ABSTRACT
In her novel Persuasion, when Jane Austen named an older female character “Sophia,” she invoked the meaning of the Greek noun “sophia”: wisdom. “Prudence” was also deployed as a name in eighteenth-century England, so it is intriguing that Austen chose the more continental-sounding “Sophia” to attach connotations of cosmopolitanism to her character. Sophia Croft, an allegorical personification of female wisdom generally, functions as a sort of everywoman figure within Austen’s revisionist allegory. Austen creates an allegorical tale about how the constant example of loving wisdom, personified in Sophia Croft, can overcome the logical force of cold, rhetorical persuasion.
