has appeared in Sojourners<\/em>,\u00a0Reflections<\/em>, America Magazine<\/em>,\u00a0LETTERS JOURNAL<\/em>,\u00a0The Cresset<\/em>,\u00a0St. Katherine Review<\/em>,\u00a0The Other Journal<\/em>, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry chapbook\u00a0Birthmarks<\/em> and lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unfortunately, sometimes you really do understand things a little better when you\u2019re older.
\nBy Whitney 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