Persuasion - Chapter One - Jane Austen

Well. I finished Pride and Prejudice, and I guess alone, as my partners have been very quiet on the topic. But I can't say I enjoyed the assignment. I think I saw the A & E version too much. I would so suggest reading the book first ...

So I picked up Persuasion by Jane Austen. I finished Chapter One. The last word in the first chapter is 'pride'...and it seems the story might be centered around a bit of it with some vanity thrown in the mix. I'm not familiar with the story, so this is all news to me.

So here are my Spunk Notes ~

We open with Sir Elliot bragging on his bad self, thinking himself quite special and handsome, and he sees a lot of himself in his oldest daughter Elizabeth, so I'm figuring we might find her as quiet doomed.

His lovely wife, Lady Elliot, has died 13 years prior to the place we are now. I thought a particular line regarding Lady Elliot's death quite odd..."and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called upon to quit them." The 'them' is her three girls. She doesn't sound like she was a very happy woman. She was probably pretty, but not happy, just dutiful ...probably didn't care much living with Mr. Vanity there. But we'll see.

The oldest Elizabeth is now 29, (yikes!), and unmarried (yikes!), and so is looking for a suitor, finds one suitable, but he blows her off! Dad is not happy and neither she, because it seems, she really did like the guy as she found him "extremely agreeable". He not only fit everything they needed for honor and style, but Elizabeth was attracted to him, also.

Seems he was a baronet - which I thought was a weapon at first, but that's a bayonet - and that ‘baronet thing’ was necessary for something very important to her and her father, something about blood lines, but I got confused here. Seems the rouge who threw her over was named William Walter Elliot, Esq. And her father is Walter Elliot. So. Ummm, he was related in some way, and this, perhaps not being all to unusual back then was okay with them. A little too close to home for me, maybe Elizabeth should count herself lucky.

So, anyway, the rouge married a wealthy woman whose birth was counted for nothing important, but this move, you see, guaranteed his own independence. Because had he married Elizabeth, then the other Walter Elliot would have been in charge of the money.

But the William Walter’s wife apparently died. I'm not sure exactly, but it seems that Elizabeth wore "black ribbons for his wife", so I can only think that be a custom should one be dead. But what do I know? I'm just ending Chapter One.

Let’s see, the middle sister, Mary, married a regular guy. No one was impressed even though he's rich.. I hope we learn that Mary was in love and lives a happy life. The father refers to her as "coarse'. He just sounds like maybe we are not going to like this guy unless this is a book about redemption, and I don't think it is because it's called Persuasion. Persuading and Redeeming are different, I suppose.

I haven't mentioned Anne yet. This will be our heroine. Apparently a sensible girl, so far, but her father has referred to her as 'haggard'. Probably wore out from putting up with his painfully silly vanities, and takes a lot of deep breathes before speaking and shakes her head a lot in disbelief so this makes her haggard looking to him.

There is also the character of Lady Russell. You get the idea that 'maybe' Lady Elliot had thought that Lady Russell and Sir Vanity Elliot would have married upon Lady Elliot’s death. But because Lady Russell did not follow through on that, you get the idea that she might be no fool, and might be an independent woman with some means. Her husband passed so maybe a rich widow.

So jumping to the end of chapter, the Elliot's are near broke and have been advised by their friends to "retrench", which basically means stop overspending people. Oh and just to let you in on Elizabeth’s character a tad, when she saw this as a good possible choice, she choose to stop ‘unnecessary charities’, not buy new dining room furniture and skip giving Anne a birthday present that year. Sweet girl, huh?

So here’s a great line for the end of the chapter…

okay, they, Sir Vanity and Elizabeth, have called in their two closest friends to advise them and they say they want a suggestion that will “remove their embarrassment and reduce their expenditure, without involving the loss of any indulgence of taste or pride.”

Right. Good luck with that.