ABSTRACT
Persuasion is at once Jane Austen's most serious and her most romantic novel. For almost one-half of the novel the protagonist is in a seemingly hopeless situation. In Persuasion, the manipulation is much more blatant than in the other novels. Having placed Anne in such a bleak situation, Austen extricates her by recourse to the conventions not only of comedy, but also of romance. Persuasion is a new departure principally in its emphasis upon the importance of individual exertion, its questioning of prudence, and its more favorable attitude toward world-openness, spontaneity, and romance. In Persuasion, the point of ritual death occurs in the first half of the novel rather than near the end, and it is unusually prolonged. Persuasion, like all of Jane Austen's novels, depicts a process of education. In this case, the education is that of Captain Wentworth, who must come to appreciate Anne's virtues and to understand his own faults.
