Individuality In Persuasion

Fay Weldon’s ‘Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen’ (1984) through the form of an epistolic novel, serves to enrich a heightened understanding of the contemporary issues of Jane Austen’s cultural context. In doing so, the responder is inspired to adopt a more holistic appreciation of the roles of women inherent in Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1813). Due to the examination of the shift of attitudes and values between the Regency era and the 1980s, the reader comes to better understanding of the conventions of marriage for a women and the role education had in increasing one’s marriage prospects. Weldon’s critical discussion of these issues transforms a modern responder’s understanding of the role of a woman during the 19th century.

In Persuasion, Jane Austen provides readers with an analysis of the standards provided by the social class system in Britain. In her work, she analyzes such a system with impactful adjectives such superior as “superior, “inferior, and the plural of both. Via irony and satire demonstrates the stringency of the Victorian class system as well as the traditional values it has to offer. With a genuine depiction of familial characters, Austen illustrates major cons of such a social clique and explores each individually.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen gives unique insight into the values and social structure of Austen’s world. These insights are expounded on and deepened by Fay Weldon’s Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen. Jane Austen Critiques the Regency Era’s views on marriage, condemning the social norms of marrying for status and social security rather than for love. Letters to Alice evaluates the role of women in Weldon’s 1980’s context, criticising the social expectation of ‘The Angel of the House,’ which was the expectation of women in the early to mid-20th century.

In Persuasion by Jane Austen, the plot of the novel is influenced by three characteristics that the characters either lack or possess. When characters have faith, they tend to place all of their faith in one person. This results in the character sometimes being blinded by another character’s ulterior motive or not being able to rationally see how their decision will impact them. When characters possess hope and they recognize it, they make the right decisions. Characters who are charitable sacrifice themselves in order to improve other’s lives. However, characters who lack charity tend to focus more on their own selfish desires. The possession or lack of faith, hope, and charity influences the decisions that characters make, and drive the plot of the novel.

Based on the readings from The Republic of Plato, the central tension within the book is identifying the ideal form of guiding individuals either through a persuasive or compulsive path of becoming complete guardians. Through persuasion, those qualified to rule, similar to Adeimantus and Glaucon, are more adequately educated to lead a city than through compulsion. Within this essay, the defining important principle of persuasion that will be explained are listening, exhortation and dialectic. By examining Platos understanding of the importance of persuasion in education, it can be determined that qualified individuals are more adequately educated through an emphasis of persuasion over compulsion.

When trying to persuade someone, there are many ways one can approach the task, and appealing to the audience's intellect as well as their emotions are two very good ones. Indeed, in Emily Bronte's 19th century novel Wuthering Heights, the protagonist, Catherine Earnshaw Linton shows her ability to customize persuasive appeals according to her intended audience. At times, she can display impressive emotion. She usually employs this tactic for Nelly, her housemaid. During one explosive scene, however, she uses the same in her interaction with Edgar, her intended husband. Each person has an opinion of Catherine's emotionally persuasive style. And, Edgar and Nelly react quite differently to her changing modes.

    Throughout the course of her work, Persuasion, Jane Austen offers much insight into the social aspect of English life at the beginning of the 19th Century.  Austen’s characters, through their lives, demonstrate how the landed aristocracy has seen their dominant grasp on the social scene loosened.  In addition, through various degrees of personal illnesses, Austen’s characters portray the human body as fragile and delicate creation.  Yet as separate and distinct as these two themes may seem, Austen relates them to each other in the theme of sickness; the aristocracy has taken a turn for the worse in light of the successes of the navy in the war, while the individual characters suffer through

Through her sarcastic and contemptuous tone in Persuasion, Austen portrays how many members of the upper class only cared about appearance and thought of themselves as being more attractive and overall better than everyone else. After Mr. Elliot had come to Bath and spent time with the Elliots, they could not stop talking about him. Sir Walter, while discussing the flaws in his appearance, said that “‘He did not mean to complain, however. Mr. Elliot was better to look at than most men, and he had no objection to being seen with him any where’” (Austen 93). Despite having spent a large chunk of time doing nothing but “complain[ing]” about Mr. Elliot’s appearance, Austen mockingly states that criticizing him was not his intent. Sir Walter actually thinks of Mr. Elliot as “better

What Warnings Does Jane Austen offer About the Moral Dangers of Persuasion? My essay will be exploring the different forms of persuasion, where it occurs in the story and the effects that it has upon the characters in the novel. In it's most basic form persuasion means 'Gaining power over others'. Which means to influence others into acting in a way in which you want them to via exploitation.

In Persuasion, by Jane Austen, there are many exceptional characters. Perhaps two of the most memorable are Sir Walter Elliot, and his daughter, Anne Elliot. These characters are well shaped and have something about them that transcends time and social class, enabling readers of the all ages, to feel they have something in common with them.

Within Jane Austen’s book Persuasion, she addresses issues of wealth, class, looks, and love through her use of humor. Love plays a major role in this story because to Sir Elliot, the father of Anne Elliot, a major character, looks and one’s fortune and one’s position in society. Anne Elliot wanted to marry Captain Wentworth, however since he was poor at the time, Sir Elliot looked does upon him and did not want Anne to marry him: Anne turned down his offer of a hand in marriage. Later in the story, Captain Wentworth reappears; this time he is rich. All of a sudden women are all over him and Sir Elliot thinks highly of him. When Anne and was reacquainted with Captain Wentworth, she

In the early 1800s Jane Austen wrote what would be her last novel, Persuasion. Persuasion is set during the “Georgian Society” which greatly affects the character's views and actions throughout the novel. Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth quickly fell in love when Anne was just nineteen years old, but because he wasn't wealthy enough, Anne was not given the permission by her father, Sir Walter, to marry him. Eight years after this incident, the roles have reversed; Sir Walter has lost all of his money and Frederick Wentworth is now known as Captain Wentworth. Throughout the novel, Anne tries to overcome struggles with social class in order to fulfill her longing of being with Captain Wentworth. Therese Anderson's statement about the

In Persuasion, the last of Jane Austen’s works, the readers are immediately intrigued by the autumnal tone of the piece, and the mellowness of the main character, Anne Elliot. Anne, a twenty-seven year old upper middle class woman, met and fell in love with Captain Frederick Wentworth at the age of nineteen. She was however, forced to break off the relationship at the time because Wentworth was deemed an unsuitable match. Eight years later, they meet again and by that time Captain Wentworth has made his fortune in the navy and has become an attractive catch. Anne was now uncertain about his feelings for her. Persuasion examines English society’s view of marriage and

In Jane Austen's last completed novel, Persuasion, England is one large family with two distinct branches, the navy and the aristocratic upper class-it is no accident that the two large books consulted in the novel are the Baronetage and the Naval Lists. The naval family poses a threat to the aristocratic family; in fact, undertones of social instability riddle the text, through imagery of death, illness, and accident. The marriages of Anne Elliott, Louisa Musgrove, and Harriet Musgrove reveal a gentry which can only redeem itself through intermarriage with the professional meritocratic class, symbolically taking on their values of utility and social responsibility, and

The novel uses an unknown third person omniscient narrator; this literary technique is regularly used within Austen's novels. The narrator’s judgements' however are similar to those that we would expect from the novel's protagonist Anne Elliott. The reader is persuaded to make judgments on the characters within the novel by observing the behaviour and reactions of how they interact with the novel’s protagonist Anne. Hawthorne