Rupert Penry-Jones and Sally Hawkins in the 2007 adaptation of Persuasion
I recently finished reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion for an English Literature class, and have to say this was one of the most enjoyable assignments.
The masterpiece of Persuasion was not unfamiliar to me having watched (and loved) both of the recent television adaptations, yet the brilliance of Jane Austen only partially transfers to the big screen. While reading the short novel, I often found myself almost in tears, laughing out loud, or frequently stopping to jot a quote down on my notepad.
As if often the case for classic novels, the book is twice as good as the movie. To whet your appetite for a stroll through Persuasion, I’ve copied a few of my favorite quotes.
“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.”
“I am so ill I can hardly speak.” – Mary Musgrove, a hypochondriac and chatterbox.
“Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion
she certainly had not.”
“A submissive spirit might be patient, a strong understanding would supply resolution, but here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone. It was the choicest gift of Heaven.”
” I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as — if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you.
All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!” – Anne Elliot
Jane Austen’s Persuasion is available at Amazon.com or wherever books are sold.
