Here's a discussion thread for those who want to join the group read of Persuasion going in during March. Also just a place to talk about your thoughts on the book.

(No Spoilers please!)

Cheers. Thanks for starting this. Just 40 or so pages in and I already love Anne as a character. Do I detect a little emotion there too? (not very typical of Austen in my opinion).

Thanks from me as well!

Yes, definitely emotion -- of the suppressed sort, however, which on the one hand is very much in character with Anne (hoping that's not too much of a spoiler -- it does become clear fairly early on) and also a necessity in Anne's situation. Anne is all placid equanimity on the outside ... her inner life, though, is a different matter.

How are you liking her father so far? (He's played by Michael Redgrave in the 1995 movie ... it's almost worthwhile watching for his portrayal alone.)

I'm enjoying this but I have some serious issues with most of the characters in this book! Her father...I was going to say earlier that he was like Mrs. Bennett but worse...but then I met Mary and I stand corrected. I love Anne, but I am seriously contemplating slapping a few people in this story!

And I can see with the right actor, the father would be a very...interesting character to watch. I'll have to check that movie out after I finish this.

Loving reading all the radical ideas about the aristocracy. I guess she learned something from the French Revolution. Just imagine what she would have written if she'd lived a few more years. Anne reminds me of a less rigid Fanny Price. She clearly benefitted from the affection she received from her mother and Lady Russell.

And what's with Sir Walter's obsession with looks?? I can't help myself laughing at every relevant reference!

Reply to post #7 (show post):
I know! I was comparing him to Mrs. Bennett till I met Mary. I can't wait to see how someone plays him!

Reply to post #7 (show post):
There is a great line about him in the first chapter. Something about vanity of rank and appearance being the beginning and end of his character. I guess reading the Baronetage is the equivalent of googling yourself. He's the most despicable character Austen ever invented.

hahaha! Indeed, googling youself or checking out (and perhaps filling up) a wikipedia entry on yourself. I think he's a lot worse than Mrs. Bennett. I don't know which chapter you're on guys, but it feels as if the whole family sucks, except for Invisible Anne of course (I just finished chapter 16 by the way)

Reply to post #10 (show post):
I agree. Even people she thinks somewhat highly of, I don't. The whole lot of them suck and I love all the people who love Anne and hold her in esteem...even if they don't have the rank to recommend themselves to her socially over-conscious family. I know class mattered but...really! And Sir Walter judging everyone on how they look to him...gargh!

@ The Boat Was My Friend - what do you think of Mr. Elliot?

I'm really struck by Austen's radicalism. Sir Walter is so much worse than Mrs.Bennet because he so detached from the real world. Mrs Bennet had none of his advantages and she had a legitimate concern for the matrimonial state of her daughters. Sir Walter could care less about what happens to his daughters. His remarks to Anne, when she chooses to visit Mrs Smith rather than to visit their esteemed cousin, is so mean-spirited that i'm surprised the Republican Party hasn't turned it into a campaign song! Anne needs some consciousness raising herself when she describes those noble cousins as nothing.

Reply to post #7 (show post):
You'll love the 1995 movie adaptation then, if you ever get around to watching it ...

("Invisible Anne" is a great description of her, btw!)

Reply to post #12 (show post):
Yes, that's what I love about this book as well -- Austen holding a mirror up to her own society, even more so than she did in "Pride and Prejudice." And I agree, Sir Walter is much worse than Mrs. Bennet -- in large parts, because unlike her he has all the privilege and advantages of rank, education, money and gender. It's as if she were saying, even having no superior education nor any access to society's other privileges doesn't excuse you from at least acquiring some basic common sense, but shame on you if you DO have access to all of those privileges and you still don't do any better. And of course, making her readers laugh about Sir Walter (and Mrs. Bennet, for that matter) is so much more effective than just a straightforward portrayal of their shallowness ...

Austen wrote "Pride and Prejudice" while she was still living at Chawton, but "Persuasion" is a product of her own years in Bath (Westgate Buildings is where she herself and her mother actually ended up after her father's death, when they ran out of money), so on another narrative level, one is in a sense her reflection of country life and society, and the other, of city life and society. In fact, what is really interesting is reading her letters as a companion piece to "Persuasion" (and "Northanger Abbey", for that matter). You get a great sense of what her own life in those years was like, and also what she liked about Bath (e.g., the cultural events, such as the musical evenings at the Assembly Rooms) -- but also the things (and people) she ended up caring decidedly less for.

Reply to post # 12: I hated that scene! I ended up reading it out loud to my husband as the best example of how despicable Sir. Walter was. It made me seethe!

Reply to post # 14: That's one of the reasons I've always enjoyed her books and this one has more of it really then the other two I've read (S&S and P&P). And yes, it was better in her time, and ours, if the persons you hold a mirror to are able to be laughed at rather then frowned at...or worse. Her characters - the good, the bad, and the ugly - are so human. I think most people can draw connections between the fictional characters and people they've met in their own lives. I know I often do.

You can see her time in Bath so clearly in this book. The descriptions are not plentiful, but what are there are solid and make it seem so real. It's easy to see them based on familiarity. I'd wondered about the Westgate Buildings...partially because of Sir Walter's scathing attack. Do the other books feel this...traveled? I know there is a bit of travel in S&S, but it really shows more in this one.

Reply to post #15 (show post):
Oh, absolutely -- the "Who is this sickly Mrs. Smith, and how can you even contemplate visiting her instead of our snuff-nosed cousin" exchange is definitely Sir Walter at his worst. I love how Anne is sticking to her guns there, though. Not so meek after all! In that sense, she and Fanny Price from Mansfield Park are very much alike ... they generally hold back on what they think and they are careful not to give offense needlessly (Fanny out of necessity as much as by nature, Anne chiefly by nature, and both also guided by a very shrewd insight into other people's character), but when it comes to their personal choices and their sense of what is right, they stay true to their convictions come hell and high water. (In Anne's case, obviously a lesson learned the hardest way conceivable ...)

And no, IMHO the earlier books don't display that much personal knowledge of location as do Persuasion and Northanger Abbey (I love your expression there, "they feel traveled"). The country society in the first two books in particular, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, reads essentially like that of a generic early 19th century rural setting (well, it does to me, anyway). In fact, given Austen's elegant and insightful use of the Lyme Regis and Bath settings in the last two books, I kind of wonder how she would have used the Derbyshire Peak Country in P&P if she had been as intimately familiar with it as she was with Lyme and Bath ...

(Here's a thought: Imagine Northanger Abbey being set in the Yorkshire moors, and satirizing the gothic literature tradition from amidst that setting, thereby also satirically foreshadowing the Brontes' books, particularly of course Wuthering Heights. If the Bronte sisters (well, Charlotte in any event) already didn't care for Austen's work as it is, imagine how irate THAT sort of thing would have made them!)